Situation analysis - More relaxed hive inspection.

So, it's two days since I last went into the hive.  At that time, I annoyed the bees by dusting with icing sugar. - I wasn't relaxed, and they certainly weren't.  Worryingly, I didn't see the queen, and I found several sealed queen cells.  - The queen cells, and the rowdy bees at that time meant I wasn't really concentrating on what I should have been, and didn't do a good job at evidence gathering. - So, my plan was leave them alone for a day or two and take a proper look at what was going on. - I left work at lunch time today as the weather was due to be warm, and intended to have a better look around.  Specifically, could I see eggs, and could I see the queen.  Then, I might have enough evidence to contact someone more knowledgeable.

In the 'super', we have a good frame here showing some capped brood, some pollen surrounding, and some honey around that.

Here we can see capped brood, pollen and around the centre of the picture, a couple of uncapped lavae.  From what I understand, at the stage they fill the bottom of the cell like this, they were probably eggs laid around 8 days ago. - So, we know the queen was laying at that time.

Here's a frame from the brood box - Not a bad shot showing the grubs at the left hand side of the frame - looking like children's teeth as I believe they should.

I still couldn't see eggs anywhere - the next two shots show some of the queen cells we found.  This one appears sealed.

There are two cells in this next shot, but one of them appears damaged - I don't think 'hatched' - maybe just not viable.

Finally as we were beginning to give up hope of finding the original queen, my daughter's eagle eyes spotted her.

So, in conclusion we've seen grubs, capped brood, we've seen the queen, though we have not seen eggs - which in any case are hard to see, and we've seen several capped queen cells.  I wonder if the apiguard has put the queen off laying properly, and this could have caused the bees to build queen cells?  Anyway, I think I've now got enough of an idea of what's in the hive to ask someone more expert which will be my next move.

Next hive inspection.

Nice weather this Saturday morning, and more than time I had another check on the bees.  I also wanted to dust them with icing sugar which is futher supposed to help them clear the varroa mites. - I think the reasoning is that they 'groom' each other and pull off some of the mites. - Also, I guess the sugar might irritate the mites and cause them to fall off.  Certainly, the varroa board had a lot of 'live' mites on it after I'd dusted the bees - these I disposed of well away from the hive, and left the board off.  I'll leave the bottom open for a few days and then check the mite drop properly to get a better picture of how it's going.

Something I read said you should always have a plan when opening the hive - a reason for doing so.  Well, today I really just wanted to check that all was in order and dust the bees with icing sugar - that was the plan.

Little smoke to let them know we are coming.

Working down through the hive - they've taken about half of the Apiguard, or it's evaporated - hopefully the large number of mites on the drop board shows they are dying.

Looks like they are filling the upper super with syrup, and some brood too - as expected.  They still haven't filled the outer couple of frames but maybe they will - they have about a month yet before the start of winter.
Working through the super, I sprinkled the bees with icing sugar as I went.  Here's a pretty full frame from the super.

Moving into the brood box was a little more fraught.  Firstly, I didn't see the queen anywhere today. - There were some grubs, and I always struggle to see eggs, but I'm really not convinced there were 'many' grubs.  More worryingly, there were what appear to be three sealed queen cells - no photo's of these, but you can just make out some grubs to the top right of this photo.

So - at this stage, the bees were getting pretty agitated - they really didn't like being dusted with sugar, though as I mentioned, it does seem to have a pretty immediate effect on the mites - there were several on the varroa board, clearly alive after the dusting which may have just come off.   However, since the bees were getting rowdy, and I'd not seen the queen and I've seen queen cells, I finished off quickly and need to take some time do decide on next moves. - Might need to contact someone more knowledgeable than myself to know what I might need to do, but first - let's assess the possibilities.

1. - Firstly - don't panic!  I last inspected the hive 10 days ago, and there were no sealed queen cells at that time and what looked like 'play cups' were small and we removed them anyway. - So, if we assume that they only started building queen cells after that point, then they would have been sealed about 2 days ago at day 8.  (Queen emerges from cell at day 16 after egg layed).

2. - I think it's pretty late in the year for the bees to think about swarming, and anyway, why would they?  They have plenty of room and are not big enough to swarm surely? - Don't think this would be the reason.  Also, my understanding is that if they were going to swarm, they would most likely do so after the new queen cell(s) were sealed. - Since they've not yet swarmed, then it could be they are not going to.

3. - Though I didn't see the queen, that in itself is not unusual - I was somewhat flustered by the bees reaction to being dusted and their increasing agitation, so it would be easy to miss her. - She may still be present.  That could indicate the bees might be planning to supersede the queen - In this case, I probably don't need to do anything other than let nature take it's course. - However, if this is the case, then again it's very late to supersede the queen. - There will be decreasing numbers of drones available for her to mate with and this would surely doom the colony at this time of the year?

4. - Something has happened to the queen - either yours truly squashed her on the last examination, she was attacked by the evil wasps, or has succumbed to disease of some sort. - I guess all these are possibilities, and if the case then we need a new queen and I should again let nature run it's course.

So - I just don't know for sure.  Since the bees are still here, what I think I should do is go into the hive again in a day or two and check more carefully - 1. - look for eggs with magnifying glass etc. - 2. - Try to find the queen. - 3. - Once we have situation fully assessed properly, contact some members of the club for advice.

Interesting examination today - watch this space!

Evening gatherings.

The last couple of days have been lovely weather.  The bees have been very busy, brining in pollen and presumably nectar, and they've not been taking a whole lot of the food since I last gave them some, some 5 days ago.  I think this is partly because I upset them somewhat putting in the 'Apiguard', and partly that the food is now on top of the empty super - they need to work harder to find it. - They are still taking some, but whilst the weather is good, and they can get their own nectar, that's got to be better for them than sugar water anyhow.

So - a behaviour I've noticed is that when the evening begins to darken, the bees stop flying but there can be a large cluster of them outside the hive around the entrance, even until it's quite 'cold' and dark. - I've no idea why they would do this - the wasps don't seem to be a problem at this time of night - it's almost like they are just tired and having a little chat and relax before retiring for the evening - the old women of the hive gathering for a glass of sherry and a chat before bed.

Not so many in this shot, but there can be many more. - If you have any ideas, let me know!

Hive Inspection / Varroa treatment.

It was certainly time I had another look in the hive - the last time being 12th August which was 9 days ago.  I had pencilled in an inspection yesterday, but was waiting for delivery of my 'Apiguard' varroa treatment before proceeding and this arrived in the post today.

There are varying opinions on the web regarding varroa, the levels you should treat at, when you should treat, and what with - this seems to be a common theme in beekeeping that there is no 'right' answer, so you just have to read a few sources, and make the best of it. - Hopefully the bees are pretty resilient to action and inaction.  Anyway, the rates of mite drop are well above the levels where Defra recommend treatement, so I think it's probably not wrong to treat them now, and Apiguard is recommended for treatment in August.

This is my helper / photographer for this evening:-

So - what did we see in the hive today. - Well, last time on 12th August I added the super full of foundation.  The bees have drawn out much of this comb, and filled it - I guess this is where the syrup has been going, but at least I know they have something to get them through the winter.  There were a couple of frames at the edges which were not filled, so I moved these in one space.  There was no sign of brood in the super. - Here you can see a frame from the super and how the bees have started capping off the cells at the top - Not sure where they've been putting all the pollen they seem to be bringing in.

Having had a look through the super, we put it to one side, and had a look at the brood box. - What I wanted to be sure of was that there was still evidence that the queen was well and laying OK.  We actually saw her a few frames in, and saw some young pearly white grubs as they should be at the bottom of the cells - and capped brood.  Couldn't see eggs, but I think that's just the light / my eyes, since there must have been eggs at some point for there to be young grubs. - Having seen the new grubs, and the queen I was happy for now.  Nothing either that looked like proper queen cells to me, so all is good with the world.  One of the frames at one side of the hive wasn't completely drawn out, and the one next to it only partly, so maybe I was a bit premature in putting on the super but maybe I can move it in a bit if still not drawn next time I look.

Finally, we put back the super, and added the Apiguard on top of that. - It's like a sort of minty smelling gel that the bees will eat, and clean out of the hive and spread it around hopefully removing a large proportion of the varroa mites in the process. - I will monitor varroa count again when treatment is complete in a month or so. - It's a two part treatment - leave one can of gel for 2 weeks then replace with another for (I think) 4 weeks. (http://www.vita-europe.com/products/apiguard/)

We put the varroa floor back in to partially seal the bottom of the hive and allow the vapours from the gel to be more active throughout the hive, then put an empty super on top of the stores super, crown board on top of that, and filled a feeder on top of the crown board.

Job's a good un!  The bees were really very well behaved and didn't seem at all fazed by being opened. - I had warned the neighbours again, but they didn't bother them either. - One bee was getting a little fussy toward the end, banging into my veil, but only a couple of times - nothing nasty.

Looking forward to checking progress next week.

More Varroa

Wasn't quite happy with the photo's I had of the varroa - needed more magnification to see the blighters, so jerry rigged a 'super macro' lens by taping an old 50mm lens (backwards) to the front of the camera:-



I'm happier with the results, though at this magnification you don't have much depth of field:-

The markings on this ruler to the right of the photo above are at 0.5mm intervals giving an idea of the size of these monsters.

Varroa

From what I've read, the 'Varroa Destructor' mite was introduced to the UK many years ago from import of foreign bees - probably from Asia. - Even from early 'managed' beekeeping, bees from abroad have been imported around the world, and as with other animal introductions, it causes unforeseen consequences. - The 'native' bees in the UK have little natural resistance to the varroa mite, and it is therefore a serious problem for all UK based beekeepers.

The varroa mite is itself implicated in 'colony collapse disorder', and can carry diseases such as 'deformed wing virus' which can also reduce the efficiency of the colony as an organism.

Varroa appears to be almost like a 'tick' on a person or a dog, but with much larger relative size to it's host, and consequently more damaging to the host.  It breeds quickly, and appears to be ubiquitous throughout the UK.  Anyone becoming a beekeeper needs to be aware of the mite, and methods for managing it.  No management methods kill 100% of the mites, and they will always re-breed and if left will ultimately reach a level which will overwhelm the hive. - It's therefore important to maintain as low a level of mites as possible.

A few days ago I put the 'varroa floor' under the mesh floor of the hive to measure the rate of mites falling from the hive. - This gives an indication of the total mite infestation of the hive, and whether to actively treat at that point or not. - I counted about 40 mites over 4 day period so around 10 mites per day. - This might be an underestimation because I didn't use anything sticky on the floor - I think I should maybe coat it with olive oil or something so the live and dead mites stick to the board.  At this level, recommendation seem to be that treatment is not immediately required, but it's something I'm thinking about as we approach cooler weather and we start to think about the bees going into winter.

These brown blobs are varroa mites.  They are roughly 1 x 1.5mm, so pretty small, and tricky to photograph.

There are various lines of defence / treatment to reduce the numbers of mites in the colony and I will use a number of these to try to control it.

1. - Mesh floor. - This is simple - the mites which fall off the bees pass through the floor and can't get back onto another bee - easy & a good reason for using a mesh floor.

2. - Icing sugar (powdered sugar).  It is thought that dusting the bees with icing sugar causes more problems for the mites.  It also encourages the bees to 'groom' each other and remove the sugar, knocking off more mites. - This is clearly a relatively less risky treatment as sugar is a relatively innocuous substance to introduce to the hive in the grand scheme of things. - I will dust with sugar at next inspection.

3. - Sacrificial brood. - The varroa mite favours drone brood.  These cells are larger than the worker brood, and drones take the longest to incubate giving the mites more time to mature in the cells with the bees. - During a couple of hive inspections with the local association, we've removed some immature drone from their capped cells, and these can have several mites already visible and grown on the bees. - Not a good start!  - However supposedly you can encourage the bees to make drone cells by putting a shorter super frame into the deep box - The bees will build natural comb onto the bottom of this frame to fill the space, and then you can 'sacrifice / destroy' this comb and the mites therein. - This is something I will try next year.

4. - I'm not hugely in favour of using chemicals in the hive, but since I have no expectation of honey etc until next year I will probably try a 'Thymol' based treatment - apiguard which at least isn't an 'engineered' chemical. - Since I only have one hive, I'm keen to give it the best chance I can of surviving the winter in a strong state.  I've ordered some 'apiguard' as it needs to be used whilst weather is still relatively warm.

First hive inspection.

The bees have been in the hive for just over a week now, and apart from feeding them, they've been left to their own devices. - We've just been away for a few days and stayed away a little longer than planned. - I'd hoped to inspect the bees yesterday - make sure they had enough food, and check how they were getting on space wise but I don't think it matters that I left it until today as all seems well thankfully.

It wasn't massively warm - around 18C, so I tried to be reasonably quick, but being the first inspection, I was very nervous! - I filled the feeder as soon as we got home today, and wasn't going to open the hive unless it got a bit warmer, but the sun came out for a time so thought I'd have a check.  The bees were flying and bringing in some pollen, but not nearly as busy as when it was hot during last week.  They'd emptied the 4 pint feeder since Thursday last week (now Monday).

So... I lit the smoker and got the spare super with foundation ready in case I felt they needed more space.  Three of us got into suits & I had the hive tool - all ready to go.  A little smoke in the entrance, and under the floor, and then wait a couple of minutes.

Removed the roof - the feeder was stuck to the crown board, with 'propolis' - a sort of plant resin glue the bees use to fill small gaps around the hive and stick things together. - Feeder removed, crown board removed.  Bees given a touch more smoke though actually they didn't seem that concerned.

Here is the brood box - from the top of the picture to the bottom, we have a 'dummy board' (just a blank board to make a little room in the hive when you need to manipulate the frames.)  The first two frames going down the shot were 'new' foundation.  The 6 frames with yellow spacers were those from the nuc, and the remaining three frames at the bottom are new.

I removed the dummy board first - this allows me to pull the next frame towards the empty space, and then out of the hive - this means that the bees don't get squashed or rolled.  I think this first frame is interesting because it shows how the bees draw out the wax foundation into honeycomb.  Here you can see how they've done that.  It's a good sign that they've done it on this frame which is right at the edge of the hive - I think it shows they've done reasonably well in the last week.  The other side of the sheet is blank as yet.

The next frame along was fully drawn out on both sides, and at least partly filled with capped honey (possibly mostly from the sugar syrup I've been giving them).  I think it's amazing that they've drawn out both sides of this, and filled it within the week - hope it's a good sign that they are all well and happy!

The next combs were those from the original nuc, and though I couldn't spot eggs in the cells (they are difficult to see without the right light, and especially so in a bee veil), I could see grubs in cells which showed the queen must have laid eggs a few days ago. - One of the things I'd worried about when I put the frames in from the nuc is that I didn't see the queen, but for there to be grubs there now, she must be around and laying.  I was lucky enough to see the queen roughly in the middle of the frames. - Can you spot her below?

There weren't too many bees around her at this point. - She is marked (with a red spot) which makes her much easier to spot.  You can see below that she is distinctly longer than the normal workers, but in my view easily mistaken for a drone if she were in a clump of bees, and not marked.

We've seen the queen, we've seen she is laying recently, and we've seen that most of the foundation has been drawn out. - There's not much else I wanted to see at the moment, and given that they have filled around 80% of the space available to them, I will give them another super with foundation into which to extend the brood nest and stores and continue to feed them the 1:1 sugar syrup.

The only thing I noted of concern today was that there were quite a few 'play cups' - queen cups - none of which seemed to be filled with royal jelly, and none sealed, but it's something to look for when I next examine the hive.  Queen cups are built perpendicular to the normal cells, and are where a new queen might be raised if the hive wants to do so.  - It can be the case that they make a new queen in order to swarm, though I think it's getting quite late in the year for them to want to do that.  Here you can see a queen cup which I've just broken with the hive tool.

Next inspection pencilled in for 20th August. - Prior to that I might put in the 'varroa' monitoring floor and think about treatment at that point.

Wasps

Nothing to do with the bees today except let them get on with it.  It's been bright and warm all day, and intermittently pretty sunny with no wind all day, so the bees have been extremely busy.  They have been bringing in great masses of bright yellow pollen with a little of the lighter coloured pollen I saw previously.  There is (I think) honeysuckle within a few hundred yards, and a lot of the tall purple flowers I don't know the name of either. - They are basically weeds, but we do have some in the garden too.

Unknown purple flowers.

 Honeysuckle I think.

My daughter also made a welcome sign for the hive.

They've taken about half the syrup I put in on Sunday so I've made up some more and will top it up tomorrow so they should have enough to keep them going until the weekend then.  Decided not to inspect them yet, so they will wait until Sunday. - This should be OK, and I'm pretty certain the queen must be present and OK because they are so busy brining in forage.

So - Wasps. - There seem to be a bunch of wasps intent on attacking the bees when they can. - It's grizzly to watch as they will attack a specific bee - perhaps ones which are weaker / old, I'm not sure. - They will wrestle it to the ground, and sting it, then bite it in half, making off with the abdomen, leaving the dying head / legs.

The wasps don't have it all their own way - I've seen a few enter the hive, and a similar number are carried out as corpses by the bees.

I've set up a couple of (highly successful) wasp traps around the garden, filling them with a mix of sugar water and vinegar with a little salt.  This doesn't seem to attract the bees, but it does attract the wasps who can't get out of the traps and eventually drown. - I'm already more than a little protective over the bees!

I think today is the busiest I've seen the bees to date, and the closest neighbours have been in their garden working most of the day seemingly without being bothered by the bees, so - fingers crossed that the site of the hive is OK as I hoped it would be.

Day 2.

So, little to do today - I really need to not do anything to the bees for a few days to let them settle in, however I did take off the roof to check the feeder. - The feeder is a 4 pint syrup feeder filled with 1:1 weight for weight water / sugar mix with a dash of chamomile tea mixed in.  The bees however don't seem to be taking it, but I'm unsure why. - It's possible they've not found it yet, so I put a little of the syrup on the inside of the feeder - if they like it, they should be able to follow the smell / syrup up into the feeder itself. - It's a bit of a labyrinth for them, so maybe they just need a little help. - In the nuc, their feed was off to one side and maybe this is what they'd got used to.  They certainly had enough stores in the nuc, so maybe they are using that, or perhaps they are already brining in enough nectar - I just don't know.

Good news is that there seem to be plenty of bees flying and they are brining in some very light coloured pollen. -  Don't know where this is from, though there is a large fallow field just across the road with many daisies, and also bramble in flower in a waste patch nearby. - Given so many are flying, and they are very busy, I take this to be a good sign they are reasonably happy.

One thing I'm learning is that bees are pretty difficult to photograph - they are small, and they move very quickly - I was trying to catch some with pollen with limited success.

The pollen you see here looking like a lump of butter on the back legs of this bee was rather darker than some which was being brought in.

The bee on the left below had some very 'grubby' looking pollen.  The bee on the right I believe was 'fanning' - she had her backside in the air and was wafting her wings very quickly.  I believe they do this to put out the scent / pheromone, but whether her doing this was something significant, I don't know.

Anyway - things look good for the moment.  Just wish the weather could warm up a little.

20:00 - Breaking news.  Just had a quick glimpse at the feeder. - Good news is that there were now several bees using it, so it looks like they just needed a little encouragement to find it - excellent.  That should help them build up, and I'm much happier to have seen them feeding given the weather is somewhat changeable, and they have had a stressful few days. - I can happily leave them in peace now.

Bees at the hive. - video

Quick shot on the day I put the bees into the hive from the nuc.  Showing that they seem to be going in and out of the hive entrance absolutely fine following the move.