On the 13^th April we’re holding our first Apiary meeting of the new season. As usual I've “left everything to the last minute”. “Team Garood” and I have been working on the Apiary garden for a couple of weeks and today, 10^th April, we’ve made preparations for the meeting on Saturday, tidying the Pavilion and stashing all the gear that was strewn about. I hope everyone will be a pleasantly surprised. The site has taken a severe haircut with the objective of allowing more sun to reach the herb garden and other areas of the Apiary. Numerous shrubs have been planted and wild flower seed sown to provide a succession of forage for the bees but the “piece de resistance” has to be the orchard, yes, orchard! 10 trees in all, if memory serves, apples, cookers dessert and, sweet and sour cherries, plums and a pear.

 I’m thinking of carrying out Bailey comb change manipulations soon, possibly on Saturday, as I think for various reasons including disease control, there is some virtue in the bees pulling all new combs from starter strips and the existing comb is “manky” anyway.  For this we will require, all sterilised, a spare brood box, a full set of brood frames with foundation or starter strips, a floor/snelgrove board a contact or frame feeder and a crown board for each colony operated on. A quick check turned up 4 x Snelgrove boards, 1 piece of 9mm ply 2’6”x4’ possibly for 2 x cover boards, 1 piece of ¾” ply 8’x4’  which I have since cut into 8 pieces,  460 mm x 460mm to be made into spare floors, 3x mesh floors and 6 x brood chambers (3 from H1 and H3 and 3 freshly made up). There are quite a few brood frames in kit form plenty of old ones that can be flamed and re-used and also a few sheets of foundation but these I need to count. Some of the colonies are a bit weak and for these I favour the Bailey comb change whilst for the stronger colonies I might go for the “shook swarm”. Note: I have typed up the procedure I intend to follow with explanatory diagrams but I've been unable to get the blog to accept drawings so I've printed off some hard copies in case anyone would care to check it out. I should be able to send it by e-mail. 

Check out the logpile and relocated “wildlife hotel” which are immediately in front of visitors as they pass through the Apiary gate. Kevin’s and Kelly’s kids teamed up to re-locate the re-designed wild life hotel. Kevin’s boys did the necessary research which I expect will be available for visitors to the Apiary as a file. The “hotel” should enjoy much more sun in its new location and I’m hoping this will result in many more interesting residents.

I’ve made 6 National floors/split/cover-boards with an entrance that can be closed by a close fitting wedge. There’s a slot that will allow the floors to double as cover boards above which one of the rectangular type feeders will sit if required. I’ve also constructed 6 frame feeders of an experimental design, they’re wooden and the inside surfaces have been dressed with melted beeswax. Dummy frames of various widths are under construction. They’ll be made of wood and will be insulated with polystyrene.

In my last posting I said I would put my video of Vespa velutina (the oriental hornet) on ‘YouTube’. If you enter “The Asian Hornet filmed in Nepal” in the ‘YouTube’ search box you’ll see it along with a selection of other postings on the subject.
Barry
ps I hope to get some photos of the changes to the Apiary and publish them on this posting later.

Oxalic acid treatment on the Barnehurst Apiary and Hornet traps

Colin and I have a few hives in Barnehurst, 10 minutes by bike from my home. Today (20Feb) they received the Oxalic acid anti-Varroa treatment and, touch wood , they were all in reasonable nick as far as I could tell. The feral colony that had set up home in a tree on site, see my blog for 17^th Dec 2012, is not easily accessible and will have to wait until I shake them onto new comb in the spring. I mention this because the accepted wisdom in beekeeping circles is to treat late in the year or in January.  The theory being to treat r6when no brood is present, so I should at least be ok from that angle.

Every morning I feed the birds on the Apiary with seed and fat-balls. On Wednesday I visited the Apiary twice in one day and within 4 hours the substantial helping of seed placed on the bird table was almost all gone! I suspect the two turtle doves which are always the first on the scene. Does anyone know of a method/ contraption which would allow smaller birds to get a share of the goodies?

Forgive me for “rattling on” about the subject again but as you probably know there is a strong possibility of the Asian Hornet becoming a problem in the south east in the near future. As I have also mentioned before on this blog if you capture the Queen early in the year before she has fully established her nest you may have prevented a major infestation and you will have delayed the colonization of Kent by the Vespa velutina nigrithorax (Hornet). Anyway I intend to make up a few traps for the Bedonwell Apiary and for my apiary at Barnehurst and I recommend the idea to all Beekeepers, who knows if you’re “lucky” you may have the dubious claim to fame – “the first Beekeeper to capture the invader in the UK”. Below is a photo that I took in Nepal of the hornet carving out a chunk of goat meat for her offspring and a video showing how she hovers under the entrance of a hive in order to pounce on returning foragers. This link will take you to an authoritative article on the Hornet by FERA. https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/index.cfm?pageId=208

The video declines to be uploaded to the blog, I keep getting an error message, so I'll upload it to You-Tube and I'll post a link on my next post. 

Oxalic Acid and Queen excluders on Saturday 2nd February

I had promised to be at the Apiary for 10:00am to treat the Apiary bees for Varroa. I was making good time up to the point where I realised that I’d not made up the Oxalic Acid solution. Still, a quarter past wasn’t bad. Then the car wouldn’t start!

When I eventually got to the Apiary, on foot, I found Richard, Nigel and Kevin and his boys had kindly turned out to help. Waiting patiently for me and as it turned out to witness my embarrassment! The weather was cold so hopefully the bees would be nicely clustered and receive their treatment quietly.

First the essential cup of tea and biscuit, courtesy as always of Kevin, as always accompanied by informative bee gossip.

And so to the business of the day. Hive 1, oh dear, all the bees are clustered in the super above the Queen excluder, any bees in the brood chamber have expired, including the Queen presumably. We drizzled the oxalic acid over the bees in the super anyway. I’ll probably combine these bees with our weakest Queen-right colony later in the spring.

All the hives had Queen excluders still fitted and we opened each hive with some trepidation but all were still ticking, or perhaps I should say buzzing, nicely and clustered far enough into the brood chambers to keep their Queen snug and warm. All received the designated 5ml of oxalic acid solution per seam (between each pair of frames).

We couldn’t do much for the top bar hive as the bars have no gaps between them but judging by the activity at the hive entrance the colony is reasonably strong.

 Al in all we were quite happy with the condition of the all the colonies except, of course, for Hive 1.

The lesson for the first inspection of the season is :-

Do not leave your Queen excluder on over winter if there’s a chance of the cluster moving up into a super and leaving the Queen isolated in the brood chamber!

I suspect  there may be more examples of what not to do by the end of this season!

Barry

Oxalic acid treatment, the basics, gardening and a new angle.

I'm planning to treat all the colonies on the Apiary with Oxalic acid next Saturday (2nd February), weather permitting.   As usual I read through a selection of the articles to be found on the internet just to confirm my recollection of the procedure. Last year the Gurus told me “choose a warm day to minimise trauma due to exposure”. This year the majority advice was “choose a cold day when the bees are tightly clustered on the comb”! Apart from this the advice was similar. Will next Saturday be warm or cold? Whatever, as long as it isn't raining the bees are getting the treatment. Any Beekeepers who want to observe, help, learn or pass on their ideas of how to do it are welcome to attend. I’m aiming to be on site at 10.00am –ish and expect to get ‘wound up’ at around 11.00am.

At our last committee meeting the suggestion was made that some Dartford Beekeepers might like to sit the BBKA Basic Assessment in 2013 and that the committee should make a plan to facilitate this. I suggested that prospective candidates might like to meet on the Apiary to work on the practical aspects and quiz one another on the theory required by the syllabus. As I may have mentioned before Beekeepers are always ready to offer a little constructive criticism and mutual support could be a good way to proceed. Bill Mundy has offered to help where he can and the Apiary facilities will be at our disposal (yes I’m going for it myself!) The link below will take you to a downloadable pdf copy of the syllabus - http://www.bbka.org.uk/files/library/basic_syllabus_2013_1354100470.pdf If you’re interested let Kevin Garood know so that you’ll be ‘in the loop’. Since writing the above, I've had a look at the syllabus, oh boy, we've got our work cut out. There's a lot to learn!!

Colin "the dynamo"Mann, who did most of the hard work on the Apiary, has moved and now resides in Somerset, how inconsiderate  can you be? Nigel Lincoln has offered  to help manage the Apiary in Colin's place and I am duly grateful to him and keen to get his angle on the job. 

Barry