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This month will see the start of our Annual Sale Days. We will be kicking off at our branch in Newburgh, Scotland on Friday 12th and Saturday 13th. The other dates are as follows:
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Windsor, Berkshire - Saturday 3rd September
Stockbridge, Hampshire - Saturday 17th September
South Molton, Devon - Saturday 24th September
Rand, Lincolnshire - Saturday 8th October
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You can now order online and over the phone for collection from the Sale Days. We will also be running our wax conversion service at all our Sale Days, so make sure you bring along your rendered wax!
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As you have all probably noticed, wasps are a huge problem at the moment. We have most definitely noticed here! We would recommend installing a simple Wasp Out at the entrance of your hives. You can read about the inventor's experience on the product pages.
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Again, can we ask if you are yet to shop on our new website, please make sure you reset your password before putting any items into your basket. If you have any issues with this, you can contact us on Live Chat during office hours, or email sales@thorne.co.uk.
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Special Offer
Free Apivar with Easycheck*
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We are giving away a free packet of Apivar with the purchse of the Varroa EasyCheck.
Now it is getting to the time of year when you are removing your honey supers, this is a good time to check your varroa count and treat with Apivar.
You can read all about both Apivar (in the article below) and the EasyCheck (in the article further down the newsletter).
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*100 available, one per customer, make sure to purchase the product that says it includes the free Apivar
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The Apivar strip is a combination of two components:
• Amitraz is an acaricide. It acts on acarids by blocking Varroas’ nerve transmissions in octopamine receptors, which causes paralysis in the parasite. The Varroa can no longer cling to the bee, lets go of its back, and falls to the bottom of the hive. Incapable of feeding, the Varroa dies of
starvation secondary to paralysis. The amitraz used in the production of Apivar is of veterinary pharmaceutical quality, thus ensuring a high level of quality.
• Plastic polymer strip: specially designed to ensure a regular release of amitraz on the surface of the strip after its placement in the hive.
Apivar works by contact: the active ingredient is delivered continuously over time. As bees walk on the strip’s surface they pick up molecules of the active ingredient and then distribute them throughout the colony.
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Slow release technology:
Apivar is a treatment designed to act over time to treat several reproductive cycles of Varroa and to limit re-infestation. The plastic polymer strips release amitraz continuously over at least a 6-week period, so Varroa falls in the beginning of the treatment may be lower than during a flash treatment. However, Varroa falls rise dramatically as the active ingredient in Apivar continues to spread throughout the colony, killing generation after generation of mites.
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Using Apivar:
Make sure that honey supers are not installed.
- Separate the double strip.
- Push the strip’s V-shaped die-cut outside.
- Push each strip between the head of two frames inside the brood area or the bee cluster with a minimum distance of 2 frames between strips. The strips should be placed in such a way that the bees can have free access to both sides.
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Alternatively, the strips can be hung by the hole in the V-shaped die-cut, using a small clove or toothpick fixed on the frame.
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Positioning the strips correctly:
The effectiveness of the treatment is tied to contact with the strips by the bees transporting amitraz into the hive; therefore it is necessary to position the strips vertically at the heart of the brood area or the bee cluster (and not on the edges of the brood) to promote as much contact as possible.
Place each strip between two frames inside the brood area or the bee cluster with a minimum distance of 2 frames between strips. The strips should be placed in the most symmetric way as possible inside the brood area or bee cluster, avoiding the edges of this area. The strips should be placed in such a way that the bees can have free access to both sides.
Comply with the recommended number of strips:
The recommended dosage is two strips per hive. Apivar is most effective when applied at the specified dosage. This maximizes the number of contacts of bees with a large enough quantity of amitraz to eliminate as many Varroa as possible.
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Treat all of the hives at the same time:
Adult Varroa mites attach themselves to adult bees and are transferred to new hives whenever hives are robbed, when males migrate from one hive to another, and when pollen is gathered by foraging bees. Hive member exchanges, meetings of colonies, artificial swarming and even bee shipments may infest a hive that has previously been healthy. To prevent this, check your hives regularly and treat all of them at the same time.
Check strip positions during the treatment:
Brood areas can shift slowly within the hive, so it is important to make sure Apivar strips remain near the brood. We recommend checking the position of the strips during the treatment or at the end of the treatment. If you discover that the brood area has moved away from the Apivar strips, relocate the strips near the brood area. Strips must be removed after a maximum of 10 weeks.
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The exact measurement of gaps within the hive is very important to consider when building your hive. In layman’s terms, bee space is the space between parts of the hive that bees need to be able to move around freely. There are two distinct bands of bee space and these occur because sometimes the bees will work on their own, but at other times they need to be able to work back to back. Below is an explanation of the different spacing and how it affects the bees and your hive.
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A space below 4mm and the bees will fill it with propolis. You may notice this around the small gaps between broods and supers and also underneath frame lugs, sticking the frames firmly down to the box. You need your hive tool to prize them apart because the bees stick them together. Some bees are more propolis-happy than others!
A gap of 4.3 mm is a standard European spacing for wires in a Queen Excluder. This is a big enough space for workers to cross through but not queens or drones.
A 5mm space will make an excellent pollen stripper as the workers can get through, but a significant portion of pollen will be stripped from their legs.
6 mm is the smallest gap that bees will leave between adjacent comb surfaces outside of the usual clustering area. This small gap means the bees can defend the area more easily, it leaves the nest less susceptible to draughts and may help to maintain humidity.
A 9mm spacing between capped brood surfaces allows bees to work back to back without getting squashed.
A gap more than 9mm will get filled with brace comb (wild comb) and not what you want to see when you go inside a hive. When this happens, it can be very frustrating because the brace comb has to be dealt with and it could be full of sticky honey, precious brood or both! It appears when, to give a few examples, a frame is missing from the hive, the frames are not pushed up tight to one another or when an eke is left directly on top of the brood box…basically whenever any extra space is left, the bees have the opportunity to build brace comb in it. This is especially true for strong colonies during a honey flow.
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Additionally, you may have heard the phrases ‘top bee space’ and ‘bottom bee space’. Top bee space simply means that the designated space for the bees to move around in the hive is above the frames, meaning that the frames do not sit flush with the top of the box they are in. However, the most common bee space is bottom bee space, where the designated space for bees to move around in is at the bottom of the frames, meaning the top bars of the frames sit pretty much flush with the top edges of the box.
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July has been a scorcher here in Lincolnshire, with the hottest place in the UK recorded just a few miles away from us in Coningsby, at a whopping 40.3°C! Just look at how much our lakes have dried up here this month!
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This has obviously had an effect on the bees as they not only struggle to keep the hives at a constant, optimum temperature, but they have also had to deal with less forage. The wildflowers have come out at the apiary and the bees seem to have been foraging but the high temperatures must have caused them to dry up because there seems to have been a bit of a dearth in nectar. They are collecting a small amount but there is definitely not a flow on. Therefore, the bees have been fed just to keep them going through this spell of extreme heat.
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As you can see from this photo, we also have to contend with other species at this time of the year, namely wasps which are beginning to cause trouble in the apiary, as they always do! Any spillages of syrup are quickly found by the wasps and robbing bees so we have tried our very best to avoid this, but sometimes it just happens!
This is also an example of what not to do – leave a gap in the boxes, especially at this time of year! Other bees and wasps will find any little gap and exploit it to get to the food inside the hive. This was a simple case of a frame not fitting inside the hive properly.
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Beekeeping hours have had to be either really early in the morning or really late at night, not only because of the early sunrise and late sunsets, but mostly because of the uncomfortable and frankly dangerous conditions of beekeeping in extreme heat. Despite the vented veil, it quickly gets unbearably hot inside a beesuit so to get anything done in the apiary this month we have had to work really hard out of normal hours.
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For August we really hope that we do not see the kinds of heat we experienced this month, or ever again in fact! It will be a time of looking at the size and state of each colony to determine whether it needs to be united with another in order to make it through the winter. Here’s to a cooler August..!
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Book Review
‘Insectpedia – A Brief Compendium of Insect Lore’ - by Eric R. Eaton
ISBN:978-0-691-21034-6
Hardback
199 pages
£9.99
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Insectpedia-A Brief Compendium of Insect Lore by naturalist and writer Eric Eaton is a collection of condensed but detailed vignettes describing many different insects from all over the world. Eaton includes history, folklore, new discoveries, and future research subjects. He profiles influential figures in entomology including Anna Botsford Comstock, the first female professor at Cornell University, and Jean-Henri Fabre. Fabre promoted science for young women and lectured on entomology to French school girls in 1870. Eaton also positively promotes insects in his delightful small portable encyclopaedia at a time when raising public awareness about the importance of insects is crucial. Not only are insects needed for the services of soil conditioning and pollination; they will become an important source of protein for the human diet in the future.
This colourful, cloth-bound book with an elaborately embossed insect on the front cover is good
value at the price. It feels pleasant to handle and is printed on fine-quality paper. The drawings by artist and illustrator Amy Jean Porter are delicate, detailed, and beautifully executed. They reflect her own knowledge and affection as a naturalist who is fond of insects.
The reader is transported vicariously through time and space to cricket fighting in Tang dynasty
China, where the sport continued till banned by the Communist Government in 1976 (it was
regarded as an elitist leisure activity). The journey leads us on to the Kalahari Desert where the San people collect leaf beetle toxins to rub on spears. We learn that the toxins damage oxygen carrying red blood cells so that the animals die from a fatal reduction in oxygen.
The author has an engaging way of drawing the reader into the stories using humour. “Some insects are to dye for” is an example, and we “discover” scale insects producing cochineal for food colouring and dyeing cloth. Cochineal was once Mexico’s second largest export commodity during colonial times up to the revolution in 1821. And who would not be fascinated to read about Signor Berlottos’ flea circus of 1830 and enjoy the drawing of a harnessed flea pulling a carriage?
Insectpedia will appeal to all ages and is written for everyone interested in learning new things
about our environment. Find out about brochosomes and their importance. Discover which three
particular insects are used as indicators in determining water quality. Learn why the Aussies had to stop chucking their empty “stubbies” (beer bottles) on the ground in order to save the western
Australian jewel beetle from dying out.
Many young people are growing up today with a positive fascination for insects, and this book is
perfect for piquing interest and encouraging further studies. It will be a valuable addition to school libraries.
My only disappointment is not finding the late Edward O. Wilson listed as one of our great and
influential contributors to entomology, but perhaps this will be amended in a future edition.
- Review by Ann Chilcott, Scottish Expert Beemaster - beelistener.co.uk
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Varroa Easycheck
Edit of article taken from Vetopharma's website
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With all the challenges facing honey bees and beekeepers today, varroa mites are still the greatest threat. Last month, in my Ask Phil column, I answered a question about why monitoring for mites is so important. This month I am devoting an entire article to how it’s done and specifically how to use the Varroa EasyCheck, made by Véto-pharma, to monitor more simply and accurately.
Varroa:
Remember, the purpose of monitoring is not to determine whether or not your hives contain mites; they do. All hives in this country do. The purpose is to provide a snapshot of how many mites are present on the bees at a given time, and how dangerous the level of infestation is. As much as 70% of a colony’s varroa population can be present unseen in a colony’s brood cells. After a worker or drone egg laid by a queen bee hatches, an adult female varroa enters the cell and lays her own eggs. As the immature bee develops, the newly hatched varroa mites develop faster and begin feeding, first on the larval bee and then on the pupa. When the young bee emerges from the cell, the mites – already mature and mated – leave also, and spend the rest of their lives on adult bees. Both in brood cells and on adults, mites feed on the bees, weakening them and spreading viruses and other diseases in the process.
Monitoring:
When we monitor, we are not actually sampling the number of varroa mites in the colony, but only those on the adult bees, technically called phoretic mites. We express these numbers as percentages – ratios of mites found per 100 adult bees. Through research and observation of colony dynamics, scientists have developed thresholds, short for varroa control thresholds. A mite count percentage below the threshold is considered acceptable; one at or above it indicates the need for some form of mite treatment. It’s a laudable attempt to help beekeepers quantify their level of risk based on objective data, and it is a useful tool.
Interpretation of the varroa count varies with time of year as well. In the spring, or prior to the onset of strong seasonal nectar flows, we use lower thresholds when making decisions about treating. That is because a colony’s brood production is ramping up and varroa populations can explode suddenly. It’s better to be fore warned and treat, if necessary, before honey supers go on and monitoring becomes much more cumbersome. I recommend considering control measures at levels of just 1 mite per 100 bees early in the spring build up. By control, I mean the use of a registered miticide; homemade remedies are not effective. Later in the season, after the honey flow ends, is the other critical time for varroa monitoring. At that period I use a threshold of 3 mites per 100 bees to indicate the need for immediate treatment.
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Using the Varroa EasyCheck:
Most beekeepers understand the importance of monitoring for varroa mites, but many still don’t do it – maybe because they don’t know how, because they don’t have the right equipment, or because it’s messy. In 2016 Véto-pharma saw the need for a reliable, easy to use, and durable tool to simplify the monitoring process. The product that resulted is the Varroa EasyCheck, designed to be used for varroa alcohol washes.
The EasyCheck is made up of three parts: a clear plastic bowl, a white basket with holes, and a tight fitting lid.
Step 1) Start by pouring just enough fluid into the bowl to cover the bottom of the white basket. You can use denatured (rubbing) alcohol purchased from any retail store or winter windshield washer fluid (with contains alcohol) as described above.
Step 2) Find and isolate the queen, or carefully check for her on the frame or frames from which you intend to take your sample.
Step 3) Take your sample. The basket contains two lines on its interior surface between the rows of holes. It takes 300 bees to fill the basket to the top line; 200 to the lower one. Scrape the basket down the surface of brood frame being sampled as shown in the photograph. Be sure to scrape the frame down, not up. As you pull the basket along the face of the brood frame bees will fall into the basket. For best results, fill it all the way to the top line. You could also sample the bees by shaking them from the brood frame or frames into a plastic tub, and scoop them out with the basket.
Step 4) Twist and shake. After you have collected enough bees, secure the basket in the bowl and quickly twist the lid on to prevent the bees’ escaping. Shake once to immerse them in the liquid. This will kill both the bees and any mites on them. Remove the lid and add the washing fluid to the fill line on the transparent bowl. (The fine line is marked inside the bowl). Re-secure the lid and shake the EasyCheck for 60 seconds. You can shake vertically, from side to side, or rotate it to optimize separation. (If you’re in a remote bee yard it’s OK to sing out loud while you bust a move. Use discretion in more populated areas.) Tip: Keep the EasyCheck upright. You may be tempted to turn it upside down to dislodge the mites from the bees, but that could jam the varroa in the lid and prevent them from falling though the holes.
Step 5) Counting. The transparent bowl makes it easy to count the mites, either before or after removing the basket of bees. After noting the number, you can filter the liquid through a very fine sieve or cloth into a collecting container and reuse it on the next hive.
Step 6) The numbers. To calculate the percentage of infestation, divide the number of varroa counted by 3 (if 300 bees are sampled), by 2 (if 200 bees sampled) or adapt the formula according to the size of your sample. This gives you a varroa count per 100 bees.
- information taken from article written by Phil Craft
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The next National Honey Show is fast approaching, a good time to plan your visit. Our fabulous venue has plenty of onsite parking, free to honey show visitors.
The schedule of entry classes is on our website, and the printed copy will be posted to members who have chosen to receive it by post.
Meanwhile the latest YouTube video release from our 2021 lecture series is Vince Gallo's “How to build honey comb - a bricklayer’s perspective” showing how individual decisions regarding the placement of each speck of wax combine to produce well-formed comb even when presented with complications.
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Look forward to seeing you at this year’s show: Thursday 27 to Saturday 29 October 2022.
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Upcoming Events
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12th & 13th August – Thorne of Scotland Sale Day
3rd September – Thorne of Windsor Sale Day
17th September – Thorne of Stockbridge Sale Day
24th September – Thorne of Devon Sale Day
8th October – Rand, Lincolnshire Sale and Open Day
27th - 29th October – The National Honey Show
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