This month will see the kick off of the 2023 shows - starting with our return to Ireland for the Ulster BKA Annual Conference at Greenmount, Antrim, and then onto a brand new show, The Beekeeping Show, at Telford.

We will have a full range of equipment to browse at both shows, including new pieces of equipment. Don’t forget we will also be offering our wax exchange service. Please let us know how much wax you will be bringing, otherwise there may be a return carriage charge.

Ariel Sanchez Soldevila, the Europe Sales Manager of Véto-pharma will be doing two talks at The Beekeeping Show. He will be covering how and when to use Apivar, the use of any complimentry medicines, resistance and the importance of understanding your mite dropbefore treatment. We think these talks will be well worth catching if you can!

If you are still waiting for the arrival of your sale order, it won't be long now. Please be patient.

Equipment Focus

Under Floor Entrance

If you are looking at replacing your floor, why not consider the under floor entrance - this floor, as it sounds, has the entrance underneath the hive.

The bees enter the hive about 75mm from underneath the front, entering the brood box beneath the frames. They are afforded a great deal of shelter in the entrance area. The entrance to the hive will stay perfectly dry as driving rain cannot cause a problem. As well as this, wasps and predator bees find the entrance difficult to negotiate and the bees in the hive find it easier to defend. Mice and other vermin cannot gain entry either.

The floor is made in Western Red Cedar and is available with or without legs.

Get Involved!

Do you have Super Foragers within your Colonies?

An article by John White

Have you ever wondered why some colonies seem to consume their fondant very enthusiastically whilst other colonies largely ignore it? This, despite the fact that they may have been well fed and have plenty of stores? The pictures below show two adjacent colonies that were well fed in the autumn and when hefted pre winter felt very heavy.

I began to wonder about the make up of foragers within these colonies. Do some of them contain very strong foragers that consume everything before them when given the opportunity? The colony on the right (along with another colony) also exhibited a tendency to feed with great gusto during the autumn. Some of the bees were so frantic to get at the food sources they squeezed below the central cup and drowned as they gorged. So desperate were they to get at the food that some wedged in the small openings within the central cup (see photo below).

These same colonies that fed rapidly in the autumn are demonstrated a faster rate of consumption of fondant, as above. Perhaps they are also the colonies that produce greater honey yields?

This feeding characteristic might help identify which queens/bees are best able to source forage, may have implications for honey yield and possibly how, if at all, we feed our bees during autumn.

I would like to invite you to join me in a community bee project to see if we can identify those of our colonies have ‘super foragers’ within them. These colonies seem to be able to find food more efficiently and quicker than other colonies. And some of our colonies have them!

This feeding characteristic might help identify which queens/bees are best able to source forage. It may have implications for our honey yields and possibly how, if at all, we feed our bees during autumn.  I don’t believe any of this has previously been identified.

My interest here is in trying to identify colonies with this particular type of forager and how prevalent they are. In doing so perhaps this makes these colonies more resilient in times of nectar dearth? It may well also mean that they produce more honey. This is a very light touch project.

If you are interested please drop me an email: smallcell@hotmail.com

Thanks,

John White – Jan 2023

Ask the Expert

When to start using Apivar?

Apivar is an excellent choice of treatment when it comes to getting rid of varroa, with up to 99% efficacy. It can be used while feeding and has a shelf life of 2 years, from manufacture, which makes it a very popular medication. As with many varroa treatments, you should not use Apivar when supers are on the hive, so it is important to consider when to carry out your treatment.

Signs of a severe varroa infestation are:

- Deformed wings which are shrivelled and useless

- Stunted abdomens

- General weakening of the colony

- Patchy/ pepper pot brood patterns

- High level infestations can be a direct cause of colony loss

- The mite is also a vector of a number of viruses.

- Seeing mites crawling on the frames

If you have any of these, it is time to treat!

Apivar has a long treatment time of between 6 and 10 weeks, depending on the amount of brood and the infestation level. This is so that the strips can target several reproductive cycles of varroa, giving Apivar its high success rate. The long treatment time and the fact you cannot use with supers on the hive means that you will have to take into consideration when you are planning to take off your first crop of honey. You will simply need to count back in weeks to make sure you will not have the strips in when you want to put supers on. 

You can use Apivar at any time of year as long as you don’t have supers on the hive. However, the best times to treat are spring (to be completed before honey supers go on) and late summer (as soon as supers are removed to reduce mite load before winter bees are produced and maximize the strength of the colony over winter).

If you treat in late summer after the last honey harvest, a 10-week treatment is recommended, as this is when the Varroa population is at its peak. Even though the amount of brood is already declining considerably at this time of the year, there can still be a lot of brood in years with exceptionally warm weather and good conditions. If the treatment duration is too short for the level of infestation and/or the infestation prior to the treatment was extremely high, you could be left with a high number of mites in the colonies even after treatment.

The last thing to mention is that Apivar, like all treatments, should only be used once in the year to avoid developing resistant mites.

January

This month has been busier than a usual January as we are having a move around in our apiary! Instead of having the dog leg in the setup of our lake’s apiary, we are setting the hives up in a line. The ground has had to be cleared and the slabs moved over in a straight line (almost!). You can see from the photos that this has been a bit of an undertaking, although we haven’t had to load them on and off vehicles because they’ve not gone far and for that, we are thankful!

After the ground had been cleared and the slabs moved, we strapped all the hives up to stop them coming apart when moving them. We used ratchet straps as we find these the easiest and most secure.

As we were moving them such a short distance, once they were all strapped up, we waited for a few cold days to move the bees so that they wouldn’t become disorientated if they left the hive. In fact, it was so chilly the morning we moved them that we didn’t even have to block the entrances which made the work load a little lighter, metaphorically speaking!

The existing laurel hedge is going to be uprooted and planted behind the hives that we have moved, to create a long straight hedge.

Aside from the move, we have seen plenty of pollen going into the hives, which we presume is hazel pollen from the catkins that are in abundance here. This is a great sign to see this early in the year and always gives us hope that the bees are coming along nicely. We also fed the bees a little of the Hive Alive fondant, just to keep them going through the cold spells, until they can get out of the hive to forage properly.

For next month, we always look forward to seeing the bees out and about on the crocuses, but it is also the last month of the real ‘quiet time’ in the beekeeping year! So, we will be getting ready for the approach of the active season, with a bit of apprehension but excitement too.

February’s very topical video release from the 2022 lecture series is from Professor Dave Goulson entitled "Silent Earth: Saving our insects". Dave Goulson explains the many causes of insect decline, and then turns to the solutions to this crisis. We can all help in many ways, firstly by turning our gardens and urban greenspaces into oases for life, and secondly by fundamentally changing the way we grow food, and the food we buy.

You can view the lecture here:

Do please help us out by ‘subscribing’ and sharing our videos, and also sharing our National Honey Show Facebook and Instagram posts.

We have some more footage for you from the show, the first of our time lapse videos from 2022, showing the set up and breakdown of the display class area:

You can also see snapshots of interesting activities during the show taken during the 2022 show under the ‘Live’ tab on our YouTube channel.

The National Honey Show will be attending ‘The Beekeeping Show’ at Telford on 25th February so do come along and talk to us there.  We look forward to seeing you at the show, and do contact us if you can distribute leaflets giving information about our special centenary show, 26th to 28th October 2023. 

The year ahead is a special one for Bees for Development as we celebrate 30 years of working to support beekeepers in the world’s poorest countries.  We will be hosting the London Bee Garden Party at Marlborough House on 14 June – limited tickets will be available – The event will be hosted by Martha Kearney and feature a live auction hosted by Gyles Brandreth, watch this space next month for more news about the event and how to buy tickets.

The BfD Birthday Giveaway
In celebration of Bees for Development’s 30th year we are delighted to announce The Bees for Development Birthday Giveaway giving you the chance to win a fabulous BfD Birthday prize - every month of 2023!

February’s prize is a fully assembled UK National frame hive, complete with stand, generously donated and delivered to you by E H Thorne (Beehives) Ltd.  This prize is worth over £700!  This competition is live on 8 February 2023, closing on 8 March 2023. To take part in The BfD Birthday Giveaway, just enter your details here:

Your entry helps us to promote sustainable beekeeping, combatting poverty and building sustainable, resilient livelihoods around the World. Good luck! Thorne’s have helped and assisted Bees for Development in all sorts of ways throughout our 30 years and we are delighted to enjoy continued, super support again this year!

- Jenny Handley and the team at Bees for Development

Book Review

‘A Guide to the Safe Removal of Honey Bee Colonies from Buildings’
By Clive A. Stewart & Stuart A. Roberts,

with a foreword by Professor Thomas D. Seeley

Published by Northern Bee Books, 2022

129 Pages

ISBN 978-1-914934-50-6

This is quite a short book, at 129 pages, but it gives a great deal of helpful information and advice, including warnings about the precautions which must be taken before you try to remove a colony of bees from a building. I feel sure that most beekeepers have been requested to perform this feat at some time, and I think that the warnings in this book should really be included in any beekeeping course. It would especially valuable for less experienced beekeepers to be warned about the difficulties they are likely to encounter, when they may innocently be trying to help someone who has discovered bees in their chimney or attic.
The main part of the book is addressed to a beekeeper who is considering taking up bee removal as a small business or service. The authors emphasize the immense difference between collecting a swarm from a tree or bush, and trying to dislodge a colony from its nest inside part of a built structure. All beekeeping courses will address the first of these, almost none addresses the latter. Yet, collecting a swarm and enjoying the drama of being watched by the admiring citizens is a completely different job from the hugely challenging beekeeping and construction skills which are needed to remove a colony from a building where it may well have been living for some years. Whether you are considering starting a service or business, you will need to understand the legal and insurance dimensions of this work as well as understanding bees and their needs.
A good example of the complexity of the problems which you are likely to encounter would be the need to know whether the part of the building which you may be required to open up, contains asbestos. In such a case, there is not only the risk to your own health. There are also stringent regulations about dealing with asbestos which you should know. The authors recommend that you actually do a course on this subject before you delve into an old roof (with asbestos tiles, for example) or open up an old chimney where the cowl could be made of asbestos cement from years ago.
Just as important, you would need to understand enough about building construction to assess the risk to the fabric if you cut into rafters, joists or walls, where the bees have taken up residence. In every case, a thorough assessment of the work involved should be written up and discussed with the owner and/or occupier of the building. This will also require you to understand the insurance and other legalistic aspects of the job. Health and Safety regulations are paramount, and the need for scaffolding to work safely even at quite a low height. The authors spend time describing the various tools which may be required, and in fact, there is a photograph of their van fitted out with all sorts of building and carpentry tools, besides the bee suits, gloves, nuc or spare hive for the bees, and so on. Certainly my response to this thorough and highly professional outfit was to determine that I would advise anyone with bees in their building to find an expert to remove them.

However, the question of setting up a business aside, there is a huge amount of helpful advice in this book. It is clear from the outset that the authors’ main intention is to protect and preserve the colony itself. This distinguishes their entire approach. and reflects the expert nature of their beekeeping skills - a Bee Master and a beekeeper with twenty-three years’ experience. The preface by Tom Seeley speaks about the immense value of wild colonies of honey bees, and it is clear that both the authors have taken his research to heart. The preservation of the colony in the best condition possible is really the aim of all their work, though it is often put in a technical frame - heat camera to locate the colony, or discussion of the ‘bee vac’ which gives rise to the comment that they only use this (rather violent) method when there is absolutely no other choice. The constant advice to use scaffolding to provide a safe platform when working underlines all of the dire warnings they give about trying to work from a ladder - don’t do it! Their imperative is always to find and catch the queen, working with the bees’ natural instincts. I was quite amused by the warning they offer against eating any of the honey which you might obtain from a colony in a building - just think about it!
The part of the book which is of most use to ordinary beekeepers who are in the situation of being requested to remove a colony comes in Parts 4 & 5. In these chapters, the authors give excellent advice about cutting out comb - ‘Cut Outs’ - including from a fallen tree. They show how to fix the comb into a frame for putting in a nuc or hive, and advise you to keep as many bees as possible on the comb during this operation. If you are doubtful that you have kept the queen, they give the excellent advice of waiting - not being in a hurry. The bees will show the situation soon enough. There are many times when wild comb may be exposed if a swarm has not found a suitable new home, and the advice about removing such combs is most helpful.
However, the part which I found most enlightening for my own limited experience was the part where the authors describe a ‘Trap Out’ method to lure a swarm out of their new home in a building. Of course, you have no real means of knowing how long such a colony has actually been in situ, and householders may simply have failed to notice the colony for some time. This method is superficially attractive because it seems to be kind to the bees, just luring them into a new home, as you hope. But our authors’ give us the benefit of wide experience: ‘Due to the many disadvantages, I only ever use it (Trap Out) in extreme situations where access to the building is physically impossible. Whilst this option looks potentially favourable (…) it does not operate in a favourable way for long established colonies. it can however be very useful on those colonies that have truly only just moved in, where access is easy enough to enable it (the new home - a nuc or hive) to be installed without hindrance.’ I confess I have totally failed with this method myself, though it sounded ideal when the Aussie beekeeper I was talking to described it to me.
This part of the book is full of useful summaries of advice and techniques, very helpful to any beekeeper who is considering whether to become involved in any kind of removal of bees, not just in setting up a service/business. There are case studies in the final chapter, and a summary at the end of the book. The photographs throughout the book give clear demonstrations of the items under discussion in the text, and this is most helpful. It is particularly good to see a photograph of nucs which have been rescued.
I suggest that your Association could invest in a copy for members’ use. This book could save you all a lot of time and energy next spring.

- Review by Mary Montaut - Editor of An Beachaire (The Irish Beekeeper)

17th & 18th February - Ulster Beekeeping Association Conference - CAFRE, Greenmount Campus, Antrim, BT41 4PS

25th February - The Beekeeping Show* -  Telford International Centre, Shropshire, TF3 4JH

25th March - Welsh Beekeeping Association Spring Convention - Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells, LD2 3SY

22nd April (TRADE SHOW) - British Beekeeping Association Spring Convention - Harper Adams University, Shropshire, TF10 8NB

Friday 11th & Saturday 12th August - Thorne of Scotland Sale Day

Saturday 2nd September - Thorne of Windsor Sale Day

Saturday 16th September - Thorne of Stockbridge Sale Day

Saturday 23rd September - Thorne of Devon Sale Day

Saturday 7th October - Thorne Open and Sale Day at Lincolnshire Head Office & Factory

Thursday 26th - Saturday 28th October - National Honey Show - Sandown Park Racecourse, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9AJ

*not to be confused with the British Beekeeping Show (formerly known as BeeTradex) which we will NOT be attending

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