This month saw the last of the events for a while, but what an event it was! We had a great time at the BBKA Spring Convention, and it was lovely to see so many friendly faces there. We are now poised and ready for the busy season ahead.

Equipment Focus

Queen Rearing - clip-on frame and clip-on cell cups

A queen rearing frame is used in conjunction with a cell cupkit system for rearing your own queens. It avoids grafting, making queen rearing a simpler process. This clip-on frame is a modified DN4 (British Standard Deep Hoffman) with two removable oak inserts running lengthways across the frame. This maximizes the space you can use and therefore increases the number of queens you can rear on each frame.

Using the Nicot cupkit, the queen should have laid eggs in the small brown cell cups. The brown cell cups of these cupkits are compatible with the clip-on cell cups, as are the cell cups for the now discontinued NB cupkit. Any brown cell cups with eggs then need to be transferred to the clip-on cell cups and clipped onto the oak bars on the frame. Next, the frame needs to go into a strong colony that has been made queenless so that the bees will draw out some new queen cells and nurture the developing queens. Nicot hair roller cages can then go on to protect the queen cells and newly hatched queens. NB roller cages are not compatible.

The Queen rearing clip-on frame is made from Western Red Cedar with oak bars at Rand in Lincolnshire and costs just £7.60. To purchase with 10 clip-on cell cups, the price is £13 and with 10 roller cages as well is just £16.80.

Special Offer

ACJ and Manipulation Cloths

10% OFF

These ACJ beehive cover cloths are very useful during inspections, clearing supers and harvest. They are also very useful when carrying out training type demonstrations when the colony is likely to be open for longer than normal inspections.

The rods can be removed and the cloths washed. They come with full instructions.

Similar to the ACJ cloths.  Heavy canvas with stainless steel rods sewn into the edges to weigh the cloth down. The centre section can be folded over to close or folded back to allow a frame to be taken out. Slide across to expose other frames.

Ask the Expert

Do you need to treat for varroa before the main honey flow this season? If you do, then ApiLife Var may be the perfect treatment for you. Total treatment time is four weeks, and then after just one more week add the super(s) to your hive. Each pack contains two strips, so you will need two packs to complete a full treatment.

Price per pack decreases if purchasing 20 or more.

ApiLife Var is an effective, reliable, worldwide recognised product and is an organic solution against varroa. It is the only veterinary medicine with the synergic action of 4 active ingredients; Thymol, Eucalyptus, Levomenthol and Camphor. Mixing thymol with the other substances decreases its melting point which works well for the UK climate. The thymol can then work from solid and liquid form which can both pass to gas state which is necessary to reach the varroa mites. The step from liquid to gas is much more constant and reliable than the step from solid to gas, especially under cooler temperatures. The sponge like material of the strips allows a gradual evaporation of the mix of the 4 active ingredients inside the hive. 

ADVANTAGES:

   - Excellent efficacy and tolerability

   - No need for extra space in the hive

   - Dosage suitable for any type of standard hive

   - Easy and safe to use

   - Allowed in organic beekeeping

1
Carefully open the bag, making sure not to damage the strips.

2
Take one of the two strips and break it in 2-4 parts. 2 parts is recommended.

3
Open the beehive and set the single pieces of the strip in two corners of the beehive.

4
Close the beehive and let the product work for 7 days. Repeat the treatment for another 3 times.

HOW IT WORKS:

ApiLife Var works by evaporation and by contact. The varroa mite, hit by the active ingredients, detatches from the bee's body and falls down to the bottom of the hive.

WHEN TO USE:

- Early Spring (before nectar flow)

- Summer/Autum (soon after honey harvest)

- Between 15°C and 30°C

- Application early morning or late afternoon

ADVICE FOR USE:

- All colonies in the same apiary should be treated simultaneously to avoid robbing

- Treat by introducing ApiLife Var into the beehive either early in the morning or late in the afternoon

- Do not use with honey supers

- Do not place the product in the center of the beehive or near the brood

- You can feed during the treatments

- It is not necessary to remove the strips at the end of the treatment

- Handle with care

For further instructions and advice of use see the label of the product

April

The weather has still been fairly variable this month, only really warming up enough to inspect towards the back end of April but the bees are now finally starting to build up in numbers. One thing we have struggled with this month has been forage. The bees are very close to a number of oil seed rape fields in full flower, but it has just been a bit too cold for the bees to fly too far and for the flowers to yield sufficiently.

Here you can see a small section of frame where the bees are congregating round the edges to reach the food that they already have stored in the hive. You can see that there is sealed and open brood here too, which is a good sign. 

With the slow start to the month in terms of cool weather and little forage, we have seen that the bees have not really been able to draw out much new foundation yet.

This means some of the queens are struggling to actually find cells to lay in and we think that is why some of the cells have 2 eggs in. Other than that, the brood patterns are looking great.

We have also had the pleasure of seeing our lovely queens this month and have successfully managed to mark most of them. We don’t normally go looking for her as we don’t find it imperative most of the time to do so, however, it is always nice at the start of the season to find her to mark so that once the colony expands, we still have a fighting chance of spotting her.

Here are a few pictures of our queens this year:

The eagle-eyed among you will be able to spot some eggs in the bottom of a few of those cells.

May is always our busiest month, which we look forward to in many respects, but it is also the hardest, longest, and most demanding too! We’re hoping to get some lovely warm weather soon so that the bees can happily forage, build up in numbers and continue to thrive through the summer months.

Our latest video release from the National Honey Show 2022 lectures is from Grace McCormack: “Protecting honey bees on the island of Ireland: Our journey from discovery to legislation”.

When Prof McCormack first started working on honey bee research in Ireland little was known about the genetic composition of the Irish honey bee population.

It was assumed that no honey bees were able to survive in the wild and while members of the Native Irish Honey Bee Society (NIHBS) were confident that they were breeding the native dark bee others were more sceptical. The main objective of NIHBS is to protect Ireland’s only native honey bee. In collaboration with other scientists, beekeepers and members of the public Prof McCormack’s group set out to explore some of these assumptions. More recently NIHBS also joined up with the Climate Bar Association and a Green party TD and together we got enough support to present a Bill to Dail Eireann to ban imports.

This year’s schedule of entry classes includes special centenary classes some of which need some preparation – starting now.  They present a delightful challenge and an opportunity for you, and some classes perhaps a group, maybe from your local association, to contribute to the spectacular display at the show this October. Schedules will be posted to members, and together with entry forms can also be found on our website: 

Do please get in touch if you can distribute some show leaflets, letting us know how many you would like and the address to send them to. Contact Val: publicity@honeyshow.co.uk

Look forward to seeing you at the show at our fabulous venue: Sandown Park Racecourse, Esher, Surrey, UK 26th to 28th October 2023

A huge Bees for Development Thank you to all that generously donated to our Green Match campaign last month. The money we raise from this campaign will provide beekeeping skills training and raise awareness of the importance of forest conservation and planting trees. We are working to create a strong economic incentive for beekeepers to reverse the process of forest degradation caused by charcoal making. The ability to earn a living from selling honey motivates beekeepers to plant and protect their forests for the future.

You are invited to a unique celebration of all things Bee!

The charity Bees for Development are organising a Bee Garden Party Fundraiser on Wednesday 14th June 2023, 4 – 7.30pm in the beautiful private gardens of Marlborough House on the Mall by kind permission of HM The King. To give you a flavour of our last event, which was attended by their President, HM The Queen Consort, please see our film here.

The party will be hosted by Martha Kearney and feature a live auction hosted by Gyles Brandreth. The silent auction features hundreds of bee postcards from artists and celebrities, while champagne, mead and honey cocktails will flow, all with a background of fabulous music, entertainment, bee fashion, displays and demonstrations. By celebrating all things bee, the event underscores the critical role that bees play in maintaining the environment.

To purchase tickets to this unique fundraising event please visit www.bees.org 

RHS Malvern 11-14 May

Find us at RHS - Royal Horticultural Society Malvern Spring Show from Thursday 11 – Sunday 14 May. We’ll be hanging out at the Bees for Development - Bee Friendly Show Garden designed by Gardens By Rick Ford and Katie Gentle, with beautiful plants grown by humblebeegardeners. We’ve organised hives with our wonderful friends at ehthornebeehives and brought along bee suits and smokers for the garden, with some bee friendly bits for sale and fantastic giveaways. Do come along and say hello!

- Jenny Handley and the team at Bees for Development

Book Review

‘Notes for New Beekeepers’
By Bill Cadmore

Northern Bee Books, 2022

112 pages

£17.00

This book is what it says on the cover, a series of notes to act as an aide-memoire for all beekeepers.

It is clearly written, the font easy on the eye and it has good photographs and illustrations. There are useful links to other organisations, a short reminder of what bees are, their lifecycle, pictures of eggs. larvae and sealed brood.
There is an unbiased resume of hive types, polystyrene and wood, including illustrations of frames, followed by a section on personal equipment, smokers and hive tools.
The section on choosing an apiary gives advice on avoiding problems with neighbours. There are clear chapters about manipulating a colony, on how and why there is a need to open hives and a section on swarms, swarm prevention and ways to control swarming.
After dealing briefly with disease problems, this booklet touches on what honey is and dealing with honey. The last page illustrates a hive record card that is overly complex - possibly the only criticism.
I would recommend this booklet as useful to all levels of beekeepers, whether beginners or experienced.

- Margaret Thomas, Master Beekeeper, NDB
Review originally published Bee Craft May 2023

Rand

Monday to Friday - 9am to 5:30pm

Saturday - 9am to 3pm

Windsor

Monday to Saturday - 10am to 5pm

Scotland

Monday to Friday - 9am to 5pm

Saturday - 9am to 12pm

Stockbridge

Tuesday to Friday - 9am to 5pm

Saturday - 9am to 4pm

Devon

Monday to Saturday - 10am to 5pm

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

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