WSBKA bulletin for June

West Suffolk Beekeepers’ Association Posted on by

Dear Member
I hope that you are enjoying some aspects of lock down including the amazing weather.
Bees have not heeded lock down rules and there have been plenty of reports of swarms. Some members do not seem to be aware of the excellent website that both they and the public can use: https://www.suffolkbeekeepers.co.uk/Swarms.html . It’s easy to find this link via the Suffolk BKA website. 
Anyone who collects a swarm and hasn’t got a home for it, please let me know as I often hear of people who need an extra colony.

No news yet about the club apiary opening up to us on Sunday afternoons. I will keep you informed.

There still appear to be some members how haven’t paid their annual subscription. If you are unsure, please contact tim.slaven@btinternet.com and he will check for you.

I am making enquiries about holding winter meetings and exploring various formats and venues.

Finally, here’s something to keep us busy – 
(I’ll sign off myself now, hoping that you and your bees are keeping well and safe, Carol Williamson, Secretary, WSBKA )

A letter (edited by me) from the COLOSS English survey coordinator, Anthony Williams:

We are living in unusual times with massive disruption to our lives and rightly people’s current focus will be on human epidemiology work.  Winter losses were on average 10.4% for England.  Losses varied from region to region from 8% in South West to  9% in Warwickshire and  8.4% in Leicestershire, my home regions which were slightly below the national average.  A more detailed note of Winter losses will shortly be presented in the Journal of Apicultural Research.  COLOSS would like to invite all English bee keepers to complete the hive loss survey for 2019; in particular we would like to get a better handle on data for the Bury St Edmunds  area.  Last year I received 714 valid responses which represents about 2.5% of all beekeepers in England, this year I hope we can improve on this and get a more accurate picture of Winter losses at a Local, National and European level.The survey can be access through the following link 2019-2020 England winter losses

Letter from COLOSS 
Monitor Honey Bee Colony Losses spring 2020
Dear Beekeeper.

In the last decade, elevated losses of western honey bee colonies have been observed, mainly in Europe and North America, but the underlying causes still remain unclear. In 2008, European and USA honey bee experts formed a network “COLOSS” realising that efforts by individual countries to identify the drivers of losses were unlikely to succeed, given the current consensus that causes are complex and can be different between regions and between the years. Now more than 1000 scientists are working together in this network in specific working groups.

The epidemiological working group have developed a standardised questionnaire to identify the underlying causal factors of losses and provide beekeepers sustainable management strategies.
We now invite you to fill in the questionnaire for 2020 which you will find below. This will enable us to compare your answers with other beekeepers. With your data we can estimate the relative risk of colony losses for beekeeper decisions such as Varroa treatment, migration of colonies and comb replacement. We also aim to identify differences in relative mortality risk between regions. This will enable follow up research projects in specific regions.

At your option your personal details may be recorded however we undertake not to disclose them to any third party to protect your privacy.

Finally your help is much appreciated. Please can I ask you to promote this survey and the questionnaire link through this open letter to as many English bee keepers as you are able to do so. Feel free to share the link by email, word of mouth, newsletters or social media and to your local bee keeping organisations. In doing so you will be making a contribution to tackling the problem of colony losses and ensuring that English data is represented as an equal partner in the COLOSS European community.

Thanking you

Dr Anthony Williams

COLOSS Survey Coordinator for England

De Montfort University

A Member of Leicester and Rutland Beekeepers Association 

Email: anthony.williams@dmu.ac.uk

Tel: 0116 207 8468

############## More Information ###########################

For further information about the COLOSS colony loss core project and past results please see the COLOSS website: https://coloss.org/core-projects/colony-losses-monitoring/

Results from previous surveys have been published in Journal Apicultural Research, the most recent article was published as an open access document and can be found at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2019.1615661

Bees in a box rescue

West Suffolk Beekeepers’ Association Posted on by

Bees in a box rescue by Lewis Turner

Being a beekeeper who has put his name down for swarm collection and having made myself known locally I am learning that it’s not just swarms you are called out for. So far in addition to actual swarms I have rescued a bumblebees nest in a bird box, an actual hive in a bush that was in the process of drowning in the rain and most recently, bees in a box!

Box of bees

Yes, I know all our bees are in a box, but this one was a handmade box, not meant for bees, on a shelf, in someone’s garden! Looked perfect for bees though.

I think they had been there since last year without causing any problems however we have had a lot of swarms in the village in the last few weeks (I know, I’ve been out to a few of them) and the owners of the garden were getting worried about the neighbours and the footpath right beside them, understandably they needed them removed. As you may know during these difficult times provided you follow the guidelines we’re fine looking after our bees and attending swarms due to bees being livestock – please read this page at the BBKA.

Luckily the ‘owners’ were lovely people and really cared about what would happen to the bees, so rather than getting pest control in, I got the call. As this wasn’t an emergency I was able to visit, take pictures and notes, go away and have a think and plan.

Box with door

I am fortunate that I have as a mentor Jane Corcoran our Vice Chair and Education Secretary. I wondered if she wanted more bees and a project! I personally now have enough bees, well, not true, you can’t have enough however I really shouldn’t be taking even more on just now. After discussing the best way forward I arranged to go back to the bees and install a door Friday afternoon so I could shut them in once they were tucked up in bed that evening, remove them and take them to my home for the night and then deliver to Jane’s early Saturday morning.

The journey to Jane’s was reasonably uneventful. Only a few bees managed to find a way out of the box into the car. Is it just me or do you think now, is that from the box of bees or from my last little outing? Let’s just say my ever patient wife Sarah asks me to ‘de- bee’ the car before she borrows it now.. On arrival we decided on a plan of action.

As the box was light I assumed it was just a handful of bees so Jane got a Nuc ready. We started to undo the lid and I lifted it a little, then put it down again. “Jane, we need a bigger box”. Nope, not a handful of bees. A box full of comb and bees. We needed a proper hive to put them in and we were going to have to try and save some of the comb and brood and splice them onto moveable frames.

We set about carefully dismantling the comb from the lid, attaching as much as we could to frames and putting them and the bees into the brood box.

About halfway through Jane spotted the queen! Those experienced eyes always seem better at seeing queens than mine. One day I’ll get there first, one day. We popped the queen in a cage for safe keeping whilst we went through the rest of the hive saving what we could and building the new hive.

Creating a frame

In some ways I’m glad I’m not going to have to sort these spliced frames out in the future, in other ways I’m cursing gifting these bees to Jane. I have never seen such lovely bees. There we are destroying their nest and they never showed any defensive traits at all. I was not aware of any attempts to sting, no pinging off my veil.

We went through the actions: dismantle the entire box, shake all the bees in, save what comb and brood we could, return the queen, pop the broken comb with stores on top of the crown board inside an eke, put the lid on, and insert a queen excluder on top of the floor to keep her ladyship in for now ( Jane will remove that later).

Final action was to wish them all the best of luck in a new home.

Bees going into the hive

The whole transfer took about 90 minutes and was very, very satisfying, especially with knowing the queen was safe inside.

She was a very pretty lady too!

First Swarm Collection April 2020

West Suffolk Beekeepers’ Association avatarPosted on by

First Swarm capture of 2020

I only started keeping bees in 2019 and that year rescued a small wild nest in a hedge being drowned by rain and a bumblebee nest in a bird box that had to be relocated. I have read many books, watched many videos on easy and hard examples of swarm capture. I was and am on standby for calls to a proper swarm! The call came two minutes after I had finished work (like most, working from home currently) last Wednesday 29th April. I keep a swarm kit in my car just in case, consisting of:

  • Skep
  • White sheet
  • String for the above
  • Pair of secateurs
  • Large secateurs for big branches
  • Smoker and fuel
  • Blowtorch
  • Gloves
  • Bee suit
  • Poly Nuc box with frames, one drawn, has a dial so you can change the entrance to suit
  • Ladder near the car

On speaking to the owners of the garden on the phone it really did sound like a proper swarm this time, albeit a small one. I duly turned up, they stood inside their conservatory and watched, nothing like having an audience for your first swarm collection! On inspection it was indeed a small swarm, just a couple of fistfuls of bees, on a branch, hanging down under a small bush. They had arrived at the typical time, just after lunch after the sun had come out. It was now dull and raining, they really needed rescuing. I arranged all my equipment and planned.  Laid the sheet on the plants under the swarm, held the Nuc under the swarm, gave them a shake so they dropped into it, brushed a few more bees off the bush into the box, lifted the sheet and tipped them in, added the lid, and put it on the floor beside the bush so the flyers could enter (entrance set to queen excluder). By the time I turned around the owner had come out. I could not resist the opportunity to say, “and that is how you capture a swarm!”. I wasn’t going to tell him it was my real first one and that this is as easy as it gets. Clearly a cast with a princess. They seem to be doing well, I hope she mates OK and brings on a great hive. This Video is from just after I opened the dial on Friday so she can go on her mating flights. 

This month in the apiary – May

West Suffolk Beekeepers’ Association Posted on by
  • Continue weekly inspections checking for eggs and queen cups and cells. Empty cups may be okay watch when they are polished and act if they have an egg or are charged with royal jelly. Remember the appearance of drones indicates swarm time watch the egg laying. If it decreases the bees could be readying your queen to fly.
  • Change comb by Shook swarm, Bailey comb change or rotation. Be mindful of night time temperatures if doing a shook swarm.
  • Keep checking the queen has space to lay. If the colony has supers on but they have also filled the brood box with frames of stores remove one and add foundation near to the brood nest but not splitting it.
  • Add supers before all frames are capped . If you have Oil Seed Rape in the supers extract before it crystallises. If most is capped shake to check uncapped frames if nectar doesn’t come out it is probably okay, though better to check with a refractometer.
  • Check swarm control equipment ready, a nuc or another hive.
  • Start queen rearing to replace older queens or any you might lose or to help out someone in the association .
  • Put up Asian Hornet traps. Ensure any traps have holes of 5mm to let other pollinators out. Only put them up if you can monitor them.

2020 Spring Convention Videos

West Suffolk Beekeepers’ Association avatarPosted on by

Although the convention was cancelled we are thrilled that there these videos available from Professor Tom Seeley who could have been one of the speakers.

“BBKA is grateful to both the C.B.Dennis Trust and the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for generous sponsorship of all three recordings below.  These have been provided by Professor Tom Seeley, of Cornell University, who was to have been a speaker at the Convention”.

This month in the Apiary – April

West Suffolk Beekeepers’ Association avatarPosted on by

Spring feeding – you may wish to assist with feeding to give the bees a further head start. or if the weather doesn’t allow the bees out to forage. A 1:1 syrup is okay now
Spring cleaning – give the bees a clean floor, and entrance, Think about changing comb with a Bailey comb change or working old comb to the edge to remove
Varroa – Check varroa levels by putting a board in. Use the Beebase calculator to see if you need to treat
Do a complete health check inspection once a month; shake all bees off the comb and inspect every cell. Inspect every 7 days for swarming signs, Queen laying, brood pattern and stores. The temperature must be above 15C.
If you find charged cells, remove the queen on frame she’s on and place in a nuc or new hive on the old site. Move the parent colony to one side, remove all cells except one well charged one. ( artificial swarm)
Unite small colonies by the paper method. Remove one queen and leave for a week before consolidating boxes.
Make sure there is enough space for the queen to lay and for the bees . Once on 7+ frames of brood add a super– add supers as necessary. Once the first super has most frames with stores and several capped add second super. The bees need processing space, so don’t wait until the super is all capped before adding another.
Find and mark the Queen before the hive gets too busy. Clip to avoid loosing the bees if the colony swarm.

Watch changes in the weather, smaller colonies or those with less stores may need feeding.