Don't Warré Steve

(Title dedication: Julie of Happy hour at the top bar hive).
As I hinted in my last post they has been some change in my warré circumstances.

My own warré remains consistent.  They are still just within one box but show good activity even with the ailing weather. So what has changed?... August Cottage has some lodgers!

BACKGROUND
Steve is a natural beekeeper based in York who I met as we were both starting out last year. Him with a warré, me with a kTBH. Unfortunately
his hived swarm was robbed out quite quickly and didn't make it. This year, through the biobees forum, Steve was the lucky recipient of bees from Barbara, who is an extremely experienced kTBH keeper who has been treatment free for varroa for more than 5 years. Newly (and beautifully) built warré in hand Steve collected his bees. All went well until 6 weeks later the bees swarmed again. A classic case of false floor syndrome perhaps. So the swarm's swarm was hastily housed in the spare box and one Steve had to hand.

Fast forward to today and Steve is in the throws of a house move with no where to put the hives.  This is where I ride in on my white charger to save the day. Since there is plenty of room where I keep my bees I am keeping an eye on his hives until after Christmas.  By that time Steve is hoping to have orgainsed an  allotment in which to site the hives.

The reswarming has left the both colonies a little on the small side going into the back end of the year. On a positive note the hives are certainly well built. The wood is two inches thick with generous windows so you can keep an eye on things.  Not sure I would want to lift them when full of honey but I'm sure the bees will appreciate it during a Yorkshire winter.

Change of weather, Change of fortune

I have been keeping an eye on the hives of late but not messing about with them too much. The weather is flowing inevitability towards autumn and with the shortening of the days comes the slowing down of the hives.

I can no longer inspect (open inspection) the hives after work in the evening. It is just a little too cold for my conscience to allow. That only leaves me with weekends to open them up, and the weather in Yorkshire is.... unreliable.

Formally Phoebee
This hive swarmed whilst I was on holiday and I have been waiting for signs of a laying queen. Whenever I have tried to inspect this usually placid colony has been extremely reactionary. A change in temperament like this was not a good sign but I hoped for the best. The activity in this hive however has continued to drop off. I managed to fully inspect the hive this weekend and things really don't look good. There was the crack of propolys on opening, a further sign of the march towards winter. Once open the bees gave me no trouble and appeared listless. There were bands on honey at the top of 22 combs and I removed any empty to reduce the hive to a more manageable size for them.

I have never been a whiz at queen spotting but this hive's queen (and her daughters) are particularly hard to spot. Their markings have all been VERY similar to the workers and are all quite skinny.  Still I looked hard and found not a monarch.

The brood pattern was spotty and very bumpy suggesting drones.  Whether this is a drone laying queen or a laying worker at this stage I think it is unimportant.

You get an idea of how they feel from this comb really. Queen cup anyone? I fear I may have to shake these bees out in front of another hive one evening so they can find a new queenright home. It is just too late in the year for a brood transfer.

Boudica's bees
It might not be summer anymore but someone forgot to tell these girls. On sunday it was grey and overcast with a little mist in the air. Boudica's hive was as busy Heathrow on a bank holiday.

Opening up I notice there were still a few squatters in residence. I am afraid I had to well and truly block their route of entry this time as I will be putting the insulation board in later this week.

is that one pulling out a pin?

On opening the hive I noticed the propolys was still very soft and sticky. The colony is obviously having no trouble maintaining a good temperature. The bees were still festooning in places suggesting comb building is still underway. There is still a solid brood pattern and fresh eggs.

I removed the remainder of the comb from the brewery bees. You can see in the picture below how they chewed down the comb to expose the larvae. This reduced the hive to 18 bars. Not all of the bars are fully built out so they should have plenty of space for the rest of autumn but not too much to keep warm in winter.

All in all I am really pleased with this colony.  After the shaky start we had we are getting on well and the bees are doing well.

I ended up with quite a bit of empty comb from both hives. Any good empty comb I placed behind the follower boards to help out next year. I only removed the comb that was very old, wonky or had high drone cell content.

My wife has a fancy to make lip balm but we shall see! Next update on Warré hives in a few days...yes... I said hive's'!

By eck it's bin awhile

I think I need to start this blog entry with an apology.  I have been remiss in my duties as a blogger. I started a new job in July leaving me less opportunities for online time. I am sorry for not keeping you all up to date on my poor long suffering bees and the meanderings of my mind. To try and make up for it (and because this blog post is quite light pictures) here is a photo of a bee taken at The Eden Project in cornwall.

The combine of the queenless brewery bees and boudica's hive seemed to go well. There was certainly no bad behaviour externally that suggested the colony was undergoing internal struggles. I left them alone for a full two weeks before sticking my nose in for check up. They were no more defensive than usual and I noticed all the comb from the brewery bees was empty. All the stores were gone, presumably moved. More surprising though was all the drone brood was gone too. Looking at the comb which contained the brood I noticed it had been chewed in. This may have been bees harvesting the wax to use else where but there were small white blobs on some cell edges (not varroa btw). On one of the combs that contained younger brood when I put them in, there were a few larvae with the cell chewed down around them (so they stuck out) with workers nipping at them!  Admittedly I am not that experienced but I have never seen anything like this. The colony has appears to have decided that the drone brood was just unacceptable. Why bother to wait and have to evict the drones when you can eat them and get a bit of protein into the bargin. I didn't disturb the brood nest at all and removed the crosscombed bars from the brewery bees hive.

I hope to do a proper inspection this weekend and update on all the hives so stay turned.