A Bungling beekeeper and some worrying wasps

The weather forecaster had warned us of a wet weekend and was characteristically wrong. This weekend was the hottest so far this year, though its competition has been wanting. My saturday morning dog walk was one of discoveries. I noticed a lot of wasps at the kids playhouse and on investigation found a wasp nest the size of a melon. Having set up a vespa exclusion zone I continued on the walk and decided to visit my apiary and check on the activity at my swarmed warré. The activity looked good and I feel good about the new queen's mating chances. Then I notice scout bee activity at the empty hives.  The scouts were coming and going quite rapidly and I was easily able to track them a big ball of bees in a hawthorn bush.

I ran back home and grabbed my kit and my assistant beekeeper Kyle.
The first job was to trim back the surrounding bush which was quite twisty and overgrown. It was at this time that I made a boo boo. I managed to cut the branch that the swarm had clustered on. The bees unceremoniously took to the air. Having realised my incompetence the bees decided they needed to make things a little easier for me and re-clustered on a stack of two bait hives. Initially they looked as though they were heading into the bottom box but 30 min later they had reformed on the top box.

Swarm clustered conveniently on a bait hive.

This time all I had to do was scoop them up in my hands and put them in the box. The bees didn't seem to mind at all, I'm not sure what it was like for them but for me it was very warm and tingley. I saw the queen and she was surprisingly small and completely black. I think this was a cast swarm from our poppy hive. The Queens from this hive we have decided to name after the flowers in bloom when they emerge. Having given a list of current flora to Kyle he decided the new Queen should be called "Dog rose". I am very proud :)

Queen Dog rose

As for the wasps I am afraid they met their demise in the evening. A bee suit can be used for evil as well as good!

My attempt at a video blog.

My photos and images backup automatically to google+. Occasionally it presents me with an "autoawesome" image. This is what it did with the swarm bits, a bit more dramatic than my attempt:

Laying Workers: The Why, How, and Now what!

I have tinkering with this post on and off now for some months and cannot get it right. It just seems very meanderng and inconcise. Perhaps it's the "man-flu" speaking but I had enough of it. You can deal with it now.
From time to time a beekeeper will be faced with the question of whether or not a hive is queenless and ultimately do you have a laying worker. It can be difficult to tell the difference between a laying worker and a drone laying queen but generally your options are the same. Often these concerns are as a result of the colony swarming but occasionally a colony can suffer from "queen failure" or the queen can be lost or injured during an inspection (naughty beekeeper!).
When triggered by swarming, if you haven't seen the swarm leave hopefully you have at least seen queen cells. Sadly, even the most beautiful of queen cells can end in tragedy with the queen not returning or bad weather affecting mating. In the short term you will notice an increase in stores of honey and pollen as the bees with no/less brood to look after turn their attentions to foraging. You may well panic in this period as the amount of drone brood appears to increase, it probably hasn't. It could simply be due to the longer period of time it takes for any drones laid by the old queen to emerge. After all the worker brood has emerged there may well still be drone brood waiting around appearing as though it has increased because you notice it more.
Do not be in a rush! The quickest you can expect to have a laying queen from the point the swarm leaves is two weeks.
It can certainly take longer and if you keep disturbing them it is not helpful. Two week inspections should be sufficient.
Obviously the best test of whether a queen is present is to see her. However, not all of us have a good queen eye and often young queens are a little thinner and harder to spot. The next best thing is eggs. Occassionally, a new queen may lay more than one egg per cell to start with but she soons gets the hang of things. Many eggs laid haphazardly and even in cells containing pollen is a good sign of a laying worker.


The multiple eggs per cell seen when laying worker(s) are present.

Laying workers will also lay their eggs to the sides of a cell instead of in the bottom middle as their abdomens are shorter. This isn't always obvious to the new beeks eye so don't rely on it.
If you don't see the multiple eggs then often the way the capped brood is arranged can offer a clue.

Drone laying queen brood pattern. Domed brood in worker cell.

Again, laying workers are haphazard leaving large patches. Drone laying Queens give a better pattern but the cappings will be domed as in drone brood but laid in worker cells.
When queenless the bees do behave and sound very differently to how things are with a queen about. Over time working with bees with even realising it you will have developed an ear for the tone of a working hive. You probably won't even realise you know what it should sound like until it sounds....wrong! Rather than the many toned buzzing of a hive on task the buzz becomes low and monotonous. The bees themselves appear listless and easily provoked to sting.
Now what!
Well it really depends on the type of beekeeping you aspire to.
If you have laying workers that needs sorting first. There are two ways I know of to "deal" with laying workers. Fast and dirty, or slow and surely.
F&D
I have not done this but many swear by it. Shake out all the bees 100yds or so away from the hive. The idea is laying workers (having never left the hive) will not know their way back. Any foragers will be able to return since they recognise the area. Do this at a busy time of the day so the laying workers will be challenged should they attempt to enter another hive. Then try a queen fix below.
 S&S It is important to note that laying workers are NOT the result of absence of a queen, but the absence of brood. A subtle difference I know, but an important one. If a colony shows signs of laying workers weekly brood transfers from another hive... assuming you have one... will over time suppress the laying workers. Three or four weeks should see the colony building queen cups with the best of them.

New queen:
This is a relatively quick fix.... if you have spare queen. The queen will have to be properly introduced because even when queenless the colony will kill off a poorly introduced queen. If you have laying workers you must deal with them first as they will also kill a queen.
Combine:
If the colony is queenless you combine it with another... assuming you have one. This could be done with a newspaper combine for vertical hives, or using icing sugar to coat the introduced combs and bees in a kTBH.
Brood transfer:
Transfering young uncapped brood ...assuming you have some... will allow the colony raise a new queen. Take care they don't produce too many and swarm.

By the this time you may have noticed two things:
1 - Transfering young brood into the colony from another will fix the problem of laying workers AND queenlessness. It will even help you post swarm. Adding brood can stimulate a new well-mated queen to lay, and provides the colony with opportunities to replace her if poorly mated. It also stops you from having to bite your fingernails trying decide what, if anything, is wrong.
2 - If you only have one colony you're stuffed. The curse of the new beekeeper is that at a time when you need the most resource and have the least experience the reality is opposite. So, join forums, find mentors and seek out supportive associations.
There is always the option with your to allow 'nature to take its course'. I can certainly get on board with that philosophy and at times have applied. All I will say is that be wary of generating unnatural circumstances and leaving nature to sort it out. Sometimes she'll be able to sort it out on her own but don't count on it. Make sure for any manipulation you perform on your hive you are clear on:
a) What you want/expect to achieve (over and above not doing it).
b) You have considered what might happen if it doesn't work.
c) You have fall back plan and know what you want to do and how to do it.



Worst Beekeeper Ever!

Laying in bed last night reflecting on the evening and feeling more than a little sore from the events my wife mumbled sleepily to me ".. you shouldn't do beekeeping in a hurry...*snore*". I had to admit she was right (please don't tell her), if you don't have time to dedicate to complete a task, however it pans out, leave it for another day.

Remember the swarm trap that was occupied on Sunday?

I thought there weren't many bees in there. "Probably a small cast swarm...", "probably a queen cell I missed in my own hive....", was what I told my wife. Well.... I was wrong. There were a LOT of bees in that box, and they reeeeeaaalllly didn't like me!

Here was my evening (numbered list of mistakes below):
I decided I had a little spare time so thought I would collect the bait hive 1. This is the location I had a full bait hive stolen from in May so I didn't want to leave it there too long. It is a little remote and only accessible along a farm track on foot or by bike. So I cycled out to the bait hive in my bee suit 2. It felt good cycling out there as this is where I collected my first swarm last year when I "became" a beekeeper. I had moved another full bait hive the night before with no trouble at all. They were quiet as lambs and although I had lit my smoker just in case I didn't need it so felt a little silly. So this evening I didn't bring a smoker with me 3. I thought I could maybe put the bait hive on my bike seat and wheel the bike to the apiary location but that wasn't going to work. So just like last year I corked up the entrance 4. and carried them the 3/4 of mile to the apiary. Remember I am wearing the beesuit, though not done up it was still rather warm 2. This should have been my first clue as to just how many bees were in there because it was very heavy. By the time I reached the apiary I was hot, sweating, and aching 2. I left the bait hive at the hive site to settle whilst I jogged back to the bait hive site and collected my bike, to cycle back to the apiary 2. 2. 2.

Buoyed on by the ease of the previous evening's transfer I decided to move the bees into their new hive 3. 5. BAD IDEA! From the second I took out the first bar 6. things were not good. The size of the colony meant they were comb building on all 9 bars of the bait hive having only been in there 1 1/2 days. So removing the end bar disrupted the cluster and must have rolled some bees against one another.... they did not like this. They boiled out of the bait hive making a noise like water hitting a hot skillet. All I had with me was a water mister spray with some peppermint oil in it. I was quickly covered in bees who were ready, willing, and able to show there displeasure for the treatment they had received that evening. I misted the air liberally in order to discourage the flying bees and hopefully mask the alert pheromones with the peppermint oil. They were having none of it. A group had rallied together on my arm and were tunneling up my gauntlet stinging as they went. A few had managed to master velcro and had gained access to the zip at my neck and found a sweet spot at my throat for stinging. Having got all the bars roughly in place I beat a hasty retreat to regroup. I grabbed my bike and cycled home shedding angry bees into the wind on the way, there I grabbed my smoker 3. and got it lit before heading back to the fray.  I managed to get the majority of bees into the hive without much more fuss, the evening was cooling and having already moved the bars the cluster was intact and in the hive. There were still a few hundred bees on the bait hive walls which I was not going to try and brush or bang out. I put the bait hive on its side in front of the hive. The bees still in the bait hive will have to overnight there and move into the new hive in the morning when there sisters show them the way. I returned home aching of muscle, skin, and pride and soaked in sweat and shame. I fell into bed with a greeting of "...what took you so long?" from my wife. Having described my evening she imparted her sleepy wisdom only to leave me awake and thinking of all my mistakes... oh, and I forgot to put the bins out!

1. Never try and "fit something in". Have the time or don't do it.
2. Take your bee suit in a bag. It may be easier to wear it rather than carry it but on an evening where it is 17oC with high humidity you will sweat, and bees do not like it.
3. Never assume just because one lot of bees is calm one evening, another will be the next. Every colony is different. Over-prepare, it is better to feel a little silly than a lot sore.
4. Although this bait hive does have vent holes drilled in the side it would have been better considering the heat and humidity if I had placed mesh over the entrance instead.
5. These bees should have been left to settle in the new location for a day or so before attempting to move them into the hive. Placing the bait hive so the entrance is in front of the new hive entrance means that when you perform the transfer any bees oriented to that location will return to find the new entrance in the same location. By putting some grass in the bait hive's entrance it also prompts the bees to reorient.
6. There were no spacers at the end of the bait hive so all bars were for comb building. This isn't usually a big deal as it takes a colony a while before they have built across 9 bars. It is better though to leave a spacer bar at each end (~5-10mm) so you have access to each end without having to remove a comb building bar and disturbing the bees.