Long live Queen Neroli, our Jubilee Queen

I went to Albania and a lot happened while I was away! Our naughty queen Lavender decided to swarm when our backs were turned. And Emma had to put Queen Myrrh to rest and give her hive a new queen cell, because she had not managed to mate successfully amidst all the rain. Emma has a great blog post about all this action here: The Bad Beekeepers Club. Oh yes, something else that changed while I was away…the never-ending rain finally stopped, sunshine broke out here and rain came to Albania.

So we had a lot to do during our inspections yesterday. Emma has kindly let me use her brilliant photos here.

This was the queen cell Emma took from Lavender’s swarmed hive two weeks ago and put in Myrrh’s old hive. Alarm bells were ringing at the sight of it still being capped. It was already capped two weeks ago; the queen should emerge eight days after the cell is first capped. Sometimes the workers can keep adult queens trapped within the cell by thickening the wax topping, but that is generally done if the colony is considering throwing multiple casts, or after-swarms. That would not have been the case in this little hive.

Un-emerged queen. Copyright Emma Tennant.

We asked John Chapple’s advice. He instructed us to shake the bees off the frame and then gently cut the tip of the queen cell off with a hive tool to see what was inside. The queen revealed was obviously a goner, and had been for some time. “I’m no expert” (hah!) John said, “but that looks like black queen cell virus”. Having looked it up at home, this is a virus associated with the spore disease nosema, which is worrying. You can see her tattered wings and black body below.

This queen possibly died from Black queen virus. Copyright Emma Tennant.

Another odd thing was found within this hive; I gave Emma quite a jump when I held it up on my hand! It’s not a monster, merely a dead bumble bee I found on the floor of the hive. I asked John about it and he explained her black, shiny body was due to our bees having pulled all her hair off whilst attacking her. She was probably hungry and our bees didn’t take kindly to a robber. A sad ending for a beautiful beast.

Dead bumble bee. Copyright Emma Tennant.

It has now been over a month since this hive had a properly laying queen. We had wanted them to produce their own new queen rather than buying in a queen from a different climate, but the weather was against us and this attempt failed. We decided to combine the dwindling bunch of bees with our queen-right colony, using the newspaper method. This technique is much loved among beekeepers for its simplicity and cheapness, advantages close to all true beekeepers’ hearts.

Copyright Emma Tennant.

Some newspaper is placed on top of the brood box you wish to add extra bees to. “It’s not the Times”, John commented. No indeed, it was my local free newspaper. That’s how cheap I am. Next, a few little holes can be made in the newspaper with a hive tool. Don’t go too crazy with the holes, as the idea is that the bees chew though the paper gradually and slowly become accustomed to each other’s smell, preventing fighting.

Combining two hives using the newspaper method. Copyright Emma Tennant.

Ta-da! And so two hives become one. By the time we inspect next week they should have chewed through it all and become friends.

I should also introduce our new ruler in Lavender’s old hive. When her retinue decided to swarm and leave us, they left behind some queen cells, which Emma sensibly reduced down to two. I peeked in the hive last week and was lucky enough to spot our new queen. She was still a virgin, so a stubby little thing, but more shockingly than that… ginger. I mentally blinked several times, because many generations of our previous queens have been long dark beauties, black as can be. And here was a vibrant red head!

When we looked in yesterday, we were delighted to find she had mated and grown up into a spectacular queen. I am quite prepared to forgive her for being ginger. We have named her Neroli. This was Emma’s idea, as Neroli is an oil produced from the blossom of the bitter orange tree. I think it’s a beautiful name. From Wikipedia: “By the end of the 17th century, Anne Marie Orsini, duchess of Bracciano and princess of Nerola, Italy, introduced the essence of bitter orange tree as a fashionable fragrance by using it to perfume her gloves and her bath. Since then, the term “neroli” has been used to describe this essence. Neroli has a refreshing and distinctive, spicy aroma with sweet and flowery notes.”

Queen Neroli! Copyright Emma Tennant.

Here she is amongst her dark sisters. Her first daughters are currently mere neatly laid eggs. It will be fascinating to see what colour they turn out. Lavender had obviously mated with some New Zealand drones, but which drones will Neroli have mated with?

Copyright Emma Tennant.

And so we have a new Jubilee Queen! The Diamond Jubilee is this weekend, marking 60 years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The nation is celebrating with two extra days off and a lot of drinking. I’m not expecting Queen Neroli to last as long, but I’m hoping she gives life a good go.

Finally, a shout out to Roger at Talking with Bees - www.talkingwithbees.com. This is a new blog which I’ve started following recently and am really enjoying. Roger describes his beekeeping self as “relatively sane with a hint of obsessive enthusiasm”, which I think gives you an idea of his sense of humour. He is very honest about sharing his fears and trepidations on his path to ‘beemanliness’. For those of you interested in the Omlet Beehaus, he has a very nice review of it here: www.talkingwithbees.com/beekeeping/beehaus-review.

National Bee Unit Varroa Workshop – Part 4 – The enchanted garden

After our day of workshops on the evil little varroa mite, Emma and I were itching for a chance to catch the last rays of sunshine in the Roots & Shoots garden, a horticultural training centre for young disadvantaged students.

We were lucky enough to meet David Perkins on our way round. David runs an Environmental Education outreach programme and manages the wild part of the garden for Roots & Shoots, keeping it welcoming for wildlife. It soon became clear that he knows an incredible amount about solitary and bumble bees. Below are some shots from his garden, which would just be the best garden ever for a child, because it features all sorts of overgrown paths and even a very dangerous dragon’s den…

In the ‘safe’ part of the garden, away from the dragon’s fire, we came upon a flurry of bees feeding from an apple tree hedge. After taking several blurry shots I was quite pleased with the one below of two honeybees. Bees may not be the most dangerous subjects for a wildlife photographer but they must be one of the fastest!

Honey bees on apple flowers

The garden was full of fascinating little signs like this. The more I read this proverb, the more I’m not sure I understand it fully; can anyone explain it to me?

Now this, this is David’s solitary bee home, or should I say castle. It is a copy of the Trellick Tower in London. When I said David knew a lot about bees…

Below you can see how some of the holes have been inhabited and contain mud, which solitary bees collect from the nearby pond. David explained to us that in many species of solitary bees males and females need different size holes. Males are slightly smaller than females. They hatch out earlier in the year to be ready for the females, so at this time of year there’s more males than females. We saw one male trying to approach a female but she shook him off; David said this was probably because she had already mated.

In the picture below you can see a red mason bee zooming home on the right hand side of the pic. There were lots of these lovely furry red bees.

David opened up the side of the bee tower so we could see the tubes inside. He didn’t get time to tell us much about them, but I’m guessing the yellow stains will come from pollen.

I was really saddened when David told us that his camera has recently been stolen, along with hundreds of bee photos on it. He came across as such a kind, gentle man and has given so much to the local community through his work in the garden. I hope he can afford to get a new camera soon.

National Bee Unit Varroa Workshop – Part 3 – Honeybee viruses

Part three in this series of posts about the varroa workshops given by National Bee Unit inspectors at a special training day last Sunday. After lunch, sitting outside in the sunshine of the gorgeous Roots & Shoots garden, we went back inside for a bee viruses workshop with NBU bee inspector Caroline Washington.

Varroa mites help transmit several viruses to bees. These include deformed wing virus, sacbrood and acute bee paralysis virus. In Caroline’s opinion bee virus infection rates have got worse in the past 3-4 years. She believes the reason for this is more beekeepers, and more beekeepers not treating for varroa. This is a particular problem in big, crowded cities like London, where disease spreads fast. To help honey bees we don’t really need more beekeepers, we need better trained beekeepers prepared to look after their bees. And more flowers of course.

Sacbrood

Also known as “chinese slipper”, because the infected larvae swell up and become fluid filled sacs lacking in the segmentation of healthy larvae. They then eventually die and begin to dry out, turning a dark brown to black colour, giving rise to characteristic ‘Chinese slippers’ or ‘gondola-shaped’ scales. The NBU’s Beebase Sacbrood page has some photos. Not a serious disease, as many hives have little patches of it. If it becomes a larger problem, it’s best to requeen or shake the colony onto clean comb.

A frame of sacbrood which Caroline passed round. We used tweezers to pull the dead larvae out.

Deformed wing virus

The major virus in the UK. Bees with deformed, shrivelled wings cannot fly and only live a few days. There are two main ways of transmitting the virus: horizontal and vertical.

Horizontal transmission is when infected bees pass the virus on through feeding brood or feeding other adult workers, drones and queens.

Vertical transmission results after a queen becomes infected during mating and subsequently her eggs are infected.

Some bees with deformed wings which Caroline passed round. Their poor little wings look like withered, tattered flakes.

Deformed wing virus effects

The deformed bees were on the comb below. Note the perforated cappings, a sign that the workers have detected that something is wrong and tried to begin uncapping the larvae.

Mmm nice white mouldy pollen.

Chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV)

If you see dark, hairless bees, they could be infected. Other workers will nibble their hair off because they smell different.

Long periods of bad weather and overcrowding in a colony can contribute to chronic paralysis. There are two forms of paralysis:

1. Crawling bees with bloated abdomens and dislocated wings
2. Dark, hairless, shiny bees rejected at the entrance (not to be confused with robber bees)

Both forms can appear in the same hive. Robber bees can also have a lack of hair from being involved in fights, but bees infected with chronic paralysis virus will be unable to fly properly. See the NBU’s Beebase CBPV page for photos and more information.

Has anyone reading this seen symptoms of any of these viruses in your hives? Emma and I had some sacbrood in Rosemary’s hive during the bad spring weather this year.

Related posts:

• National Bee Unit Varroa Workshop – Part 2 – practical apiary session with Caroline Washington
• National Bee Unit Varroa Workshop – Part 1 – “Know your enemy”

National Bee Unit Varroa Workshop – Part 2 – practical apiary session with Caroline Washington

A follow-up post from my one yesterday, ‘Varroa – Know your Enemy‘, about the series of workshops on varroa given by National Bee Unit inspectors this Sunday.

After Alan’s talk to all of us on the life-cycle of the varroa mite, we split up into three groups for some practical workshop sessions. Emma and I were in Caroline Washington’s group, Caroline being the NBU inspector north of the Thames.

Caroline speaks in a Joanna Lumley-like plummy accent and takes no nonsense, peering at any troublemakers over the top of her glasses. Beekeepers can just occasionally be somewhat awkward and stubborn, especially when it comes to being told what to do with their bees. Luckily Caroline is not adverse to a little shepherding and will happily quiet anyone trying to talk over her with a firm “Let me finish” or a simple “Shush!”. Here she is below, getting her smoker going with pine cones.

Caroline Washington

A hive had been put out for each of the groups, and Caroline told us to cluster round her as she started inspecting. This did not particularly please the bees, who were soon swirling all around our heads as they tried to get home. “Why are these cells shiny?”, Caroline asked, holding up a frame of pollen. I tried guessing that the pollen might have a thin film of nectar over it, but Caroline revealed that the cells’ shine came from being varnished with propolis. I had read about the bees doing this to take advantage of the anti-bacterial properties of propolis, but hadn’t realised just how much shine propolis could add.

“Why are these cells shiny?”

“This is a very boring colony!” Caroline said. The hive which had been brought for us to look at wasn’t particularly full of bees, and had very little brood, probably as a result of the terrible weather lately. She told us that if the hive was hers she would have used a dummy board midway through the frames to help keep them warm, as the colony was too small for all the space in the hive.

As we went through the frames Caroline was looking out for the queen when Emma pointed her out on a frame that was still sitting in the hive – uncannily impressive queen spotting skills!

We took out the varroa monitoring board to take a look, but it had obviously been cleaned recently as there was very little debris on it. Caroline pointed out some pure white wax flakes, which she thought had fallen from the bellies of young wax-building workers.

Caroline pointing out wax flakes

One of our group mentioned the brood nest as having a “rugby ball shape pattern”. Caroline looked at him over the top of her glasses. “What shape”, she asked, “is a rugby ball?”. Taken aback, he tried his best to demonstrate, making the shape of a rugby ball with his hands. Caroline looked doubtful and replied “I shall leave that analogy to you, I will never remember that”.

Below is a photo Emma took of me watching Caroline in action.

Copyright Emma Tennant

The next post will feature information Caroline gave us on honeybee viruses.

National Bee Unit Varroa Workshop – Part 1 – “Know your enemy”

On Sunday Emma and I went to a ‘Varroa Workshop’ themed day held by the London Beekeepers Association, in conjunction with inspectors from the National Bee Unit. The Unit’s inspectors spend their working lives giving beekeeping training, checking for disease in the public’s hives and carrying out beekeeping research. If anyone in this world knows anything about bees, it’s them.

I learnt so much during the day that I’m going to have to split my notes up into a series of posts. This first post contains my notes from the talk by Alan Byham, SE Regional Inspector, on varroa – “Know your enemy”.

A female varroa mite – © Crown copyright 2010 “Courtesy The Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), Crown Copyright”

“There are far more colonies lost to varroa than anything else”, Alan told us. The number of colonies lost to the statutory diseases which must legally be reported if suspected by a beekeeper (the European & American foul broods) is about 800 annually in the UK. In contrast many thousands of colonies will be lost to varroa. The main risk is not the mites themselves but the viruses they help transmit.

Alan gave us an extensive presentation on the in-bred lifecycle of the mite. A female mite will enter an uncapped cell with a larvae inside and bury herself under the larval food, where the bees – and beekeepers – can’t see her whilst inspecting. She uses specialised tubes to breathe during this time. A pheromone is given off by larvae ready to be capped –  female mites sense this earlier than adult bees and receive a cue to enter cells just before they are ready for capping (mites enter day 8 after the egg is laid, while worker & drone cells are capped on day 9).

Once the cell is capped, the female mite will emerge from under the larval food and lay a series of eggs – first a male egg, then females. The young mites hatch and mate with each other within the cell, obtaining energy to do so by feeding on the developing honey bee larvae. Mites mate on their own faeces, which give off a pheromone smell enabling them to find each other in the dark of the cell. 60-70% of the mite population will be breeding in the brood during the active seasons of spring, summer and autumn. Western honeybees, Apis mellifera, currently have no  defence against varroa multiplication.

Once the honeybee larvae emerges, the young female mites crawl out too and spend some time feeding phoretically on the backs of adult honeybees, before they can carry out the cycle again by hiding within an uncapped cell. They can live between 1-5 months.

Immature mites feeding on a bee larvae- © Crown copyright 2010 “Courtesy The Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), Crown Copyright”

“I get so many beekeepers telling me they haven’t got varroa in their hives”, Alan remarked…”In the early part of the season you won’t see varroa – doesn’t mean they’re not there!”

The big problem comes in July, when brood numbers start to drop off but mite numbers are increasing. At this stage the colony can collapse if varroa levels become too high. Tragically, often beekeepers find that their strongest and best colonies succumb. This is because lots of brood will also carry lots of varroa. Colonies that are prevented from swarming will also have more mites, because they won’t have a broodless period.

Varroa infestation – © Crown copyright 2010 “Courtesy The Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), Crown Copyright”

The audience was obviously fascinated as plenty of questions were soon flying. “What about varroa resistant bees?”, Alan was asked. An “interesting idea”, he told us, but in his opinion no-one has successfully done it yet. He believes good husbandry methods, combined with requeening each year with a resistant-bred queen from specialist breeders, produces this effect. It’s not sustainable when queens are mating with local drones from all over the place, and therefore resistant bees are going to take a long time to do significant good for beekeeping.

“How effective is icing sugar dusting?”. The advantages of this method, Alan told us, is that it’s cheap and easy to do. It can also be done with supers on, unlike thymol based treatments like Apiguard which might taint the honey with their smell. The icing sugar works by interfering in the mite’s grip on adult bees moving around the hive. A flour dredger or a honey jar with holes punched in a lid work well. Work in pairs to do the treatment, with one person holding out each frame horizontally and another person dusting the sugar over each side.

As the treatment doesn’t kill mites, but only knocks them off, it is only any good in a hive with an open-mesh rather than a solid floor. Since it only affects phoretic mites clinging onto adult bees, which only make up about 30-40% of the mite population, it is a low efficiency treatment and generally only reduces mites by about 20-30%. This may sound good, and is better than nothing, but really an 80% effective treatment (such as Apiguard or oxalic at the appropriate times of the year) is needed to have any real effect on mite numbers.

“All sorts of things might do something – a pair of my smelly socks might kill off a few mites – but you want to kill them in quantity!”, Alan concluded.

You cannot rely on sugar dusting alone to keep varroa levels down; if you do your colonies will die (Alan repeated this twice). This is true generally of varroa control: you cannot rely on one treatment alone, but should use several different methods throughout the year.

Some beekeepers prefer to grind up their own sugar, as they are wary of the anti-caking agents in icing sugar. In Alan’s view the anti-caking agents do the bees no harm and grinding up the sugar is likely to reduce the efficiency of the treatment, because it’s the super fine powder that you want to reduce the mite’s grip.

“How do feral colonies last without treatment?”, someone asked. Many people were surprised when Alan told us that in his opinion feral colonies could last longer without treatment than a managed colony. This is because feral Apis mellifera colonies are more similar in composition and behaviour to the mite’s native host, the Asian honeybee Apis cerana. Feral colonies are smaller and swarm more often, meaning there is less brood for the mites to reproduce in and regular breaks in the brood cycle after each swarm. Maintaining large colonies to try and produce a honey crop brings its own risks.

My next posts will contain advice from the bee inspectors on chemical controls and husbandry methods to keep mite levels down, as well as photos of bees in the beautiful garden where the day was held, at Roots & Shoots in Lambeth.

Battle of woman vs beekeeping exam: and the winner is…

Yesterday I came home to a long-awaited letter. As soon as I saw the British Beekeeping Association’s address on the back, I realised it must be my Module 1 Honeybee Management exam results.

Opening exam results is hard, isn’t it? I remember a girl at 6th Form College who walked around for hours shakily clutching her A-level results envelope, too terrified to open it. I never did found out what she got. As I stared at the envelope I was hit by a feeling of doom. Even though I had felt positive afterwards on the day in March, in the weeks since I’d thought up plenty of mistakes I’d made and visualised tight-lipped examiners tutting and sighing at my messy writing.

Luckily, the feeling of doom was unfounded and in the battle of woman vs beekeeping exam…woman won!

Yay! Very relieved that I won’t have to revise frame sizes or how to wire a frame ever again. Next I hope to do Module 3 on diseases in November, so that I can inflict lots of gruesome photos of yucky gooey larvae on my rapidly decreasing blog visitors.

Here’s the BBKA Module 1 exam paper. The questions weren’t too bad, they could have been a lot nastier to us. I’ve marked the ones I answered in Sections B & C. Many thanks as always to the Mid Bucks Beekeeping Association, who produce excellent free Module study notes, and to the elder beekeepers in Ealing who take the time to patiently pass on all their years of bee knowledge.

Book review – ‘Beekeeping: A Novice’s Guide’, by David Wootton (2011)

I bought this after reading a very positive review in the BBKA News and starting to follow David’s blog: (www.beekeeping-book.com/blog). I am pleased with it!

Do not buy this if you are an experienced beekeeper wanting to learn extra tips and tricks or scientific background to your beekeeping. Do buy it if you are a beginner wanting simply written, beautifully illustrated advice to get you started on the basics. As David says, “It is written by a novice, for novices, to demonstrate that taking up beekeeping doesn’t need to be complicated”.

Things I liked about it:

• David is a professional photographer and used his own photos throughout the book. It is sumptuously illustrated, with a glossy colour photo on almost every page. I’m a very visual person so this really attracted me to it.
• His is the first book I’ve found to have a step-by-step photo guide (p28-33) to making up a frame, down to where every nail should be placed. This really helps when you’re a beginner and, like me, not a natural carpenter!
• He has similar thoughts to me on bee suits, smokers and feeders, preferring an all-in-one suit and round rapid feeders. About smoking, he says “I don’t smoke the entrance of my hives, as I’ve found it aggravates my bees unnecessarily. As a beginner, you can only judge this by observing how your bees react as you get to know their temperament.” Emma and I have also stopped smoking the entrances, as our bees are so gentle it’s not needed.
• The book guides a beginner through the basics of their first year, from the first inspection to winter feeding. Making up sugar syrup is explained well.
• It has a pollen colour guide! This is really quite unusual in a general beginner’s book and very fun to have.
• Practical advice on storing combs and equipment over winter, a topic often not covered.

Little niggles:

• There are a couple of minor typos and spelling mistakes, even though this is the 2nd edition. I’ve noticed this in a lot of beekeeping books – don’t the publishers use copyreaders?
• He recommends that the third year beekeeper should replace some old frames with new frames of foundation gradually. In their ‘Replacing Comb’ factsheet, available for free on the Beebase website, the National Bee Unit team describe this as the comb replacement method that causes the most problems (they prefer either replacing old comb with prepared drawn comb or carrying out a Bailey Comb Change). 
• It has a glossary but no index!
• He describes a mouse-guard as non-essential if using a reduced entrance. Having seen mice damage in a nucleus with a round entrance about the size of a 1p piece, I don’t think it’s worth risking going without one.

These are just minor niggles and overall it’s one of the best beginners’ books I’ve read. If you are interested in buying it, cheap e-book editions are available at www.beekeeping-book.com/ebook.html or it can be bought directly from David at www.beekeeping-book.com/order-book.html.