Summer Barbecue & Auction

We all enjoyed the association barbecue held 19 August with more than 30 people taking part (and some of them were vegetarians). Many thanks to Peter for organising it so efficiently and making sure we all had plenty to eat. Many thanks to Ron for making sure our sausages weren’t burnt to a cinder and many thanks to all who brought food to share.

The highlight for many was the spectacular auction that took place before the food was dished up. Members were able to purchase outstanding equipment at rock bottom prices – brood boxes for as little as 3 for £5, crown boards for £1, floors for £5. Not only did purchasers get amazing bargains, we helped a member raise over £300 for St Luke’s Hospice and we made space in our lock up whilst raising over £250 to bolster the Association coffers. It looks like we’ll have to make the auction a regular feature of the barbecue.

Preparing a double brood for winter

Question:

We currently have double brood boxes below our QE. There are mostly stores and some brood in the top box. There’s mostly brood in the bottom box.

For winter, do we need to rearrange the boxes so the stores are below the brood?

Last winter we had a slightly different setup, so we put the brood box with 100% stores under the brood and it worked really well.

Not sure if it’s worth messing with this year?

Answer:

Yes, it’s worth messing around to get things right. I’ve consolidated some double BBs down to singles but I’ll wait until next month to put stores below brood nest, when I put on mouseguards.

If you have a question about beekeeping, please email us: ask@sheffieldbeekeepers.org.uk

Room for bees after removing honey supers

Question:

How do the bees “fit” in the hive after you take supers off? (How do they have enough space?) Do we need to replace the full frames with empty frames just to give them some room?

Answer:

The bees need space to hang out. Supers with drawn comb preferably, foundation if nothing else available. Extract the Honey ASAP and return the wet supers for them to fill up again.

If you have a question about beekeeping, please email us: ask@sheffieldbeekeepers.org.uk

What to do about wasps?

Wasps can become a problem for us and our bees at this time of the year. To understand why and what to do, it helps to know something about their lifestyle. Wasps are carnivorous. The larvae are fed chewed-up insects by the adults and they exude a sweet substance which the adults lick up and from which they obtain much of their carbohydrate intake. When the breeding cycle comes to a close at the end of the summer, the adults no longer have access to their “sugar fix”. They raid our picnic tables and they raid honey from weak colonies.

The fact that wasps eat insects means that they do provide a beneficial service to gardeners in controlling aphids and greenfly during the summer. This function is no longer available at the end of the summer. Most people do not like killing (even!) wasps but you should be aware that the breeding cycle is over and the adult wasps have no further useful purpose to serve and they will soon die (the mated queens hibernate until next spring).

  • if your bees are being harangued by wasps, you can do one or more of the following:
    narrow the hive entrance to the smallest practicable extent (say 30mm wide)
  • ensure that your hives are bee & wasp proof (many old hives have broken corners or joints that are opening or roofs with ventilation openings that once had mesh over them but which are now open to wasps and bees)
  • if you’re feeding your bees, do so in the evening and mop up any spills immediately
    hang up a large grey bag stuffed with newspaper in your apiary (something the looks like a wasp nest). Wasps will be deterred from coming into the apiary because they will be fooled into thinking that there is a wasps’ nest and they are safer elsewhere. (I guess it doesn’t hurt to try!)
  • put up wasp traps. These can come in two forms – traps that kill and traps that trap insects without killing them. The latter are useful if you want to release insects other than wasps that have entered the trap. You will find examples of both on the web – see http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/downloadNews.cfm?id=122 for a trap designed for hornet monitoring but which can also be used for wasps. Bait them with jam, beer – fermenting sweet concoctions of any type.

Notes from the hive: August 21, 2018

I was carrying out a standard inspection yesterday and noticed a queen that was, strangely, unmarked & unclipped. (I mark & clip all my queens). I didn’t have queen marking pen or scissors so carried on with the inspection. Two frames later I saw a queen, marked red (this year’s colour). A perfect supersedure no doubt. Since I had already inspected a queenless colony the “red queen” went into an introduction cage and into the queenless hive. Let’s see what happens!

Bees donated to Wisewood Primary School

Wisewood Primary School is the first of Sheffield schools to take up an offer of free bee hives donated through SBKA. They took delivery of their first colony of bees Wednesday 11 July and will soon install two more colonies.

Together with the children and David Richards of the David & Jane Richards Family Foundation we found the queen, marked her red – the 2018 colour – and clipped one of her wings to prevent her being lost in a swarm.

The children were fantastic – excited but very well behaved around the hive. They all had a go holding a frame of bees and brood to look for eggs and larvae.

Read more:

July 2018 SBKA monthly meeting

Dr. Andrew Barron, originally from Lincolnshire, studied zoology at the University of Cambridge, where he gained his doctorate, and has since worked at universities in the USA and Australia, having worked at Macquarie University in Sydney for almost 10 years where he is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. His current interests are split between studying the neurological systems of bees and ants including developing mathematical models of honeybee brains, and also, in response to the recent colony collapse phenomenon, he is now studying how to improve the resilience of honeybees to the likely causative factors.

Having already given a lecture at Sheffield University recently on the first topic, he came to the SBKA meeting on 11th July to talk on matters arising from the second. In spite of the clash with the screening of the football match between England and Croatia a surprisingly large number of members attended. Australia is one of the very few places not as yet invaded by the varroa mite, this has enabled a study there of the effects of thymol, currently used as a treatment against varroa, on the honeybees themselves (and not efficacy against the mites).

One cohort received the treatment as prescribed by the manufacturers, while the control cohort received no treatment. The bees in those colonies thus treated suffered a knock down in colony growth from which they did not fully recover later in the season, and some were adversely affected even to early the following year. This was not found in the control group. (This would presumably affect the number and quality of vital winter bees in the UK.)

Those exposed to the treatment as larvae were neurologically damaged and never performed well afterwards. There was an effect on the hygiene behaviour of house bees, and the uncapping and removal of faulty larvae increased by some 40%. Unfortunately however, the activity was then less discriminatory, with healthy larvae becoming involved as well as unhealthy. Perhaps this is not surprising as both bees and mites are arthropods having similar neurological features.

Although not yet tested, it is thought that probably all other known chemical treatments, such as oxalic acid, formic acid and amitraz, may prove to have similar deleterious effects on bees.

Factors affecting the performance of foraging bees were then raised. Very sophisticated technical experiments had been carried out involving the identification of foragers, weighing them and timing them on leaving and returning to their hives. The investigators became frustrated that they were unable to measure the pollen loads of returning bees as they were lighter on return than when they had left. This was because the bees loaded up with heavier nectar before leaving to fuel their forthcoming flights and returning empty.

The investigation revealed that it is most important that the worker bees are able to go unstressed through the whole normal development process before becoming foraging bees. Stressed colonies where foragers die prematurely forces younger bees to forage too early. They are then inefficient, may only do a handful of trips and then die or get lost, whereas ‘normal’ experienced foragers are very efficient and may do a hundred or more trips before they die. 20% of them do 50% of the work. However, anything that stimulates an immune response in the foragers (and they are very sensitive) will curtail collection of pollen.

With regard to the other topic of research interest, it was mentioned that a variety of ideas to help beekeepers overcome their more recently arisen problems are currently under active investigation and consideration for practical application.