Ask me anything: Bees

[The Drone Ranger]

Real life getting in the way of things. I moved out of Bristol to the depths of Somerset last year, lost most of my bees over winter and in between sorting out the house have been trying to build things back up again. I've now got two apiary sites and 4 reasonable colonies going into winter so should start to be more active on here again.

I was beginning to think Anaphalaxis then I realised I couldn't spell it and thought bad reaction to bee sting was the cause?
You haven't packed it in then Neil that's good
Somerset is nice in Summer whats it like in Winter ?

(Thought I would give you an easy question first)

[Neils]

Thankfully still going. Winter in my limited experience wasn't too bad, but we'll see what happens when it snows!

I moved the bees onto a local farm last summer. They were all alive just before chrimble for an OA dose, but all bar one was dead come end of March. Combination it seems of isolation starvation, dysentery/nosema in most cases.

Built up again from spare swarms and now have two sites with 4 colonies. They were all packed with stores at the end of September but I'm going to check them all again over the next week or so and get fondant on them early given the warm autumn thus far.

[The Drone Ranger]

One of our friends had bees on a fruit farm but they never really thrived
Every time you went there they were spraying one or other of the fields of raspberries
When they spray its more like a drench than a light mist

She was convinced it also made the bees bad tempered
I was sceptical but as the season progressed they got really nasty
I wanted to requeen the lot but she moved them to another 3 different sites
One was on an estate ,one in a friends garden and the rest moved into the city

They all gradually became pretty docile so I was barking up the wrong tree
Well you live and learn as they say

So watch what goes on at the farm they can sometimes be a pretty hostile environment for bees


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[Neils]

Still early days for me. Both sites are on animal farms do we ranch with horses in this country? Rather than crops/fruit that would seem to be of immediate benefit but there is a lot of meadow and/or OSR about. If they survive winter we'll see how they get on next year.

[The Drone Ranger]

Still early days for me. Both sites are on animal farms do we ranch with horses in this country? Rather than crops/fruit that would seem to be of immediate benefit but there is a lot of meadow and/or OSR about. If they survive winter we'll see how they get on next year.

Sounds good Neils

[castanea]

Hello,

I am a new beekeeper, I bought a nuc in May put them in a new hive. For the time being all is well. I have a few questions.

1) I was reading that in Spring time you need to clean all frames also to change the floor. It then goes on to say to put the clean frames in a new brood box.

Cleaning the frames and the floor makes sense but changing the brood box won't it disturb the bees, any info would be gladly accepted.

2) It also says to change some frames every year, all my frames are new. The only ones I am not sure of,is the age of the 5 frames which came with the nuc.

Thanks

[gavin]

Hello - thanks for posting!

There's a good lesson which it seems you have partially learned already, you'll get a lot of dodgy (or at least contradictory) advice!

There is no need to be so clinical and interfere so much (in my view). Probably the most common of these actions is to swap and clean the floor. I sometimes do this, sometimes don't bother, the bees will do it when strong enough.

Yes, replace the oldest and worst frames when there is an opportunity but don't force the issue. When you can gently rearrange frames without disturbing them too much (ie late summer), try to get the worst frames to the outside so that in late spring they may be empty and easy to remove. I'll bet that your bees are centred on your oldest frames now which means you can't easily remove these frames.

Some try a Bailey comb change (getting them to work up into a new clean box of frames) or even a shook swarm. Nah, only for beekeepers with OCD, or possibly for those in warm southern locations and high local disease pressure.

Focus on being nice to your bees and not disrupting things for them too much in preference to renewing everything often.

cheers

G.

[prakel]

This is an interesting read:

Effects of comb age on honey bee colony growth and brood survivorship by Jennifer Berry; Keith Delaplane

This research examined the effects of comb age on honey bee colony growth and brood survivorship. Experimental old combs were of an unknown age, but were dark and heavy as typical of combs one or more years old. New combs were produced just prior to the beginning of the experiment and had never had brood previously reared in them. Either old or new combs were installed into each of 21–24 nucleus colonies each year over a three-year period. On average, colonies with new comb produced a greater area (cm2 ) of brood, a greater area (cm2 ) of sealed brood, and a higher weight of individual young bees (mg). Brood survivorship was the only variable significantly higher in old comb

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...09910813,d.bGg

[gavin]

It is. I'm all for a spot of science illuminating these issues. But would it differ according to the practices in the apiary - by that I largely mean the history of use of pesticides that could build up in comb?

What do you do, R? Frequent swapping out of a third of combs, Bailey comb change, shook swarms, or do you keep old comb?

[prakel]

What do you do, R? Frequent swapping out of a third of combs, Bailey comb change, shook swarms, or do you keep old comb?

OK. Second attempt at a reply, the last one seems to have vanished.

I've been a long term believer in keeping old comb if everything else is OK. But like so much of what I do my oppinions have changed, for various reasons although there are obiously some advantages to keeping good old comb especially when you're trying to increase colony numbers.

Firstly, large scale efb experience where blanket treatment with OTC failed but later shook swarming almost completly nailed the problem on the first round.

Then, there's my use of all natural comb for a few years (largely back on the foundation road now). There's no doubt in my mind that bees given the chance to build plenty of comb seem to have a vibrancy not so clearly seen in bees which have been sat on the same combs for a few years. To be clear a swarm newly stationed on old comb shows that same energy so it's not (I think) the comb itself but the actual act of building new brood comb that seems to benefit a colony. I may be wrong of course .

I'm not a follower of any religious comb renewal method -yet. Still trying alternative approaches. The best I like so far is similar to what finman promotes, getting combs drawn above the brood during the normal course of the season and then taking the old away as the nest relocates itself (with a bit of help sometimes) but there are lots of flaws especially with the md brood frames. I actually think that Calluna4u's promotion of late season comb drawing, which we did try in a quite aggressive manner with twenty colonies this year may actually suit this area very well. Time will tell.

Finally, just a bit of fun:

The purchaser should examine the combs, in order to know the age of the hives. The combs of that season are white, those of a former year are of a darkish yellow: and where the combs are black the hives should be rejected, because old hives are most liable to vermin and other accidents.

A Treatise on the Management of Bees by Thomas Wildman 1768