Bees
At the start of 2009, we were watching a TV programme on the loss of the honey bee across the globe. The documentary focused mainly on the USA however, many of the points made were and are relevant to the UK. This started us both looking at the possible reasons for the losses and the possibility of having our own bees. Linked to this was the idea of being able to produce some of our own honey.
The autumn of 2009 saw me attending Beekeeping night classes run by my local beekeeping association - Edinburgh and Midlothian Beekeepers - weekly for 6 weeks. This covered all the basics of beekeeping as well as advice on what equipment to buy and the chance to put our names down for a "nuc". A nucleus is a mini holding hive which contains a queen and a few thousand workers. When transfered into a full size hive it can expand into a fully functional hive. Due to honey bee losses these are now not only difficult to get but also expensive and often require the aspiring beekeeper to travel long distances, this in itself can cause problems because bees used to living in the south of England for example may not cope too well with our Scottish climate.
Back to the story, so over the early part of 2010, my son and I made up a flat-pack hive made up of a mesh floor, a deep wooden box to house the queen, her brood - eggs and larvae - the workers, a few drones (males), some pollen and some honey. We bought 3 shallower boxes known as supers or shallow boxes to house the wax frames that will hold the main honey stores. We also bought a queen excluder to prevent the queen laying eggs in the supers, an inner roof called a crown board and an outer substantial water proof roof.
At the end of April 2010, I received an email saying a nuc was available for me and a contact. This resulted in our bees arriving at the start of May with lots of help and support from the beekeeper who had produced them. By the end of the summer we had a thriving hive with one super of honey removed and the bees filling a second. One of the problems bees face is a mite called varroa, unfortunately virtually all UK bees are affected, so in August 2010 we are treating the hive, removing the super of honey first and we will see how many varroa we have.
As you will see from our blog, the first check after putting in the Apistan the bees were very subdued but that could have been due to the lack of smoke that day. When we re-checked a week later things were worse, virtually no brood. I was fortunate enough to have the beekeeper who I got my bees from phone me. I discussed my findings with him and he suggested they may be hungry. I decided to feed them, 3kg of Baker's fondant. On rechecking the feeder a week later most of the fondant had gone, so I gave them another 3kg. It may not be the whole problem but won't have helped. I see how they are on the next warm dry day.
I left them a week and checked the feed it was going down on looking into the hive - it was a lovely still warm September day - there was plenty of honey, closed brood and larvae. It looks like we were starving them. A lesson learnt.
Keep up to date with our bees via our blog.
Contact for the Scottish Beekeeping Association is www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk
The autumn of 2009 saw me attending Beekeeping night classes run by my local beekeeping association - Edinburgh and Midlothian Beekeepers - weekly for 6 weeks. This covered all the basics of beekeeping as well as advice on what equipment to buy and the chance to put our names down for a "nuc". A nucleus is a mini holding hive which contains a queen and a few thousand workers. When transfered into a full size hive it can expand into a fully functional hive. Due to honey bee losses these are now not only difficult to get but also expensive and often require the aspiring beekeeper to travel long distances, this in itself can cause problems because bees used to living in the south of England for example may not cope too well with our Scottish climate.
Back to the story, so over the early part of 2010, my son and I made up a flat-pack hive made up of a mesh floor, a deep wooden box to house the queen, her brood - eggs and larvae - the workers, a few drones (males), some pollen and some honey. We bought 3 shallower boxes known as supers or shallow boxes to house the wax frames that will hold the main honey stores. We also bought a queen excluder to prevent the queen laying eggs in the supers, an inner roof called a crown board and an outer substantial water proof roof.
At the end of April 2010, I received an email saying a nuc was available for me and a contact. This resulted in our bees arriving at the start of May with lots of help and support from the beekeeper who had produced them. By the end of the summer we had a thriving hive with one super of honey removed and the bees filling a second. One of the problems bees face is a mite called varroa, unfortunately virtually all UK bees are affected, so in August 2010 we are treating the hive, removing the super of honey first and we will see how many varroa we have.
As you will see from our blog, the first check after putting in the Apistan the bees were very subdued but that could have been due to the lack of smoke that day. When we re-checked a week later things were worse, virtually no brood. I was fortunate enough to have the beekeeper who I got my bees from phone me. I discussed my findings with him and he suggested they may be hungry. I decided to feed them, 3kg of Baker's fondant. On rechecking the feeder a week later most of the fondant had gone, so I gave them another 3kg. It may not be the whole problem but won't have helped. I see how they are on the next warm dry day.
I left them a week and checked the feed it was going down on looking into the hive - it was a lovely still warm September day - there was plenty of honey, closed brood and larvae. It looks like we were starving them. A lesson learnt.
Keep up to date with our bees via our blog.
Contact for the Scottish Beekeeping Association is www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk
