Away on a School Trip

Currently I am away on a one week residential trip (left on Sunday, 23rd June and return tomorrow, 28th). This is an annual trip I am on with the leavers, so will happen again next year, when it should not be as much of a problem as this year. As the colony is building up, I had to find someone to feed the bees, if necessary, while I'm away (next year they should be able to fend for themselves). Luckily I have two back-up beekeepers for the school hives, one of whom will (hopefully) always assist me in bee inspections when children are around, too. So one of these looked in on the bees on Monday and today.
If you are thinking of keeping bees in a school environment it is advisable to have back-up, not only for the holidays.

First full Hive Inspection

With 11 days having elapsed since the bees' arrival and the weather tolerable, I thought I would take the opportunity and look into the hives. Originally I had planned the inspection for tomorrow, but with the weather being what it is, I thought go for it while there's sun and heat. Once again I had three willing helpers from among the pupils, which is good. Interest in the hives is still strong. Trying to fit a full hive inspection into a school day is not easy and I don't have a lot of opportunities for this, so I am not only weather-, but also timetable-dependent (as I also need another member of staff with me if I have the pupils). Luckily all worked out well for the first inspection.

Suiting up

After suiting up (the pupils again in far too large suits) and lighting the smoker (which worked a treat first time), we walked to the moon hive to take a closer look. I explained to the pupils the importance of not standing in front of the entrance. Approaching from behind and detailing every step to the pupils, I first blew some smoke into the entrance and also into the back of the hive, where the boards slit in and waited a minute. I then took the roof, feeder and super off, so that only the brood chamber with the crown board on was left. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the feeder, as it was full of bees and if I put it down onto the roof, the bees would be trapped. Eventually I decided being trapped with a banquet is not the worst that can happen and put the feeders onto the roof, temporarily trapping the bees in it. It's quite nerve-wracking working on a full hive manipulation for the first time with three pupils, who all believe you know what you're doing, watching. And then those suits are so hot...
I smoked the brood chamber again through the holes in the crown board. Getting somewhat over excited I made the mistake of pointing the snout down onto the hive and some wood pellets fell out. Oh well...
Smoking the bees calms them a bit (allegedly because it masks panic pheromones) and also leads to a very funny reaction: the bees all dip their heads in honey and try to gorge themselves. So if you look at a frame shortly after smoking the hive you can see a lot of bee-bottoms staring at you from the comb. The pupils loved that part and seeing the bees actually holed up, bottom-upped, so to speak.

Make sure to check wind direction before smoking

In order to be able to work with the frames, I first took the dummy board out. This makes the frames easier to take out and put back, as it makes space in the brood chamber.

The hive open - going for the dummy board

I then worked my way through each frame, checking for the following: laying pattern, larvae or eggs, queen and anything suspicious. As expected, the outside frames were not even drawn out yet (i.e. the bees had not started to build their comb on the foundation provided in the frames). The one you can see on the picture just has bees on the foundation and some honey right at the top. I showed the pupils each frame as I took it out and told them what the state of each meant. The pupils were very interested and asked lots of questions about the various things they saw. Turns out the pupils are really good at spotting the queen.

As the bees often stick the frames together with a special glue they make from tree sap (called propolis), you sometimes have to wedge frames apart with the hive tool. When so doing, it is good to be as careful as possible, so as not to cause to much noise or vibrations as the wood cracks apart. The gentler you are with the bees, the gentler they will be with you - apparently. Being that careful, together with my nerves, took its toll and I was soon sweating.

An outer frame with just a bit of honey

When checking the frames I tried to keep them over the hive, so in case any bees fell off it they would land in the hive. Of course, if any bees fell off, this would not be a catastrophe, but if that bee happens to be a sleepy queen, who drops off away from the hive, you have a problem.

Prising frames apart with the hive tool

On the following pictures of the frames you can see 'wild' comb, where the bees have started to build comb underneath the short frames that were erroneously delivered. This is not a problem, but usually messy and can (as it did in the star hive) stick together two frames, which is not good for manipulations. When pulling out a frame with such 'wild' brace comb beneath, I tore through some cells and we saw some sealed brood exposed. The children were fascinated by these white phantoms (that were then, unfortunately dead).

After checking a frame, it is slotted back into the hive and carefully pressed against the ones already checked to make space to take out the next frame.

Checking for eggs and larvae

So, what did I see?
In both hives I saw the queen, who is laying nicely - the brood pattern is good and regular. Although I didn't see eggs (I would have had to shake the bees off the frames to have a better chance of seeing eggs), I did see larvae in various stages of development. The pupils were fascinated by the various stages of larval development.
I saw lots of bees with their heads in honey. One pupil drew my attention to a bee chewing her way out of a cell: we saw the jaws at work, the eyes beneath and a bit of antennae. I didn't wait for her to emerge, as I didn't want to keep the hive open for too long. The bees have good stores and the pollen they've collected is bright red, orange, yellow and grey - very interesting.

Slotting the frame back into the hive

Both hives had a bit of brace comb; in the star hive the wild comb at the bottom was drawn out in whirls that stuck two frames together. I removed some of the offending wild comb to ensure a smooth manipulation. I feel this will be a constant annoyance, which makes me more cross about the wrong frame size delivery.

Another frame with 'wild' comb stuck on underneath

The 'wild' comb drawn out was not solely drone cone - probably because there is too much space underneath. Some of it is honey stores, some of it worker bee cells and some drone cells. Drone trapping will be such fun with such a mix. Ugh!

Bees still hungry

Looked at the feeders again today. Have to fit checking on the hives into busy school days, but now I try to keep some breaks free to go to the hives. Pupils once again accompanied me like children the rat-catcher of Hamelin.
Moon was empty and Star running low. So I filled both up again. Bees were flying in and out, the incoming with pollen, but not a huge amount of activity. Most seems sluggish and cold. Quite a number of bees were on the floor, looking like they were freezing their stripes off.
Hope the weather improves soon.
More syrup in the offing.

Voracious feeders

Went to the hives today (I'm up-to-date now!) to take out the porter bee escapes and cover the holes in the crown board with some wood (whether this is a good idea or not is not clear: Patrick said to cover them, others say to leave the hole open for ventilation - I've covered mine for now). As I did so, I saw that the feeders were both running quite low. I had been told they should last a week. No way! Probably due to the useless weather, the bees are gorging themselves on the syrup and it's going down like whisky with an alcoholic.
So I bought another 4kg sugar and made some more syrup tonight, which I will bottle tomorrow and have on stand-by.

Bottling syrup

Happily at home

Having fed the bees on the morning of the Friday 7th (day after they arrived), I checked up on them again in the afternoon. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the bees were very active, bringing in pollen. They were also busy at the feeders. The small entrance holes were quite congested, so I thought that I might open them a bit further on Monday.

Bees jostling to enter the star and moon hive

Sticky mess

So Thursday night on the way home I stopped by a supermarket and bought 4kg sugar. Patrick had advised to make a strong syrup to build up the colony's strength, so that meant dissolving the 4kg in 2l of water. I checked which tupperware would take 2l and then put the water on the hob to heat.
After adding the first kilo, I realised the water level was rising (yes, I know: should have thought of that beforehand). That meant the saucepan I was using would not be able to take all 4kg of sugar. It also meant that the tupperware bowl I had selected (with a spout - I was thinking about some things) would not be sufficient.
All no problem. I got out a larger saucepan and poured the solution into it. I then happily added the remaining three kilos, slowly, watching the sugar clump into cloud-like structures reminiscent of candy-floss. I never let the water boil, but kept it hot, just below simmering. Stirring it all in took about half an hour max. So I had a saucepan full of syrup.

A pot full of syrup - with the saving bottles

But how to get it to school? The roads between my house and school are curvy and potholed. No plastic bowl I have would be able to take that kind of a ride with the lid staying on. So, at nine at night I drove back to the supermarket, bought three 1.5l sturdy bottles of Coke, tipped the contents down the loo and washed the bottles out.
The next day I used a ladle, jug and funnel to pour the syrup into the bottles. The whole operation actually went rather smoothly and I didn't have a sticky mess in the kitchen.

The bees at the watering hole, so to speak

The bees loved the syrup and started drinking it straight away. In one hive (moon) I trickled a bit into the hive to animate the bees to look for the source, but in the star hive a bee was already in the feeder and I trusted it to relay the message of its find, which it obviously did.

One thing I realised when going out to feed the bees is to make sure that I carry out all work to be done during breaks when the children are around. When I walked out to the hives, I soon had a little group of pupils following me and asking me what I was doing. I explained a bit about the syrup and why we feed the new colony. They watched from a safe distance as I poured syrup into the feeders and followed me all the way back to the main school building. Visible bee duties is a good way of keeping interest in the hives up!

What went wrong

Unfortunately two hitches occurred with the delivery, both not catastrophic, but both bothersome (one more than the other).

The less bothersome one first:

The feeder (finally) filled

I had ordered syrup from Patrick, but he brought none. As the bees had stores in the nuc, this was not a major issue, but it did mean I had to spend the evening making syrup (see separate entry on this). I fed them the next day and all was fine. But irksome nevertheless.

Now the more bothersome one, which has longer term consequences:
Although I had said I had a standard hive with a deep brood chamber, Patrick took this to mean a normal one. Apparently I should have said a 12x14 (how is a beginner meant to know?). So the frames that he delivered the nucs on are all too shallow. Not a huge problem, really, other than that you have to be very careful with your timings, so you don't breed varroa. Basically, the bees will draw out the comb underneath the shallow frames as drone comb. Drone comb has more varroa in it, so with four half frames of drone comb I could be breeding varroa destructor and the destruction of both my colonies. The answer is to cut the capped drone cells off and destroy them. But really, I would have liked to decide myself whether and when I want to carry out drone trapping (as it's called) and not be forced to cull all or most of my drone cells every 22 days or so (drones hatch after 24 days, so you have to eradicate them before they hatch - or else you will have released the varroa mites.
Basically what I will do is try to remove a few of the shallow frames by hanging them at the edge of the colony (if enough is laid out), so that after the larvae hatch, the cells won't be relaid as quickly and I can replace with new frames of just foundation. Will see how that goes and let you know.

The queens arrive

Finally the big day came round - Thursday, 6th June.
There was some last minute hither and thither on Wednesday whether Patrick would be able to deliver the nucs due to the weather, but just when I thought the stress might be ebbing, he confirmed he would be bringing them round as planned.

Patrick delivering two nucs

I met up with my three pupil assistants and their wellies in good time before Patrick was due to arrive. Another member of staff was with me, as was the walkie-talkie. The children were visibly excited and asked lots of questions about the arrival of the bees, most of which I was able to answer. I ran through what I imagined would happen so they would be prepared.

As soon as Patrick arrived, we dashed to the garden shed to put on the bee suits. It was then I discovered that S on a normally sized child is huge, that XS is not much better and a small child can get lost in an XXS suit. So with tons of baggy material to spare, the children were ready - and protected. The three children watched as Patrick lifted the frames from the nuc into our hives. The air was full of bees, but the children, though slightly uneasy, held their ground and seemed more interested than frightened. Patrick checked that the queen was present and showed her to the children. They were noticeably excited at seeing the 'headmistress' of the hive. Afterwards Patrick took out a huge brush and swept all stragglers into their respective hive. The children (as I) were quite surprised that you can just sweep up bees like spilt lunch.

Although the bees had been locked up all day, they were a pardigm of calm. Perhaps the sunshine contributed to their soporific buzzing.

Checking for the queen

We kept the varroa floor out and the entrances wide open so that the bees would more easily find their way into the hive. In the evening I then put the floors back in and left only a narrow entrance open.

Swarm!

In the masonry of the school (it's an old Victorian mansion), funnily enough just outside my classroom, we have some wild bees. Every year I have a host of dead bees on the floor of my room (those that came in, but couldn't fly out) and every year they swarm.

The perfect swarm

Of course, this year they decided to swarm the day before the nucs were due to arrive, so on the 5th June (yes, I'm a bit behind, but hope to catch up tonight). We saw them circling the air around their nest in the walls and that was it on the Wednesday.
The next day, the swarm was hanging, just like the books say it should, from some young hawthorn saplings, touching the ground. If I had had a spare hive, I would have gone out there and then (though clueless) to collect it. But with the nucs just half an hour away, I couldn't use one of the designated hives.

Quite on the contrary, I saw a bee checking out the empty hives and feared it might be a scout bee and soon I'd have the whole swarm in one of the hives! That didn't happen though - whether luckily or unluckily, I'm still not quite sure.
Patrick, who brought the nucs, did see if he could catch the swarm, but by then it had moved on.

Everything ready

So, after a number of very stressful days, trying to make everything ready while still teaching (marking was relegated to the small hours of the night), I finally had everything ready: the hives (painted), the risk assessment, the suits, the site, the smoker, the frames, the dummy boards, feeders and what not.

The only thing missing, apart from the bees, were pupils to welcome the bees with me. The selection process for this was not quite so easy: as we have three bee suits (Small, XS and XXS), I was looking for a babushka-line of three pupils, so ideally one more senior one, one middle-sized one and one younger pupil. I asked all interested pupils to come and see me. After I said only those with wellies in school and without a music lesson or practice on at the time in question could be considered I had reduced a small crowd to four pupils. Thus the multiple obligations of prep school life took their toll. But at least I had three.

Two hives waiting for residents

The perfect dummy boards - part 2

Having messed up my first attempt at dummy boards, I had originally thought of sticking another piece of plywood onto the existing too narrow ones. But with time running out and my trusted friend and ally, the DT teacher, actually teaching and therefore not available to cut up plywood with or for me, I had to think of another way.

Glueing the sidebars onto my new perfect dummy boards

The solution I came up with was to just stick sidebars onto the dummy top bars. As these did not have the slots, I had to saw off the top part of the sidebars. As I didn't want them as broad as the self-spacing brood frames, I also planed down the sidebars, so they were only as wide as the top bar.
So, now I really do have the perfect dummy boards!

If I were to do it all again, I would use the shoddier top bars (see my entry about making the brood frames), take out the wedge bar and instead of sidebars or wax, I'd glue a piece of ply measuring 295x356mm (I got these measurements from the net, but will try to verify them) to the top bar and then glue the wedge back in place.

Making the brood frames

Before the bees came, I had to make up some brood frames.
Be prepared for a tale of woe!

I had thought that beekeeping is all about precision - making sure all spaces are beespace and that all fits together snugly. Now, the DT teacher will tell me that wood is not a very precise material, but I didn't know it was that bad.

In order to get the side bars onto the top bar, strength of hand did not suffice. I had to use a mallet to get the two pieces together, as the space in the sidebars was too narrow. This often led to the sidebars splitting, though never into two pieces. I hope the glue I put at the meeting of sidebar and topbar will prevent them falling to pieces.

Bad top bars: knotted or split or halved

The bottom bars were very badly made, with some square cross-sections and sometimes going from one rectangle to another one, perpendicular to the original (how is that meant to work?).

Luckily I had no problems with the wax foundation tearing or breaking - it all slid in fine.

The nails are a joke. The number of times they bent or went all wrong directions is legion. Next time I will seek to borrow my friend's nail gun as this seemed to work well for her.


A lot of the top bars have knots in them at places you would want to drive a nail in or the bar you carve away falls into two pieces. How do the manufacturers get away with such shoddy workmanship?

These were all frames from Maisemore and I will try another supplier next time to see if the frames are any different.

Twenty brood frames all made up and ready to go

Anyway, I made up all the frames. The first one took me quite a time, but the more I made the better and quicker I got.

It's not a bad idea to have a quick look at an internet tutorial about making up frames before you start, just to make sure you have the process clear in your head. I used this tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piHPX0FwLZM

My suggested equipment list is: mallet, small hammer (or nail gun!), pliers (to pull out the many failed nails), wood glue and a good, sharp craft knife. I did really not use a square, as I relied on the bottom bar squaring the frame.

Health and safety

Having hives in a school environment raises issues of health and safety. But, to be quite honest, these are the same whenever you have hives in more public or easily accessible spaces.

So, what safety measures are in place?

• The hives are located away from the main school building, at the end of the allotment gardens, where children rarely go. They only access that area (or should) with a teacher to do a gardening extra activity. The gardens they work on are over 10m away from the hives.

• I have informed all staff and pupils of the location of the hives and that they are not to approach or disturb them without proper equipment and a teacher with them.

• There is a huge sign, easily visible from afar, warning about the hives. Although this is set up directly in front of the hives, it is visible from a distance.

• For all hive manipulations with pupils, there must be two members of staff present (one for the bees, one for the pupils, if things go wrong). One member of staff is to have a walkie-talkie to be able to call for assistance in case of an accident or incident. All pupils must wear beesuits, wellies and leather gloves.

• I have a list of all pupils with insect bite or bee allergies. These will not be allowed to go to watch manipulations.

I put all of this in my risk assessment, which I would upload to this page, if I knew how to attach documents to the blog. However, I am happy to send it to anybody that would like it. It is not a very complex document and is basically the result of me thinking through what could happen.

Why paint the hive?

Having painted the school hives, the question is why, indeed?
The reason I decided to paint the school hives is that it looks better and as beekeeping at a school is always going to be a PR exercise to a certain degree, if the hives look good, they will have more of a wow! factor and thus engage people more. Furthermore, the paint does protect the wood to a degree. This is not a very strong argument as the cedar wood should withstand decades of weather, but it is an argument nonetheless. Also, if you have two hives quite close together, painting a big symbol above the entrance will help the bees recognise their hive.
So, if you want to paint them, paint them.
Make sure you use a paint that is water-based and has as few chemicals in it as possible. Standard B&Q fence paint should do. I used Ronseal Woodland Trust paint.

A Tower of Work: hive components after three coats

A few lessons learnt from my experience:

Keep the hive parts you want to paint inside until you paint them. Sounds obvious.

If you want to paint the stand, do so before you level the hives. As I had already levelled them, I did not want to remove the stands and then have to level them all over again. So they remained unpainted - which is not a huge issue and doesn't look that bad.

Don't paint a fancy colour scheme - keep them monochrome. Because the school colours are light and dark blue, I thought it would be a great idea to have the protruding sidebars dark blue and the main body light blue - big mistake. Keep it simple.
In addition the masking tape I use was obviously cheap, because it either didn't come off at all, or came off with the paint underneath. Joy...

Towards the End: protruding bars highlighted with dark blue

Don't worry if your paintwork is not the neatest. I also painted the edge of the queen excluders and crown boards and I had paint slapped all over the frames. It doesn't matter. The bees won't mind.

Keep the symbols simple. A square or triangle is quite sufficient. Going for a moon and star is all very fine, but not easy, and even less so when stressed, as I was (as time was slipping away).

It took me about eight hours to paint two brood chambers (deep), two supers, two roofs and the edges of crown boards and queen excluders with three coats, as well as put the symbols on (and correct the outlines numerous times...).

Smoker

If you're a beginner like me, the thought of keeping a smoker going for any length of time and making sure the smoke is steady, cool and not acrid is daunting. I have difficulty enough getting a fire going and keeping it ablaze in my fireplace at home. So the prospect of doing this in a small tin was a wee bit frightening.
In addition there are so many opinions out there about what to put in a smoker, what not and how to get the mix you put in right, it's almost like a very complicated recipe. I picked the following up from a beekeeping course and tested it today. It worked very easily.
You'll need: a page from a newspaper, egg carton torn into cup sizes (roughly), pressed wood pellets (I used pressed pine wood, which is sold as cat litter - important thing is that it's only wood).

Light the newspaper and put it into the smoker. Put a few pieces of the egg carton in and push it down. Pump a few times. Take a handful of the wood pellets and throw in. Pump again and that should keep the smoker going for a good forty minutes.

Ekes

For all non-beekeepers, who have probably never heard of the word before, ekes are a hollow square of wood of any height used to make parts of the hive higher. Usually you will need them when feeding the bees. Having discovered that the contact feeder is too high to be contained within a super (why design/produce/sell a feeder that will not fit into a super?!? Or is it an issue of Langstroth against National?), I had to make two ekes. As this was during half-term, I did not have access to the brilliant DT facilities, so they have turned out more functional than anything else. But they should do the job.

The candles are not a necessary part of the building, but a clamp is.

They're very simple: pine strip wood cut down to size (two 460mm, and two 460mm - thickness of the wood). I used little blocks of wood in the corners and screwed all the parts together. Don't know whether glue would unsettle the bees - odour, chemicals and pheromones, so decided to play it safe.