Star still slow

With the Moon and its satellite out of bounds until the two emerging queens there hopefully mate and start laying, I thought I'd take a look inside the Star to see how it's doing.

The nuc box with a few bees, showing they are taking care of the new queen

Traffic outside the Moon

The first thing I noticed was that both entrances were busy to the point of being clogged up - an apian M25 - which was due to the fact that I hadn't increased the openings yet. The bees had of course stuck the opening blocks in firmly, so I had some difficulty unsticking them and turning them around. The bees were a lot happier with the new arrangement.
The Moon bees are frightfully busy, collecting pollen en masse (and honey, too, I assume). In fact there were so many outside the hive I thought they might be swarming - but they can't of course!

The Star is also getting busier, though not nearly as congested or rush-hour-like as the Moon. With her yellow spot easily visible, I had no problem identifying the queen. While I could see a few queen cups, these are just practice and nothing indicates the Star will swarm soon. There are many drones though, lounging around and that is good, as soon they'll have two queens to throw themselves at.

A slightly quieter Star

Because the Star is getting fuller, I supered up, to give the bees more space. Also, I hope this will induce them to move the stores upstairs so the queen can lay more downstairs.

The Star has managed to dismantle part of the bee gym. It looked like the bees were using it, but I found a bit of the plastic hanging from one frame. Talk about overenthusiastic girls ruining gym equipment!
The other highlight of the inspection was seeing two bees do the waggle dance. That was exciting; and while I don't know what they would have scored in Strictly Come Dancing, the other bees seemed to know what was going on.

Moon spaced out

With the queens due to hatch Saturday or so, I thought I ought to separate the queen cells out in the hope that I can rear two queens, in case one doesn't mate properly (or so I can requeen the Star with a Moonchild). The weather was not great (it started to rain the moment I opened up the brood box, but luckily neither heavily, nor for long), so I had slightly more high-pitched, nervous bees than usual that flew all around me. The Moon has definitely not swarmed: it is full. Even the super I put on was full of bees and activity.

The Moon super, looking as full as the brood box

However, I was right in my assumption that the Moon is queenless. This was obvious from the frames, which had no new brood, but which the bees were using for stores. Also, there were no new queen cells, meaning there are no new eggs that could be turned into such. This means it is even more vital that at least one queen cell produces a viable queen.

I took out three frames from the Moon and placed them, with the bees adhering thereto, into the nuc box. I blocked the entrance so the bees would get used to their new home. I hope they recognise this as their new home now and look after the queen cell.

The nuc box with three Moon frames. The frame with the queen cell is in the middle, marked with a drawing pin

The Moon has one queen cell left, too. Both should hatch in a few days and the queens will then go on a few practice flights before mating and settling down to lay. At least that's what they should. With the moon being so full of surprises I somehow feel this may not run quite as smoothly as envisaged.

Flummoxed

Yesterday I went to check up on the bees again, together with a little helper, expecting to have to control the swarm (Delain fans will get the pun). But the bees are once again not doing what they should and I am really, really confused.

Lots of bees, no queen

The bees have definitely not swarmed, as the brood box and super were full with bees. But there was no sign of the queen. We went through all frames four times, using a feather to brush off bees to look at the layers beneath. No queen. Now, I know the queen is not marked and she can be tricksy, but she just wasn't visible at all. Furthermore, though there are still larvae, there were no eggs. No eggs means no queen - right? Another clue that the queen has somehow magically disappeared was the fact that nearly all unsealed queen cups were empty and we saw a number of queen cells that were closed. Normally the old queen will have swarmed before the new queen cells are sealed. The weather hasn't been good, granted, but the fact that after having destroyed all queen cells on Tuesday, there were several sealed queen cells suggest the bees have turned some worker cells into queen cells.
Simple (or not so simple, as I just spent 10 minutes working this out correctly!) maths will explain this:
8 days after laying the queen cell is usually sealed. Eggs hatch three days after laying. Any worker larva can be turned into a queen larva/ cell up to two days after hatching. So if two day old larvae were suddenly raised to be a queen (because something happened to the queen either on or after Tuesday), then Friday would be the earliest date for queen cells to be sealed (larvae two days old on Tuesday means they have another three days before they are sealed, which means they would have been sealed Friday). However, if the queen had laid new eggs in new queen cells after I destroyed all on Tuesday, then the cells would not be sealed yet, the larvae would still be at the start of their development.
Fact is, I really don't know what's going on. I cannot imagine that the Moon queen has vanished (again!). I cannot imagine I killed her accidentally on Tuesday during the inspection, as I was as careful as always (which, perhaps, isn't careful at all, though my helpers attest I was gentle). I cannot imagine she swarmed alone - so what has she done? Maybe she is still hiding and will swarm as soon as the weather allows, in which case I will have lost a swarm and have to accept that - I did what I could.

Why can't bees behave like in the textbooks??!?

Looking ahead, I destroyed all queen cells, leaving only two that looked good. If my calculations are correct, these are due to emerge on Saturday, 26th April. My plan is to raise both queens, one in the nuc box, the other in the original hive, just in case one of the queens fails to mate properly - though there are plenty of drones about (that we annoyingly kept mistaking for the queen).

I must say all through the two hour operation of searching through all frames several times the bees were very well behaved. I was stung once, my helper three times (in the gloves - the sting didn't go through to the skin), but that was it. The bees calmly gathered on the outside of the hive, waiting for the disturbance to end. Despite their wayward ways, I do love them.

This colony has definitely NOT swarmed!

Preparing for the swarm

During the winter I purchased equipment to deal with swarms and decided to opt for the nucleus method, where you put the old queen in a nucleus with some of the flying bees and let the rest of the hive sort itself out without the queen (i.e. rear a new queen). So, with the Moon wanting to swarm, I quickly nailed the nuc box together, hopefully not disturbing the neighbours too much with my late night hammering.

Watch out for those fingers...

So, I'm ready to go now.

The complete nuc box

The only thing I am slightly apprehensive about is that the nucleus method depends on me finding the queen. When I decided to opt for that method of swarm control, I didn't know I had an unmarked, flighty queen in the Moon. Hopefully I'll be able to find her; if not, I have a serious problem...

Unbeelievable Photos

As promised in yesterday's post, here are some of the fantastic photos the children took.
Enjoy!

Hovering

We hold the bees in our hands

Looking down the frames into the hive

Laying circles

Event horizon

Spring!

Addendum to yesterday's inspection

One very strange (and possibly worrying) thing I forgot to mention in my report on yesterday's inspection was that a number of the bees developed a strange infatuation for my belly and clustered around it as though it contained honey or a queen. They've never done that before and it led to much hilarity and my inability to bend too much for fear of upsetting them.
Weird.

Moon on the out

My suspicions about the Moon were confirmed today when I went to do another inspection. The reason, originally, was rather trivial: my daughter was round from Austria and I wanted to take her beekeeping with me. However, given the state of the Moon last inspection, I realised an inspection within the seven to nine day cycle was important to make sure the bees didn't swarm without having at least given me a chance to prevent them.
Although the school is on holiday, I had two pupils from school accompany Valerie and me. Good thing I did, for they took some of the most original photos, which I will post separately to give them their due. Apart from that they also had fun with the smoker and were about as enthusiastic as I can get about the bees, too!

As the weather now seems to have settled down, we took the cladding off both hives and they are now once again the beautiful blue they are meant to be.

Moon supered up and Star open - but both blue again (like the beekeeper)!

The Moon hive was brimming. Bees were coming out of everywhere and each frame was full with them. And underneath the covering of bees, some frames were completely laid out, with almost no space left for stores. I can certainly understand why they want to swarm.

Lots of bees

A word about swarming: in the wild bees multiply by swarming. If they didn't, they would remain one colony the whole time; by swarming they turn one colony into two, thus increasing their chances of survival. What happens is that when space in the hive gets tight (or they feel like it), the workers will build queen cells and the old queen will lay female eggs in them. By the food they give the larvae, the workers make sure a new queen is reared (in fact, they usually go for more than one queen at any one time, just to be sure). Before the new queen cells are sealed (nine days after laying), the old queen takes half the hive and flies off with it to pastures new - literally. The rest of the colony is left to wait for the new queen to emerge. As you tend to lose half your stores and work force when the queen leaves, as a beekeeper you try to prevent the bees from swarming.
Swarm control and prevention is the true acid test of a beekeeper - and the Moon is about to swarm.

A beautiful queen cell

During the inspection we saw numerous queen cells, strewn all over the Moon, about eight or nine of them. All larger ones had larvae in them. If I had left them like that, the queen would be gone in a day or two. So, I emptied all the queen cells (sorry larvae!), buying me enough time till the weekend, when I will have to do some swarm prevention in earnest. There are a few things I have to prepare as well as lots of reading I have to do till then.
There were also lots of drones in the Moon, another sign that the colony is gearing up to rear queens.

A varroa mite on a pupa

In some broken off comb we saw developing bees, which are a ghostly white. One had a big brown bump, I think on its head. This is a varroa mite; the pesky parasites - hate them!

In another part of comb we saw a number of bees hatching simultaneously.

Synchronised hatching

A drone in the hand...

Other highlights of the rather long inspection (as I had to make sure I found all queen cells) were holding drones and finding out how to work a smoker. The eagerness with which the pupils smoked the bees reminded me of altar boys waving frankincense. One of the children was followed by bees only to then have the bees poo over her. With children's enthusiasm for all things scatological, this was quite an event and duly photographed.

Showing Valerie how to use a smoker

Bee poo

We didn't see the queen in the Moon, but eggs and larvae, so she's still there, hiding, which is easy, unmarked as she is.

Apart from the Moon we also took a quick peek at the Star, which is as it was last week. We saw the queen, which was easy as there were not so many bees and she had a big yellow dot on her back.

La Reine est morte - vive la Reine!

Although on holiday, the bees of course are not, and even though it is not prime swarming season yet, I thought it would be good to keep close tabs on the bees as the weather improves. The Moon in particular had looked quite full last time, so I thought a more regular inspection regime might be in order.

Our scribe

It's great that in the school a number of staff have shown an interest in the hives as well. For me it is truly satisfying to be able to involve as many people as possible to make the hives belong to the whole school as much as possible. Lorraine, one of the kitchen staff of the school, wanted to accompany me with her two children; so, together with a friend from Austria, we inspected the hives together. Lorraine kept the records, Petra took the photos and the children, after initial reservations, were ultimately - thank God - enthralled. There is something about the bees that seems to draw in children and fascinate them. Having kept their distance at first, by the time we got to the second hive, the two children couldn't stand close enough.

And this time, no-one was stung (not even me)!

Having learnt from the last time, I made sure to have a smoker. Whether it was the smoker or the weather or the children, I don't know, but the bees were a lot calmer, although there were still plenty of them taking to the air.

Checking play cups for eggs

Main purpose of this inspection was to determine how many frames had brood on them and how many stores. When each frame has brood on them, you know the bees are close to swarming. Therefore, it's important to know where you stand (or how much the bees have covered). As expected (feared?) the Moon only has two frames of stores, one new frame with nothing in it as yet and all the rest was brood. Given this situation, I can imagine the Moon will want to swarm soon. We also found a number of play cups - the bees practising making a queen cell (which is larger than an ordinary bee cell)  - in fact, a frightening number of them. I made sure that none of them had an egg in them (which would have meant the bees were ready to swarm in a few days), but the sheer number of them means the Moon is getting jittery.

But the Moon had a surprise in store for us: by sheer fluke we found the queen, but it was an unmarked, unclipped queen, so a new queen and not the original marked queen I received last year. How, when or why the old queen disappeared and a new one came, I do not know. But the bees seem happy with her, she seems to be laying properly (so has also mated - when did all of this happen?!!?) and the Moon is as strong as ever. I will have to ask more experienced beekeepers what might have happened there. I do not think I have lost a swarm as the Moon as always had lots and lots of bees, so the original queen must have accidentally got lost somehow, sometime and the bees must have then reared a new queen, possibly even last year.

The new Moon queen - unclipped, unmarked and very happy!

The Moon was so busy that I have decided I will super up next time I inspect the bees.

A perfectly marked Star queen

The Star was a much more sedate, as was to be expected. We found the queen (marked), no problem, and saw brood as well as a few bees hatching. In the Star there are still many frames that are stores and only about half that contain brood. Both hives had drones and quite a bit of drone comb in them; the children loved letting drones walk over their gloved hands - there's no risk involved as drones have no stings. The fact that the bees are producing drone comb suggests that they might want to swarm soon, though the risk with the Star is smaller - there were only very few play cups here.

The Star showed a beautiful brood pattern (as did the Moon, actually). What this means is that you have an arc of honey and pollen at the top of the frame and then an elliptical area of brood, which moves out as more and more eggs get laid. The photo below shows this. What this means is that all is fine with the queen and that she is laying normally. So, a cause to smile and quietly thank her and the bees for doing so well.

A perfect laying pattern, with stores in an arc at the bottom,
some space to expand and the brood in a tight ellipse

In fact I am hugely grateful to the bees for being so
industrious and calm. All in all a very successful - and interesting - inspection which the children loved. And if they go away enthused by the bees and tell their friends, then more and more people will come to see what lovely and helpful little creature bees really are.

Trigger-happy bees

28th March 2014

I have fallen a bit behind with my blog updates and what I am writing here is the inspection I carried out with three pupils on the last day of term. We had a window of about an hour before prize-giving and I thought that should suffice to have a quick look at both hives. We did manage to look into both hives and make it in time for end-of-term prizes, but only just.

The Moon looking deceptively sedate

Once again I had the head of science, Richie, as a helper (he is becoming a keen beekeeper himself, which is great and bodes well). This time the bees were somewhat more excited (which may have to do with the fact that I didn't use a smoker again; have decided that with children around it's probably best to use a smoker, if only as a placebo, as they can get nervous and then having a response to the bees is useful) and showed a great interest in Richie and the camera and it was not long before he was stung. After that the inspection seemed to turn into a free-for-all sting-fest, with most pupils getting stung (though not badly, as through leather gloves or several layers of clothes); the only one who remained unscathed was yours truly. This was the first time the pupils were stung - and the first time I wasn't.

Bomber bee!

So - what did we see?
The Star queen seems to be a lot easier to spot these days and we saw her, yellow dot shining. But we saw eggs in the Moon, which means the queen must be there in hiding, laying away quietly. We also saw some bees emerging from the comb. As last year, the Moon is ahead of the Star - the Moon has more bees and is busier.

The bees still have plenty of stores and both queens are busy laying, though the Moon has more frames of brood than the Star. In fact, I have the feeling the Moon is close to capacity and will have to check that more carefully next time.

We kept the cladding on as the weather is still not reliably clement (Ha! Is it ever?).

Bee stings

We all know bee stings are uncomfortable and, as regular readers of this blog will know, I have been stung numerous times, most spectacularly in the lip. However, I have never had the desire to find out where the most painful place to be stung by a bee might be. Someone else has had that idea and went about his research with methodical madness. The link to the findings are here.
Ouch!