Spinning honey

Today the big day was finally here: time to make honey. I remembered that last year it didn't take very long to spin out the honey, but then somewhere in the middle of the quite lengthy process this year I remembered I had only one super then and four this time round! Quite a difference. As in my previous dealings with the hives this summer, I had Mr. V to help me eat the honey.
First of all we had to remove the supers, which was not difficult, as the bees were mainly in the brood chamber and couldn't get out of the crown board, because Mr. V had installed the porter bee escapes (one way systems). There were still a few bees in the supers, which we would have to deal with later. We slid boards above and below the Moon supers and strapped them tight, so we could transport them without any more bees getting in.

Moon supers all tied up and ready to go

Star supers ready to disappear

Stupidly, not thinking very clearly (which has happened to me quite a bit of late), I removed the one way system from the Moon as soon as we had bound up the supers, so we had quite a few bees buzzing around. Must remember NOT to do that in future and I didn't for the Star. As I only had two boards (not very well prepared, I know), we used a towel, like last year, to shield the Star supers from bees.
All the supers went into the car and off we drove to the kitchens for the next steps. First of all, using the feather, we cleared the frames of the remaining bees outside.

Supers ready for extraction

Last year, you may remember, the tool of the day was the feather. Well, this year tool of the day (if you can call him a tool) was definitely Mr. V who was indefatigable and truly helpful and - if truth be told - thinking a lot more about what was going on than I was.
To get at the honey we first had to uncap the comb on both sides of the frames, place them, four at a time, into the extractor and then spin them. After a few spins, you turn the frames round and get the honey out of the other side.

Tool of the day!

Removing the wax cappings

Spinning honey

A frame in the extractor

A few noteworthy incidents this time: Some frames had pollen mixed in among the honey, which first of all set my into a slight fluster, until I realized if the pollen did spin out, the mesh at the bottom of the centrifuge would catch it and prevent it going into the honey.
I forgot to uncap both sides of a frame one time and Mr. V, although he noticed, didn't say anything as he thought this might be what you do. No. Just I being silly.
While taking off the supers, I only wore the jacket which had the irritable habit of sliding up when I was bending down, so not only did a bee sting me at the base of my spine, but a few bees also crept into my jacket. The first I noticed of them was a bee suddenly sitting on the inside of my veil as we were brushing bees off the frames. I immediately took off the jacket, and out flew another two bees that had been strolling around inside, too!
As expected some of the frames had rape honey in them which was too solid to extract. However, there was not much, suggesting the rape fields are far enough away for it not to be a major problem. Still, next year I will have to extract the rape harvest earlier.

After clearing away we had a tub full of honey - I would estimate almost three times as much as last year - and a huge plastic container full of wax cappings with some honey mixed in.

The wax cappings - crunchy!

The new honey flowing into the storage tub

Preparing for the harvest

Sketch showing the trajectory the crown board
needs to take

While I was away today (on urgent business - of course!), my very helpful and heroic teacher colleague jumped into the beesuit and prepared the hives for the taking off of the supers tomorrow. What he did was to put one-way systems into the crown boards. Then he took the crown boards away from the top of the hive, where their job should be to tell the bees that this is the end of their hive (the school bees never listen to that one!) and placed them both just above the brood box and queen excluders, meaning the bees can exit the supers into the brood box, but not then scurry back up again, meaning (unlike last year), the supers should be free of bees. Let's see if that works this time.

The crown board with the one way white plastic
system in place

Operation successful: the finished product

I have a very early start tomorrow, getting the extractor, and then in the afternoon, we'll see how much honey we get.

Varroa Roles Reversed

As reported, I had slid varroa boards into both hives a week ago and I checked them today. Although the Star is broodless, it still had quite unhealthy numbers, but the real surprise was the Moon, that had been such a star last year. Despite the fact that it had a broodless period, too, during which - surely - mite numbers must have depleted, the varroa obviously felt at home there and reproduced at almost alarming levels. Also, I guess because I wasn't able to remove any drone comb, as I did last year, the varroa had a nice, undisturbed time.
Now, maybe I'm miscounting: there are an awful lot of 'empty' mites (just the back shells) and very light ellipses that don't seem to have legs, but I put them all down as varroa - better safe than sorry, I reckon.
Given the tallies (Moon: 134 mites in 6 days, Star 54 in 6 leading to daily drops of 22 and 9 respectively), both will be getting the Apiguard treatment as soon as the honey is off.
Darn those mites!

Queen check

Today was a beautiful day, so I went to check up on the Star and Moon - the final inspection before the honey is taken off.
Lots of bees in the Moon that are working on the third super. Two supers are heavy with honey (the new low hive position does my back no favour and I'll be glad when they are on new stands again). The (invisible) queen is still laying and the laying pattern is good. As drones have been setting me riddles in the Star, I immediately noticed that the Moon has no drones. The Moon bees are obviously getting ready for the winter and have thrown the drones out. Or are the drones mating with the Star queen? I suspect the former. Drone comb was also empty and unegged.
The bees were lovely and calm and didn't sting me at all. When I'd reassembled the hive, the bees all buzzed contentedly, the wood reverberating to the lovely sound.
The Star had fewer bees, but was looking much neater again. Although more defensive, the bees were actually also very sweet and calm. A few drones hung around, but not that many. As feared, there were no eggs, let alone larvae. So the queen (I'm pretty sure there is a queen, as the colony is so calm and collected) has not mated successfully yey. Not sure she will. Question then is what happens to her? Do the workers then throw her out as she's infertile? Will have to read up on that, but am thinking that over winter I'll probably bring about some astronomical conjunction and unite Moon and Star. Can't do that safely though if I have a queen crawling around the Star.
Will continue to check the Star and take my cues, as always, from the bees.

Both hives showing signs of activity

Bee- and housekeeping

Main purpose of today's inspection was to ascertain whether there was a mated queen, a waiting-to-be-mated queen or complete chaos in the Star hive. I also thought a bit of housekeeping would not go amiss to try and remove as many traces of the collapse as possible.
Before doing any of that, I got some nice new varroa boards, which I battleshipped to better be able to count the mites when they drop. The old wooden boards warped too easily and much; these plastic ones will hopefully last longer.

Ready to play mite battleships

The Star is still fairly quiet. Having looked at the bees again, I don't think a swarm left as there are still many bees - just not as many as if the queen were still in lay. I was pleased to note quite a number of drones in the hive, lending strength to The Captain's theory that the workers got nervous, threw a hissy and their stingers around and got a few drones. Makes me think of Hall&Oates: Watch out boy, she'll chew (or sting) you up, she's a bee-eater (well, not really, as they do exist and are quite different, being birds for starters).
Anyway, no eggs, no larvae, plenty of stores. Couldn't see the queen, but suspect she's around as the colony was calm and collected. Will continue monitoring it closely, though.
We removed one whole super full of frames where the foundation had been damaged beyond repair. Should probably have done that earlier. Also checked super full of capped honey and the bees have obviously done their housekeeping, too, as all combs are in pristine condition again; no trace of squashed bees. Bees are so hygienic; wish I had one as a housekeeper at my place!
On some of the damaged frames we removed there was still some capped honey, so we allowed ourselves a small treat after the beekeeping was done.

The benefits of beekeeping

Also put a wasp trap out, as quite a few of these horrible flying menaces were around.

Outside hive advice

The great thing about the net is that people far away can take a peek at what I've been doing and then pass on their experience. I was lucky enough to have The Captain, master of all things bee related with more than 30 years' beekeeping experience, have a look at my drone problem (thank you for taking the time and for your advice!) and what he writes is (paraphrased) this:

Drones would not try to mate with a queen inside the hive. 
In instances of high stress the workers will kick the males out of the hive because of limited resources. So the males were stuck in the gaps of the queen excluder because they were trying to escape the stingers of the workers. When a bee stings another bee the barbs do not usually force a break in the abdomen, so the stinger will not usually remain stuck in the stung bee, as it happens with skin, so you would not see a trace in the drones.

The workers, I guess, would undoubtedly be stressed, losing a queen this late in the season (not to mention the upheaval of having the hive fall over and then having it righted again when they had got used to the fallen state), so the explanation makes sense and fits how we found the drones. However, the hive has enough stores for the drones not to be a drain on resources - yet (but perhaps the bees are already preparing for winter). Also, if they are rearing a new queen surely they would need drones to mate with her?
The next inspection will hopefully throw more light on the matter.

Drone death

Having tidied up the Star and put the Moon onto firm foundations, I really should have checked up on the hives end of last week or at the weekend. I did not think it was really pressing (having forgotten everything I sort of knew about queen rearing), and as I have my daughter round, who is not too keen on the bees, and also wanted to once again have the excellent services of my fellow teacher and super-hero Goulwenn, I didn't go till today. Not sure that much was lost, but possibly...

First things first: the Moon is doing fine. However, although the bees are collecting in the third super, nothing is capped yet. As the season is getting late, I doubt we will get much more honey than the two supers. If I had been able to put the third super on earlier, there might have been more to harvest.

The Star is still marked and suffering from the aftermath of the fall. All the honey in one super is gone. It really does look like a war zone.

Very few bees were in the supers, which led me to conclude that I must have accidentally killed the queen when I tried setting things aright last time. Memo to future: get the queen out first and put her in a safe place before you start cutting swathes through the hive. Live and learn.
As expected we found a number of empty queens cups on various frames: two conspicuously large and just as empty. Possibly, the first queen to hatch left the hive with a small swarm. Although this would not make much sense, as the season is late and that swarm would almost certainly be doomed, the very small number of bees suggest this may have happened. If I had inspected earlier, I could have prevented that. Always, always work to the animals' needs. Really have forgotten basic principles.

A drone's - what?

But the weirdest thing was that under the queen excluder was a whole heap of dead drones. Even more weirdly, many were stuck in between the gaps of the excluder. Now drones, being larger, don't fit through the excluder, but I've never known this to be a problem; I've never seen drones stuck in the gaps of the excluder before. Why were they so desperate to get through? There are plenty of stores in the brood box, so it wasn't hunger driving them to trap themselves. Also - why did they die? Goulwenn and I saw strange protrusions from their abdomen and formulated weird theories of bee group sex with the new virgin queen in the darkness of the hive, against the rails of the excluder - something like that.

A drone's sexual organ

However, when I checked in my bee books, I realised a drone's reproductive parts look nothing like that, not even after they've burst off after copulation. So the mystery remains: why are the drones there and what have they got sticking out of their backsides? Perhaps their guts bursting out of their bums from the squeeze?

While I could theorize that the virgin queen, while still slim, may have slipped through the excluder and the drones wanted to follow her, this also doesn't tally as the drones and queen live side by side in complete harmony in the hive and it's only during the mating flight that the queen releases pheromones that get the males all going for her.

Drones plugged through the queen excluder much like the gulls in 'Finding Nemo'

A lot of shot-down drones

Will be going to inspect again soon, to see whether the Star has a mated, laying queen. If not, I shall have to amalgamate it with the Moon for the winter.

So, while things are looking up for the Star, everything is still far from ideal. Hey-ho, that's the way it goes. Not a great year for honey due to various traumata (though it should have been), but as long as the bees pull through fine...
Oh, and having fully functional legs (and brains!) would be nice, too.