Another surprise

On 6th August we had a surprise. We went to move the Meadows into their new hive and found a cluster underneath the nucleus box. On further inspection we realised they had a queen. We quickly put her in a queen clip and proceeded to get the Meadows in their hive. We didn't find a queen so were a little worried that the queen we had put in the clip was theirs'. However they seemed happy and had new comb with capped honey and pollen stores. There was also possibly an opened supersedure cell. We decided to get them in their new hive and put the small cluster into the nuc box, for now. We also wondered if the cluster/cast was from the remnants of The Nectans and it did have a queen after all, or, more likely was a cast from somewhere else. All very odd. Anyway we gave them an empty comb and a comb of capped brood from The Dolphins. We named them The Hangers On!
We checked The Dolphins and they had lots of capped worker brood and plenty of stores.

On 8th August we checked The West Millions who had 4 combs of capped worker brood and we also saw the queen. They had quite a lot of stores too. We arranged to take them to Ali at Marhamchurch for a couple of weeks before their move to Southole.
We were feeding syrup 1:1.5 to The Paddies, The Hangers On, The Meadows and The Pines at this stage as they were all new or vulnerable colonies.
We offered The Pines to Jim Morrison and he is going to take them to Herefordshire at the end of August.
 On 9th August we checked The Posties and only found a little old capped worker brood which would have been from before the primary swarm. Didn't find the queen. Still unsure if the swarm on 31st July was from there or not. Will check them again in a couple of weeks.
We took The West Millions to Marhamchurch on 10th August.

Five of the colonies

The other two

Nectan's Meadow Apiary 2015

Then there were 6!!!

What a busy few weeks!
On 16th July we moved The Paddies, with their new black queen, into a 3' hive and also gave them a comb of capped brood from The Posties to bolster their numbers and provide some nurse bees for when the queen starts laying. We were a bit worried as there was no sign that she had, as yet.
Then, on 19th July The Posties swarmed AND sent off a cast at the same time. They were only a swarm themselves 8 weeks ago! As The Nectans still appeared to be queenless, we put the cast in with them with a newspaper barrier. We put the swarm into a nucleus box and called them The Meadows.
On 21st July we were called out to West Mill to catch a swarm. We only had our emergency flowerpot hive to put them in. We had an audience as there were several visiting children. Fortunately I had thrown all our spare suits into the car before we left.

What a great location for a swarm

Medium sized swarm in a bush

Our band of little helpers

They were very interested

Some suits fitted better than others

We rang Ruth and fortunately she had transferred the swarm we gave her into her hive, so she said she'd return our nuc box to us. She did this on 23rd and I transferred the West Mill cast into it. Unfortunately the flowerpot fell over during the process, spilling all the bees onto the ground. We managed to scoop most of them up and I just hope we didn't lose the queen. Fred and Lesley, at Southole, are going to have this nuc.
Checked The Paddies and the queen is finally laying thank goodness.
On 31st July, my birthday, I just went for a stroll up to see the bees and noticed activity in one of the pine trees. It was a swarm! Not sure where it came from at first, but we suspect it was yet another cast from The Posties. However it was very big, so it seems very strange. These we have named The Pines and had to put them in the flowerpot!

The Pines were in the pine tree just behind the flowerpot nucleus box

On 2nd August we were phoned by a couple in our group to say they had a swarm in their compost bin. We talked them through capturing it and hiving it. They were able to borrow suits and a nuc box from another couple in the group. Quite gratifying as several more members of the group now have bees and are also helping each other. Makes for a much more interesting group for the future.
On 3rd August we borrowed one of the hives from The Barton and after Mick waterproofed the roof with some roofing felt, we transferred The Pines into it and gave them a couple of new bars. They were already busy building comb. We gave them two jars of feed.
We finally decided that The Nectans had to go. On inspection they clearly had laying workers, so were still queenless, despite all our efforts. We took them to the bottom of the field and brushed all the bees off the combs. As expected they made their way back up the field and went into the other hives. They were particularly interested in The Meadows for some reason. There seemed to be little fighting at the entrances so we hope they mostly found new homes.
We checked The Paddies and they had 2 combs with some lovely capped worker brood on them. They are still a small colony, so we will have to keep an eye on them, but they are heading in the right direction.
So, briefly, we were up to 7 colonies, but now have 6. Only one of those has a new home to go to, so we should be going into the winter with 5 colonies of our own.
We still need to check that The Dolphins and Posties are OK, after their swarms and casts and we need to move the Meadows into the vacated hive the Nectans were in.

We now have 4 colonies!

Well, we said we wouldn't go above 3 colonies, but we now have 4!
The swarm we caught on 23rd May, The Posties are doing great.

The Nectans, who swarmed and then sent a cast off on 8th June, left themselves queenless so we gave them a comb of brood from The Posties (their own swarm) and they made several good queen cells. These should have hatched by now, so we are hoping there is a good queen in there now.

The ones we have in a nucleus box are the cast from The Nectans and unfortunately the queen flew off during hiving. We have learnt a lesson there that young virgin queens are much more likely to take flight than older queens. We were hoping they had another queen as there are often more than one in a cast. However, we realised they were queenless and requeened them with a black queen from Northern Island on Tuesday 7th July. We had originally planned to put it in The Nectans' hive if they hadn't made any decent queen cells, but we decided they were ok and gave it to the nucleus instead. If successful we are going to call them The Paddies!

The Dolphins have had at least one swarm that we lost and possibly 2, but seem to be ok. We are hoping they haven't left themselves queenless, like The Nectans did. We'll check soon and give them a comb of brood too, if they have none of their own.

On Thursday 9th July I was called out to catch a swarm near Hartland. It was in a low bush and was fairly easy to shake straight into a nucleus box. I left them there until the next evening to be sure we had them all and then we collected it and met up with a member of our bee group, in a layby, to give it to her. We really do not want 5 colonies, tempting as it is.

The swarm near Hartland hanging from a small leylandii bush

Caught them easily straight into the nucleus box

Just a few stragglers to go in

Beekeeping season 2015

Well 2 of our hives came through the winter very well but the third didn't make it. The one that died was the swarm we caught last year. They had swarmed again a month later and as we found 2 queens in the swarm we think they possibly left the original colony queenless, or that the new queen failed to mate successfully. In any case, we are pretty sure they had no queen and had made desperate efforts to create a new one. There were lots of queen cups, no brood and a very small, dead, cluster. They had plenty of stores, so hadn't starved. Hopefully we will get a swarm back from the person we gave their swarm to.
We had a very good meeting of The Atlantic Coast Friends of the Bees on 10th May with 11 of us in attendance, followed by a shared lunch. We looked at the bees and the new experiments we are trying out with the hives including the periscope entrances, eco floors and shellac treatment on the inside of the hives. Mick has just made a new hive which we will be transferring the Nectans into this season. The periscope entrance on this hive is shallower than the ones we have been using with a shorter distance for the bees to crawl up. He has changed the angle of the sides to 120° as recommended by Les Crowder. We are also going to experiment with different guides on the top bars, starting with lolly sticks inserted in a groove with wax. We are now using 38mm as standard.

Lovely comb of capped brood in early April

Mick making the new hive

Double viewing window at the back

New style periscope entrance

We will be able to inspect the periscope space if necessary

The bees bearding in late April

The local Friends of the Bees looking at Mick's new hive

The Nectans swarmed this year on 23rd May and settled on a post a few yards from the hive. We managed to get them into their new home without much difficulty.
Unfortunately this years beekeeping course with Phil Chandler has had to be cancelled due to lack of numbers, but he may be coming to see us soon anyway.

They settled on a post 

Mick with a stick of bees

Shaking them onto the sheet

Marching up into the hive

Nearly all there

Beekeeping Course and meeting with Phil Chandler

Phil ran a very enjoyable and successful course here on the weekend of 10^th - 12^th October. Due to the continuation of the wonderful warm weather, we were able to look in the hives, although we didn't do any full inspections. All three hives appeared to be thriving, healthy and going into the winter with their larders full.

Some lovely dark bees

The Nectan Hive

Lots of honey for the winter

Periscope entrance and eco floor

The Lintons

It feels like we are already off to a good start with our newest colony that appears to have a lot of black bee genetics in it.
The black bees are generally resilient, adaptable and particularly well suited to the British climate. Phil has already established some colonies in South Devon and plans to gradually reintroduce and breed black bees in areas throughout the country. He will soon be launching a fundraising campaign to help pay for this.

On the Sunday evening Phil talked to our group about the Black Bee project in South Devon and proposed we might be able to extend this to North Devon/Cornwall at some point in the future.

Around 100 years ago our native black bee population was nearly wiped out by diseases and parasites brought in by bees imported from abroad, especially Italy. The main parasite was Acarine which the majority of black bees had no resistance to. This resulted in the widespread dominance of imported bees. However, many isolated pockets of the black bees survived in several areas across the British Isles.

Exciting summer!

We have had a very interesting beekeeping year and now have 3 colonies in Top Bar Hives. 

Phil Chandler ran a course here in early June and one amazing find was a Death's Head Hawk Moth in one of the hives. It was actually between the follower board and the end of the hive, so couldn't get in to steal any honey which is what they do. Another bonus of having a periscope entrance.

The Death's Head Hawk Moth in the hive

You can clearly see the death's head marking

Phil inspecting the lovely straight comb in the Nectan's hive

In mid June we had a call from some neighbours to say they had a swarm in an old electricity box in their garden. After a couple of failed attempts, eventually having to dismantle the roof, we got the bees into a nucleus box. They are now well established in a hive and are our third colony. They are beautiful, very dark, bees and are probably closely related to the British Black bee. We have called them The Lintons.

The electricity box where the swarm had settled

In they go

Amazingly, 37 days later, in late July, The Lintons swarmed again. We caught the swarm and we gave them away to a local farmer. We had some our Grandchildren here at the time, so they had a very interesting introduction to swarm catching.

Arlo and Alby getting ready to catch the swarm

Quite a big swarm

Even the baby joined in

The lovely black queen can be seen here in the middle of the picture with blue on her abdomen

We are hoping our three hives will all survive the winter. They have plenty of stores and after such a good summer, they all seem to be strong colonies. We also helped a friend, at Morwenstow, with his first colony this year. He came on the course last year and had his Top Bar hive all ready to go. He was given some bees from a beekeeper in Bude.

There is one more Beekeeping course this year on the weekend of 10th - 12th October 2014. It is for Improvers and Converters, but Phil has said that he will accept people who have at least read a book about beekeeping and know the basics. There are still a few places, so if anyone is interested, do email Yarner at info@yarnertrust.org as soon as possible. They do have a bursary scheme to help with payment if needed.

Phil is staying on afterwards to give a talk about the native Black Bee Project at The Old Smithy Inn on the Sunday evening.