Atlantic Coast Friends of the Bees Newsletter June 2013

Here is our latest newsletter. If anyone, who is not part of the group yet, plans to come to any of our meetings, please contact me first in case of any changes.

Atlantic Coast Friends of the Bees Newsletter June 2013

The local TBHs seem to have come through the winter very well in comparison to most bees in the area. We know of 7 hives in our group and out of those, it seems, only one has been lost. That was one of our hives. However, our remaining hive swarmed this week and we caught them, so we are back up to 2 hives again. We're getting better at catching swarms and would be very happy to come and assist if you come across any swarms, or hear of any, providing it's a convenient time.

Here is the video of our recent escapade:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7-YQLbnuRM

Next Meeting

Saturday 31^st August at 3.30pm

Our next meeting will be at Essie & Richard Nichols home, Shernick Lodge, Red Post, between Holsworthy and Bude on the A3072: http://www.seasonsharvest.co.uk/. On Google maps it's marked as 'Season's Harvest': http://goo.gl/maps/FvbG3

They have a very nice 5 acre smallholding with chickens and 2 TBHs. They might possibly have some vegetables/eggs for sale.

Members List

As requested at the last meeting, I have attached a list of members with location, email address and phone number, where I have it. Please check your entry and let me know if there are any errors, or omissions.

Meeting with Phil Chandler, The Barefoot Beekeeper

At 6pm on Sunday 6th October at The Old Smithy Inn

Another request at the last meeting was to ask Phil if we could meet up with him during the next course in October. I put it to him and he said yes. So we will meet upstairs at The Old Smithy Inn for a fairly informal question and answer session. Nearer the time I will need to know numbers and if you intend to eat at the pub after the meeting. Phil will be staying on an extra night in Welcombe, especially to meet up with us and give us the benefit of his vast knowledge on the subject of Natural Beekeeping, so please make an effort to come. I also thought it would be nice if we all contributed perhaps £2 - £3 each household for his meal and drinks that evening.

Jim

Jim Morrison and his family are settling down in Herefordshire. We are going to miss them terribly, both as neighbours and Jim as fellow beekeeper. He's gone off with the super hive he made with Mick and hopes to get set up there soon. Since we caught the swarm last year, Mick has got more and more interested in beekeeping and so is now my new bee buddy.

We have now changed the name of our blog to: http://suenmicksnaturalbeekeeping.blogspot.co.uk/

Perone Hives

I thought you might be interested in these hives that are used a lot in South America. There are some people experimenting with them here and it will be interesting to see how they fare in this country: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n3bEZgo6qU
Friends of the Bees unConvention
Is anyone interested in going to this on 9^th - 11^th August nr Worcester, I think there are still places? It looks great. I would love to go, but I doubt we are likely to: http://www.biobees.com/unconvention.php
Sue Dollimore

Wednesday 5th June 2013

Had a successful course with Phil Chandler on 19th - 21st April weekend, despite the weather. Not able to look in the hive much, but a few bees were flying.
On Monday the bees from the Dolphin hive swarmed. We had put up bait hives, nuc boxes and lures all round the hive and where did they go - behind the hive! Anyway we successfully caught and hived them. We are calling the new hive The Elmtrees. Here is the video:

The swarm

Looking through the window at the back after hiving them

Atlantic Coast Friends of the Bees Newsletter 15th April 2013

We had a a meeting of the group yesterday and despite the weather we had a good afternoon. We were expecting 13 to 17 people by the replies we'd received and were unsure what we were going to do with everyone, as the forecast was not good. I think most people just forgot because it doesn't really feel like Spring properly yet. In the end only 3 came, so there were 6 of us altogether. Also the weather cleared up quite well by 3.30 and we were able to spend some time with the bees.

It's always hard knowing how much to plan these events, as our group is so diverse, ranging from people just getting interested in Beekeeping to people who have been doing it for a few years. However, we are all learning and I feel the main aim is for us to exchange ideas and help each other. Hopefully, in the long term we will be able to share bees with each other as well. To a certain extent, this has already happened between us and Paula, in Bude.

We were pleased that Amanda from near Lifton was able to join us this time. She has one Top Bar hive and her bees have survived the winter. She told us about her bee journey so far which has not been without it's difficulties, as always seems to be the case with beekeeping. It's good to hear about other people's experiences, as it makes us realise it's not just us who have problems at times.

Bee losses this winter

The past year has been very difficult for bees and even the most experienced beekeepers are just finding out how many losses they have suffered. We have heard of one local Beekeeper who has 7 hives left out of over 30 and another who has lost all 5 of his hives. It's tragic and doesn't bode well for the future. We too lost one of our hives, The Lizards, despite them having a fair amount of honey left. This seems to be the case with other people who have had losses too. There are various theories as to why this is. The terrible weather last summer meant that some new queens were unable to mate effectively, if at all. This, combined with being unable to get adequate stores of pollen in (needed to make beebread for baby bees), probably meant fewer bees in many hives to overwinter. They need a certain number of bees to keep the temperature up and to regulate the humidity in the hive over the winter. Another problem seems to be getting adequate pollen in this Spring, again to be able to feed the new brood properly.

Our bees that have survived, The Dolphins, seem to be doing very well and have been bringing in pollen, on good days, since February. They particularly liked the snowdrops and are currently working the gorse. We could see at least 2 sorts of pollen coming in yesterday, dark orange and yellow. I think this might be gorse and goat willow. We have offered them fondant, but suspect they probably have plenty of honey left too, as they have only been taking the fondant very slowly. We think they are probably a hardy variety of local bee and so are well adapted to the North Devon/Cornwall coastal climate. They are quite dark in colour which presumably means they haven't got much Italian type bee genes.

Farewell to Jim

One piece of news we have is that Jim is moving to Herefordshire. He and his family have been finding it increasingly difficult to manage in their tiny cottage. Three growing boys take up a lot of room! It's hard to find affordable housing round here now, so they have had to look further afield. Fortunately they have found a 3 bedroomed house in a rural location. It will also be good for Jim's work which often takes him to Wales. I will be very sorry to see him go as we've made a good team the past 3 years. Luckily, since we caught the swarm last summer, Mick has become very interested, so at least I am not on my own.

A couple of suggestions came out of the meeting. A request for a summer meeting and a request to ask Phil if it would be possible to meet up with him when he is here for a course. Also I was asked to distribute phone numbers, as well as email addresses and will try to do this soon.

Summer Meeting

I have spoken to Essie who lives at Red Post. Their 2 Top Bar Hives have come through the winter well and she said it should be fine to have a meeting there towards the end of the summer. She will talk to Richard and get back to me with a date and I will email everyone.

Meeting up with Phil

He is currently away, so I will contact him when he's back and ask if he would be up for a semi social meeting, in The Old Smithy, on the Saturday evening of the course in October. There is a course here next weekend, but that might be too soon.

Do keep in touch, particularly if you manage to source bees this year, we will be really interested to hear how you are getting on.

Sue & Mick Dollimore

Bad news

It's been a very strange winter here in the South West. Very mild most of the time, but also very wet. The past couple of weeks have been colder, but not like the rest of the country. We had a slight smattering of snow on one day, but nothing since.
I checked the bees just before the cold snap. I looked at the Dolphins first. There were none out flying, so I carefully removed a follower board and began looking in a little further. I soon heard a buzz and one bee came out to see what I was doing. As we had assessed they had plenty of stores in the Autumn, I decided to go no further and check them again in a month or so.
I then went to the Lizards. No sign of any flying, so I looked in the window at the back. I couldn't see any bees, but wasn't too worried as they had been clustering just beyond the window about a week before and one or two had come to see what was happening when the window was opened. This time there was nothing, so I opened the lid and removed a follower board, still nothing and no sound. I investigated further and all I could see was dead bees on the floor. They were all dead! At first I was worried they had starved, but then found honey right near where they had been clustering.
Talked it through with Jim and considered all the options. It could be that their supersedure queen was not very strong, a virus had got them, a too heavy load of varroa, or maybe the damp. The weather has been so wet and where the hive is, it's damper than the top of the field where the Dolphins are.
I had a chat with our experienced beekeeper friend, Dennis and he said to check for acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV) they have a shiny appearance and no hair left on their bodies. This is often due to a high varroa infestation. We will do this once the weather has improved a bit.
In the meantime we need to concentrate on the Dolphins and make sure they make it through the rest of the winter safely. We have bought some fondant and will offer it to them in case they are getting low on supplies. They will probably take it, whether they are low, or not, as they seem to eat whatever they are offered.

Autumn has arrived

I have just realised we haven't posted for over 2 months. Quite a lot has happened in that time. The weather eventually improved in late July and we were able to stop feeding. The bees became much happier and were out flying most days.
We heard that a lot of people had had trouble with queens not managing to mate successfully because of the weather and got increasingly worried about both our colonies and the nucleus, all of which had, or should have had, new queens. We eventually checked and found brood in both the hives, but not in the nucleus which we had moved into the nucleus box ready to go on holiday for a couple of weeks, prior to going to The Yarner Trust up the road. It didn't have any brood when we moved it, but we thought that might just have been because the queen hadn't started laying yet. The bees seemed fairly happy and were bringing in pollen.
There was another Beekeeping Course here on the weekend of 7th - 9th September and we decided to reunite the nucleus with the colony it came from, The Lizards and move the whole lot into the new hive with the periscope entrance. Luckily it was a fairly warm weekend and we did this successfully on the Saturday afternoon. At the same time we assessed stores in both our hives. We decided The Dolphins should be fine for the winter, but The Lizards might not be. We decided to offer them some 2:1 thick syrup in the contact feeder. They took several days to take this and so we haven't given them any more. There are some videos taken on the course on The Yarner Trust YouTube page here: http://www.youtube.com/user/YarnerTrust and here are some pictures.

Phil looking through the Lizard Hive

Looking into the hive

Lovely new comb with honey at the top

We'll check both colonies in late January/early February and assess how they are doing for stores then. Hopefully they will both be OK, but it depends on the weather really. Last winter was so mild here that they were out flying a lot and so used up more energy and so more supplies.
It's been a very odd year for many beekeepers, who knows what the next 12 months will hold. This is our third year and still no honey to spare, oh well, maybe one day.
We've been hearing a lot about The Perone hive recently and will be interested in how the people trying them out in this country do. Here is a link to a video of them doing a talk at the Natural Beekeeping conference held in August:
http://www.biobees.com/naturalbeekeepingalliance/conference.php
On Sunday 23rd September we held the second meeting of Atlantic Coast Friends of the Bees here. There were 12 of us on a wet and windy afternoon. We spent most of the time drinking tea in the kitchen and talking Beekeeping. Unfortunately none of the people who came, apart from us, had any bees yet. We encouraged those who hadn't yet been on Phil's course to consider doing it next Spring. We talked about Perone Hives and the problems beekeepers had experienced this year, amongst other things and then ventured out to look at the hives. We also had a look at the new hive Jim has been making in the garage, with a periscope entrance that has a perspex front to it.

The Swarm has gone to it's new home and we moved the split into the nucleus box

On 9th July we took the swarm to it's new home with Paula who gave us the colony they came from when it was a tiny cast last year.

Paula takes the cork out

Hello girls (bees that is)

We last checked the split we took from the Lizards on 17th June during Phil's course. There was an opened queen cell on the comb we had put in 2½ weeks before. Since then weather has been awful and we have been feeding them. They slowed down with feeding a few days ago, so we stopped and then the weather improved.

Today we moved them into a nucleus box because they are destined to go to a new home.
We were dismayed to find no brood at all. 

Plenty of stores and the bees were happy. Pretty sure there is a queen because during the moving process a group of bees clustered and hung off the bottom of one comb that was still in the hive, making a loud noise. We think the queen was in that cluster. We quickly put that over into the nuc box.

We think that we either have a queen who took a while to mate because of the weather and hasn't started laying yet, or we have an unmated queen who is now about 6 weeks old. We are going to check the hive they came from tomorrow and maybe move another comb of brood over.

Getting ready to move the bees

Nice comb of bees andhoney

They soon got the idea

Still a few hanging around the old hive

Lots of bees at the new entrance

Natural Beekeeping Beginners Course 15th - 17th June 2012

The group came down in the rain just to have a look at the hives on Saturday, but the main visit was on Sunday afternoon. This is what we found when we looked at the 4 hives/nucleii.

1) We were pretty sure the split from the Lizards has a new queen. We saw an opened queen cell on the bar of brood Jim and I put in about 3 weeks ago. The bees were behaving normally and as if they had a queen. They only had a very small amount of honey left, but were bringing in pollen and also eating the syrup we put in a couple of days before. There were lots of drones hanging around.

2) The Dolphins were bearding again and there were lots of bees in the air and loads of drones. Phil removed the beard into a flower pot and we looked to see if there was a queen in it. Couldn't see one and when we went back all the bees had gone back into the hive. We didn't disturb the main hive, apart from peeking in the end. They are possibly planning a cast, so we need to keep an eye on them for the next few days. It could also have been that a new queen was off on her maiden flight.

3) We went right through the Lizards. They are madly building on new bars both ends, but otherwise things weren't that good. There was very little worker brood and about 3 times as much drone brood. However the good news was that it looked like a supersedure cell had opened, so they probably also have a new queen. It looked like there might have been another, opened, supersedure cell on another comb too. Jim and I had noticed a possible supersedure cell few weeks ago, but strangely the 2 opened ones we saw on Saturday were either side of the bar we had marked. When I spoke to Jim about this, we were both pretty sure we had marked the correct bar. Did they break down that cell for some reason and make 2 more, or was it unsuccessful? We will never know. They had quite a lot of stores. 

4) The new, caught, swarm in the nucleus box was looking good. Mick made a feeder for them yesterday and fitted it last night. It has wetted granulated sugar in it, on Phil's suggestion. He has found this is a good way to feed the bees at any time of year.

Lots of happy drones around with all these new queens!

This is the periscope entrance of Jim's new hive with perspex front