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.

New comb in The Nectan hive

New comb through the observation window

The colony we hived 3½ weeks ago have built 10 lovely straight combs. We haven't disturbed them yet to take a proper look, but it looks good through the observation window.

Lovely new white comb

When they build new comb it is lovely and white. The reason it gets darker, over time, is mostly because of the propolis they apply.

Candles 17th May 2014

I have finally got round to rendering some wax and making my first 2 candles.
The one thing you do get more of with a Top Bar Hive is wax!

The small round candle

The 2 candles

Gives a very gentle light

The smell is heavenly

Atlantic Coast Friends of the Bees meeting Sunday 11th May 2014

We had a very good meeting here on Sunday. Nine of us gathered for tea and a lively chat in our kitchen before visiting our 2 hives. The weather wasn't ideal, but we were able to look in the ends and through the observation windows. Our own swarm, we caught 2 weeks ago, is settling in well and building comb. We have named them The Nectans. The original hive, The Dolphins is thriving and seemingly still full of bees.

We went back to the kitchen to look at some pictures of the swarm and of us processing some excess, overwintered  honey.

We discussed some of the newer innovations we are experimenting with, such as the periscope entrances, deep litter floors and the application of shellac to the inside walls. We also looked at the fruit press we have been using to extract honey and tasted the result!!!

We are hoping that our next meeting will be in October, with Phil, after the course he is running at Yarner. 

Phil is running 2 courses here this year - 6th-8th June and 10th-12th October.