I am now a Beekeeper!!

[dickymint]

Bill said:

I've been watching this thread for ages and it looks like we're finally joining the club. Mrs Bill has done the local bee group course, we have a friendly bee buddy and have assembled the hive and (most of) the frames.

Only question is where to site it? Prime spot gets the sun in the morning and dappled shade in the afternoon bit is by the veg patch. It's about 5m from the closest raised bed but swmbo is worried they'll be bothering her when she gardens.

Excellent great to hear As regards the siting near the veg patch 5m should be fine..................

[dickymint]

Bill said:

Thanks, that does make sense, even if it's not as picturesque. It's also up a bit of a hill so preparing it is heavier work!

We're apparently in line for a swarm from the local bee man.

According to my software my No1 hive is in the mood to swarm already


[pic] [/pic]

[dickymint]

Bill said:

There's software??!!?

And an app

[dickymint]

S6PNJ said:

Why is your external humidity almost always 100%? You are either living in a rain forest or somethings not quite right there is it?

Good point! Back a few months ago I was getting a few oddities with the the scales due to the feet of that hive being on swivel pads and not making flat contact with the 4 sensor pads. To overcome this I put the scales upside down onto a flat slab. I checked with the manufacturer and was told that would be fine but it "may" give issues with the exterior humidity sensor. It's not an issue really as ext RH is not used in any of the algorithms used in their software.

What I should have done is put the slab on top of the scales but I was on my own at the time so couldn't manage it due to the weight of the hive and slab. It's on my to do list

[dickymint]

Bill said:

Here are the two options.

By the veg:



In the jungle:

Bill you are blessed with both options

My opinion, especially if South is away from the veg beds, is the top photo. You wont get any problems from behind your hive/s (I say hives as you will end up with at least two unless you give away any splits that will happen!

The biggest enjoyment for me is to be able to wander down and watch my bees any time of day with ease. You will get used to knowing when they're feisty, they will let you know. They will give you a few "bumps" as a warning to keep your distance.

Has your wife been able to get up and close to bees yet? Confidence plays a big part in bee keeping.

[dickymint]

LeadFarmer said:

I don't currently have any knowledge of bees, but this year I'm turning my garden over to plants that attracts pollinators.
I have recently purchased a few different nestboxes for solitary bees, they have inspection chambers to observe them.
For now I've located a couple of them in the wood store on the south facing patio, and I'll be reading up on what I need to do next..

Interesting stuff looking forward to updates

[dickymint]

OK to get bang up to date - both my hives showed no signs of a queen (no eggs, larvae and very little capped brood but plenty of honey etc.) on my final inspection before the winter lockdown. All i could do was wait and make sure they had food in the way of fondant. I took one frame of honey for myself which was my entire harvest for that year - very expensive honey but was amazing.

I spent months not knowing if either hive was viable but at least I could monitor for signs of live via interior temperature and probably more important humidity sensors. It was now a waiting game and was doing my head in

Coming out of winter signs were better as the girls were coming out on sunny days for "cleansing flights" or to take a dump in laymans terms

If you remember we had a spell of really warm and sunny days about 3 weeks ago - bees were loving it and bringing in early pollen which was ver encouraging. So I bit the bullet and planned a quick inspection of the weaker hive with the sole intention of closing it back up if there was any signs of a queen being at home. Here's the video I took. It's a tad lengthy, full of "bad practice" (I make no apology my excuse being it got pretty emotional as you may tell). Bear with it and use the fast forward button if you get bored



And for the beekeepers out there please feel free to criticise and indeed point out my cock ups

[dickymint]

Bloody good scrap yesterday.....................

[dickymint]

CharlesdeGaulle said:

dickymint - any chance you can explain what's happening? I don't really know the relevance of what I'm looking at.

For sure - Probably an old bee (they appear to get darker as they lose their hairs) past her sell by date and being booted out! There has been more of it the past couple of days.............



I thought maybe robber bees from a nearby apiary but I'm told by my mentor not.

[dickymint]

Bill said:

We've got our spot prepared! Neither of the ones I've mentioned so far obvs!

Looks ideal. Which way is South and which way do you approach it?

[dickymint]

Last Sunday I hurriedly looked at every frame of the Flowhive that my software was showing swarm status.
The good news is that the software works.
The bad news is ..... the software works!!

[dickymint]

Jambo85 said:

dickymint said:

Last Sunday I hurriedly looked at every frame of the Flowhive that my software was showing swarm status.
The good news is that the software works.
The bad news is ..... the software works!!

You're a lot further south than me but swarm preps in March seems unlikely. The first one you found I reckoned looked like a supercedure cell (centre of a frame) but the sealed one was more swarm-like in location, but again alone and so early in the year is strange. Do you have a decent number of drones about? I'd be worried about a new queen mating successfully this early.

Do I infer correctly that you squashed the cells and are hoping for the best? I'd give them a bit of laying room, if I'm not wrong you had at least 3-4 frames of solid stores, I'd reduce that to two if that were my colony, and replace with drawn comb. If you're short of spare drawn comb as new beekeepers usually are then the frame nearest the camera could be moved in a bit (it's on the far side of a frame of stores so queen is unlikely to lay in it).

You're spot on with that appraisal

Yes very early for these sort of shenanigans. The fully capped queen cell threw me as my initial thought was the next warm day they'd be off even before it hatched which would probably be a suicide mission as the swarm and queen would surely die with these very cold nights. Possibly it was a supersedure cell but even with the capped drone cells in there it would be touch and go for her to mate and worst case scenario my laying queen gets killed.

With my very limited experience and due to lockdown no realistic chance of getting somebody from my association to pop round at short notice I felt I had to do something and quick. So you inferred correctly I squished the cell. If it were next month (and had the spare hive/nucs to hand) I'd have split them there and then. As regards supersedure. Judging by the strength of the colony and lovely brood pattern, no apparent disease etc. i can't fathom out why they're not happy with her - but bees know best I suppose.
Straight after the video I put a a super on with blank frames in the hope to buy some time - no queen excluder so it's now brood and a half. Also as their fondant was virtually all gone a syrup feeder on top.

Many thanks for the advice on the queen not wanting to pass a frame of honey to get to the outer empty frame to lay i missed that and can rectify next time.
On a positive note this afternoon my software has turned to all green lights and no swarm warning

[dickymint]

Mr Pointy said:

Can't you put in a loft extension for them to expand into or doesn't it work like that?

You are correct that is how it works the question is whether or not to exclude the queen from the loft.

[dickymint]

Jambo85 said:

What software is it and what sensors is it using? I’ve never used any but it certainly interests me!

I know what you mean about nothing being wrong with the queen to our eyes but I’ve blocked what I later determined to be supercedure a couple of times and the queen failed shortly after - they do seem to know! It can be something visible like a missing leg as they emit one of the pheromones which suppresses the workers urge to build cells through their front feet! In perfect supercedure the old queen wouldn’t get the dunt until the new one is laying but it’s a brave move to leave them to it.

I think I would have done the same thing in the circumstances apart from shuffling brood frames a bit to give them more laying room as previously described.

Great to have the season upon us again, finally saw willow with pollen on it here today

I'm using this stuff on two hives. Scales, Hive Heart and a Gateway.................

https://www.beehivemonitoring.com/en/?gclid=Cj0KCQ...

Works a treat but like all data it's open to interpretation. Monitoring weight, temperature and humidity is simple. Monitoring audio/frequency is a relatively new science for "backyard keepers" but it certainly picked up on my swarm cell and related activity well before a visual inspection would of. The jury is out at the moment as it may well be a pain if it throws out false alarms all season!

[dickymint]

Well it's been almost two weeks since I squished the swarm cell and added an extra box to give them space and keep them busy. Here's a snapshot of it's current status according to the monitoring wizardry...........

[pic] [/pic]

All green lights and a nice downward slope of the frequency bars. All good so far touch wood.

Tomorrow I'm going back in and all being well and depending on any physical signs of swarming I'm thinking of pushing my luck.

Hopefully they will have drawn out plenty of new comb on the empty frames I put in.
Remove that box.
Put on the queen excluder and the Flowframe super in the hope they carry on being busy.

This would give me some nice drawn out frames of wax to use in nuc boxes and or swarm traps. Also gives them time to prepare the Flowframe for the first honey flow which is imminent.

This is all wishful thinking and maybe a step too far let's see what tomorrow brings.

I'm going up to my associations new apiary later today - apparently they have "lost" a high number of their full hives over winter!!

[dickymint]

Bill said:

Looks like we might have joined the club! Very early swarm (AIUI) so not sure they'll move well. They've taken ages to enter the hive and were quite angry when collected so we'll see how it goes.

Nice one

I'm trying to get my head around your/their process. Can you talk us through it as it seems like they emptied them outside your hive to make their way in? They seem to be clustering around the entrance which suggests the queen is inside which is good.

[dickymint]

So after putting on that extra box to give them space and try to deter their swarming instincts I took a look to see how things were going. The software was showing all green lights. My plan was to remove that box and replace with the Flow Super with a queen excluder in-between. Question is would they accept it and wax it up or would they reject it and put me back to square one with a crowded swarmy hive? ....................

[dickymint]

Bill said:

We've just had an inspect. Lots of activity on 5 frames, eggs etc and found the queen. She is apparently a Carnolian (?sp) with a hint of a white spot so 1-y-o we think. What a result!

A white spot would indicate a 2021 or a 2016 queen. Last years queen would be blue. Now that's assuming convention is followed but may keepers just mark them with whatever they got.



But yes great result ..... and take more photos/vids

[dickymint]

Here's a shot that shows the FlowFrames through the inspection windows, they seem to have been accepted and are being worked on which is a big plus.
Sometime today I'm going to pull a couple out from the middle to hopefully find some wax being laid.

[dickymint]

Another manic week or so and not a good time to be laid up with Sciatica. Started off with this..........



Then escalated to this............



Then I got lucky for a change.........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttd5FCN3ELs

So all i had to do is get them re-housed ..........



Never a dull moment with Bees