I am now a Beekeeper!!

[Jambo85]

Mobile Chicane said:

Jambo85 said:

Turn7 said:

Mobile Chicane said:

Oil seed rape is bad news for bees. Since this was planted in the fields below my house I have observed a drastic reduction in the number of honey bees in the garden. Literally, 5-10% of their former numbers. Reason being, the seed is treated with neo-nicotinoid pesticides.

This is true, and IIRC, only since Brexit….

I don’t think you’re right there T7, the exemption post Brexit was only for sugar beet if I am not mistaken? Approval is also on the basis that the crop isn’t allowed to flower (in order to prevent transfer to bees via nectar).

MC is your observation over a number of years, or only while OSR is flowering? The reality for most beekeepers is that they absolutely thrive on OSR.

I've lived here for seven years. First five it was barley planted in the fields below. Last two, OSR. The difference is stark in my garden in terms of bees, but yet beekeepers elsewhere in the village - with access to other food plants - report no difference.

Pretty sure neonicotinoids haven’t been used on OSR in the UK within the last two years.

When the OSR is flowering, that may explain the lack of bees in your garden as they will preferentially go for the OSR when it is yielding, it produces abundant nectar even in quite low temperatures. Barley produces none at all.

[Nimby]

Jambo85 said:

Pretty sure neonicotinoids haven’t been used on OSR in the UK within the last two years.

When the OSR is flowering, that may explain the lack of bees in your garden as they will preferentially go for the OSR when it is yielding, it produces abundant nectar even in quite low temperatures. Barley produces none at all.

I agree. Bees will go a long way for OSR in April so if the rest of the village is unaffected you can't blame neonics. Also any harmful effect wouldn't show this early in the season.

[dickymint]

Many thanks for the input guys. Here's an update (snipped from a post I did for my association whattsapp page)

Dated 29/04/2022..........

It's almost a week since my swarm on the Demaree hive so yesterday I broke it down. No sign of the queen (no surprise there) in the bottom brood box. The single frame still has some unhatched brood and covered by nurse bees. Hardly any attempt to draw out the empty frames though which is a shame.

I put the main brood box back down below expecting to find several virgin queens darting around but none that I could see. There was however 4 or 5 fully capped queen cells so decided to pinch all but the best looking one. If I'm lucky the single queen cell is viable and will hatch and mate. If i'm unlucky there are virgin queen/s and they cast swarm the hive into oblivion!!

Also noticed they were back filling the main brood box with nectar and is close to being honey bound. Decided to set it up as double brood as there is still a frame of capped brood in it and obviously plenty of space for the future.

I may well be buying a mated queen soon rather than play the waiting game 🤪

Another 35 minutes of boredom for you

[dickymint]

Update on that hive ^^^ Noticed a sharp drop in weight (1.5Kg) this afternoon! So their must've been a virgin queen that I missed or the capped queen cell I left in there has emerged and buggered off. New queen ordered for delivery this Saturday. I could've reared my own queen from the other hives but that's time lost and I really want to give my Flow Frames a good test this season.

[Bill]

We've had a bit of disappointment. One hive hasn't been thriving and we noticed a couple with deformed wings. Got hold of apiguard but before we got it in place noticed a fair few dead bees outside the entrance.

Open it up and they're clearly not well. Lots of trembling, a few more with deformed wings and another load dead in the bottom. Conclusion from helpful bee bloke is chronic bee paralysis virus.

So we've move the affected hive to separate it from the other (2ft at a time) and done a bush bash to get rid of the most sickly. Plan to do another move tomorrow...

[dickymint]

Bill said:

We've had a bit of disappointment. One hive hasn't been thriving and we noticed a couple with deformed wings. Got hold of apiguard but before we got it in place noticed a fair few dead bees outside the entrance.

Open it up and they're clearly not well. Lots of trembling, a few more with deformed wings and another load dead in the bottom. Conclusion from helpful bee bloke is chronic bee paralysis virus.

So we've move the affected hive to separate it from the other (2ft at a time) and done a bush bash to get rid of the most sickly. Plan to do another move tomorrow...

Sad news Bill. Note though that CBPV and Deformed wing virus are different things. Deformed Wing is usually associated with Varroa but CBBV isn't.

Personally I'd move them as far away as you can straight away and ignore the "3 foot or 3 mile" rule! Lock them in for a couple of days and they will re-orientate.

[Bill]

Yeah, sorry, two viruses at once! Yay...

[dickymint]

Bill said:

Yeah, sorry, two viruses at once! Yay...

Google "K Wing" you could be on a hat trick

Got any pics?

[Bill]

Oh goody! Didn't spot k-wing, and not many with deformed wings.

[Bill]

I thought I had some but video is on the wife's phone.

[Jambo85]

dickymint said:

Update on that hive ^^^ Noticed a sharp drop in weight (1.5Kg) this afternoon! So their must've been a virgin queen that I missed or the capped queen cell I left in there has emerged and buggered off. New queen ordered for delivery this Saturday. I could've reared my own queen from the other hives but that's time lost and I really want to give my Flow Frames a good test this season.

Ah bugger - makes you wonder what happens that we have no idea about on hives without the sensors!!

Have you popped a frame of eggs in to confirm queenless?

[dickymint]

Jambo85 said:

dickymint said:

Update on that hive ^^^ Noticed a sharp drop in weight (1.5Kg) this afternoon! So their must've been a virgin queen that I missed or the capped queen cell I left in there has emerged and buggered off. New queen ordered for delivery this Saturday. I could've reared my own queen from the other hives but that's time lost and I really want to give my Flow Frames a good test this season.

Ah bugger - makes you wonder what happens that we have no idea about on hives without the sensors!!

Have you popped a frame of eggs in to confirm queenless?

No Jambo, like I said I have the resources to do that but opted to re-queen rather than take the long route. I'll inspect again prior to seeing if they look like they'll accept her before releasing her fully. If there are signs of a queen I can always use the new queen to make a quick split from another hive. I lost a hive last year due to it cast swarming itself to oblivion (managed to repopulate with one of the casts later though) and would rather not repeat that with this one.

Playing devils advocate - bees will quite happily make supercedure cells whilst they still have a laying queen so how does adding a frame of eggs/larvae prove a queenless hive?

Re sensors - Yes indeed. Without the scales on this hive there is absolutely no way I would have known about this cast swarm. I was at the hive an hour before the event and again after I saw the data and it was just like nothing had happened!

[Jambo85]

dickymint said:

Jambo85 said:

dickymint said:

Update on that hive ^^^ Noticed a sharp drop in weight (1.5Kg) this afternoon! So their must've been a virgin queen that I missed or the capped queen cell I left in there has emerged and buggered off. New queen ordered for delivery this Saturday. I could've reared my own queen from the other hives but that's time lost and I really want to give my Flow Frames a good test this season.

Ah bugger - makes you wonder what happens that we have no idea about on hives without the sensors!!

Have you popped a frame of eggs in to confirm queenless?

No Jambo, like I said I have the resources to do that but opted to re-queen rather than take the long route. I'll inspect again prior to seeing if they look like they'll accept her before releasing her fully. If there are signs of a queen I can always use the new queen to make a quick split from another hive. I lost a hive last year due to it cast swarming itself to oblivion (managed to repopulate with one of the casts later though) and would rather not repeat that with this one.

Playing devils advocate - bees will quite happily make supercedure cells whilst they still have a laying queen so how does adding a frame of eggs/larvae prove a queenless hive?

Understood - I mean to confirm the hive is queenless rather than to actually allow them to raise one.

Introducing a laying queen is something that is widely accepted to have a fairly low success rate - number one reason for failure is introducing them into hives that are not queenless

Re-reading your question, I suppose you're right, proving queenless is something that is impossible to do with 100% certainty, but proving that they're not queen-right (i.e. that they do pull some emergency cells on the test frame) is usually good enough

If they have a virgin running around they won't accept a strange laying queen and you won't see any eggs.

[dickymint]

Jambo85 said:

dickymint said:

Jambo85 said:

dickymint said:

Update on that hive ^^^ Noticed a sharp drop in weight (1.5Kg) this afternoon! So their must've been a virgin queen that I missed or the capped queen cell I left in there has emerged and buggered off. New queen ordered for delivery this Saturday. I could've reared my own queen from the other hives but that's time lost and I really want to give my Flow Frames a good test this season.

Ah bugger - makes you wonder what happens that we have no idea about on hives without the sensors!!

Have you popped a frame of eggs in to confirm queenless?

No Jambo, like I said I have the resources to do that but opted to re-queen rather than take the long route. I'll inspect again prior to seeing if they look like they'll accept her before releasing her fully. If there are signs of a queen I can always use the new queen to make a quick split from another hive. I lost a hive last year due to it cast swarming itself to oblivion (managed to repopulate with one of the casts later though) and would rather not repeat that with this one.

Playing devils advocate - bees will quite happily make supercedure cells whilst they still have a laying queen so how does adding a frame of eggs/larvae prove a queenless hive?

Understood - I mean to confirm the hive is queenless rather than to actually allow them to raise one.

Introducing a laying queen is something that is widely accepted to have a fairly low success rate - number one reason for failure is introducing them into hives that are not queenless

Re-reading your question, I suppose you're right, proving queenless is something that is impossible to do with 100% certainty, but proving that they're not queen-right (i.e. that they do pull some emergency cells on the test frame) is usually good enough

If they have a virgin running around they won't accept a strange laying queen and you won't see any eggs.

Yeh we're on the same hymn sheet. The plan is for a thorough check for queen then judge their reaction before deciding to leave her in there (still caged of course). It's all new to me so just another learning curve.

What is intriguing me is being able to look at the audio data in real-time after I put the lid on

[dickymint]

New queen introduced yesterday to the failed Demaree hive...............

[Bill]

Well that's been a torrid few hours!

We opened our diseased hive and found them looking much happier after the bush bash, but the queen was dead in the bottom. So closed it up while we looked at the other.

We've been distracted so it's been a while since we had a proper look but found the queen and a couple of queen cells in the super. Then in the brood box we found another 15+ cells! So we closed up and phoned (well, whatsapped...) a friend!

Upshot is we moved the queen and 6 frames into a nuc, left two good queen cells in the original hive and moved a frame with 2 queen cells (one hatching as we moved it - apparently not ideal ) into the diseased hive. (Killing all the other queens...)

Could do with a gin now!

[dickymint]

Bill said:

Well that's been a torrid few hours!

We opened our diseased hive and found them looking much happier after the bush bash, but the queen was dead in the bottom. So closed it up while we looked at the other.

We've been distracted so it's been a while since we had a proper look but found the queen and a couple of queen cells in the super. Then in the brood box we found another 15+ cells! So we closed up and phoned (well, whatsapped...) a friend!

Upshot is we moved the queen and 6 frames into a nuc, left two good queen cells in the original hive and moved a frame with 2 queen cells (one hatching as we moved it!) into the diseased hive. (Killing all the other queens...)

Could do with a gin now!

Spot on i'll drink to that well played

[Bill]

Cheers! Unfortunate lack of tonic in the house, so I've had to have a beer. #1stworldproblems

[Turn7]

dickymint said:

New queen introduced yesterday to the failed Demaree hive...............

Whats actually happening here Dicky ? Are they trying to investigate/kill/feed the new Queen ?

[dickymint]

Turn7 said:

dickymint said:

New queen introduced yesterday to the failed Demaree hive...............

Whats actually happening here Dicky ? Are they trying to investigate/kill/feed the new Queen ?

Either one is an option. Re-queening a hive is fraught with difficulty. If there is a queen (either original or new virgin queen) the colony will not accept another and will kill her. It is not easy to know if a hive is totally queenless or not so keepers introduce a new queen in a cage as in the video. Sometimes it's blatantly obvious that the bees want to kill her as they "ball" her and try and sting her, other times (as in my case I think) they will react by trying to feed her through the cage.

With that in mind it's risky (she cost me 35 quid) to just pop a queen into a hive to find out so these cages are blocked up with sugar fondant which the bees have to eat their way through to release the queen - this delays her escape by which time the colony has gotten used to her pheromones and accepts her.

Hopefully i have science on my side using internal hive sensors that give me, in realtime, audio data as to what's going on which so far is looking good.......