Sunday 27 May 2012

Moving house (sort of)

All this non droughty weather we've been having has led to a lot of swarms of bees just lately, so all the kit that I've been happily borrowing needed to go back to its rightful owner to resume is rightful position, on standby ....ready to used if a swarm need a new home.
So I needed to switch out all of the borrowed kit and swap in all my own boxes and frames.

Do you remember the little boxes? well I decided they needed to be jollied up a bit...somewhere in my head I have an image of bee hives lined up like pretty coloured beech huts...so some colour had to be introduced.....zesty lime seemed like a good place to start.

So on with the job...

With hive number one I needed to take everything off the existing floor and rebuild from the bottom up...switching out the borrowed brood box and swapping in the new zesty one.  Starting with everything to hand.
.

I stacked all the pieces up and then started searching for the elusive queen....

  

There's plenty of sealed worker cells surrounded by stores of pollen and honey but not a sign of the elusive queen anywhere....


Well anyway things seem healthy enough so I just re-stacked the super box on top and popped on the brand new roof..


Hive number 2 with the brand new swarm in was a little different .... there's no where near as many bees so they don't need as much space - too much might confuse them and faced with too many choices they might not start to use the frames in the best way so I needed to convince them that they didnt really have a whole brood box to play in.  So starting with the mesh floor....


Then adding a new zesty brood box


and simply moving the frames over...seems this hive also has an elusive queen...but they are beginning to draw out some wax cells so it looks like they are preparing the hive to welcome a mated laying queen....

 

This really is only a small swarm - they barely cover 2 frames so I gave them 5  -so they hopefully get the hint that they need to start making wax cells and dropped in a dummy board to reduce the size of the box and popped the lid on...

 

There now - don't they both look smart?


And as soon as the last few have walked out of the nuc box I shall pop it back home.  Then it really must be time for a cuppa...



Saturday 26 May 2012

And then there were two......

Its been roasting in London this week so I was incredibly happy when I managed to get away from the office a little early on Friday afternoon.  Little did I know that it was going to be a fortunate start to a great weekend.


I was quietly enjoying a mug of tea and reading the local paper when I got a text from a friend:


"There's a swarm of bees on a small tree at the end of the driveway at number x on the main road...are any of yours missing?"

Well mine haven't filled their hive yet so the chances of them being so crowded that they felt the need to swarm was pretty unlikely...but when it comes to bees (s)he who collects the swarm gets to keep the swarm.... I've NEVER collected a swarm ...but I know a man who has.  A quick jog across the road to explain the situation and the ghost-busters Swarm Busters swang into action.
They took a minute or three to find (note to self always triple check the house number) but there they were...
So a quick conversation with the householder to check she was happy for us to snip a branch off her tree (she couldn't have looked more relieved) and we suited up (traffic chaos ensued) and set about the job.
In the box.... easy as one, two,snip...
A few scouting bees continued to circle - hopefully they will find their way home and be accepted back into their original hive.  But these girls were coming home with me...
A quick trip to borrow another piece of kit from across the road-  this time a nucleus box, or nuc, and we were ready to home them.  Or we would have been if I'd have had more kit ready ... first I needed to steal some frames from my first hive so they would have something to get started on..
 
Then we rather unceremoniously tipped them in.... well it was nearly tea time and we were getting hungry..
 
And those that didn't fall into the nuc? ..well they just have to find their own way home, most of them walked in...
 

So my plans for a relaxing weekend of quilting in the sunshine appeared to be shot to pieces... well nearly .....'im indoors has rallied to the the rescue and is bravely going to take a very long shopping list for bee hive kit to the apiary tomorrow afternoon so that I can spend tomorrow evening (when I get home from quilting day) making hive number 2.





Thursday 24 May 2012

One tenth of a marathon

I really appreciated my daily walk to and from work this week.  London has sweltered in 26'C + heat for most of this week so the opportunity to start and finish my day in the office with a walk of 2.6 miles through Fulham and Hammersmith was greatly appreciated.... lets face it ..... everywhere looks better in the sunshine....
Even the start of the walk ...getting off the (rather patriotic) tube


I always think it looks like a space ship has landed on this building....


But I soon get past this and head off into the residential parts of Fulham.....how many styles of housing can one borough have?

 

 

 

Sometimes when you least expect to find something interesting at the end of a very ordinary looking road....


There's an odd looking gateway that has to be worthy of further investigation....


That leads to an unexpected oasis of calm ...

 

Before I get to walk past the side doors of buildings full of hope

 




More interesting places to live..

 

 

And landmarks of British broadcasting


The next landmark on the route often greets me with a surprise that the last tide left behind....

 

Sometimes I wonder what it might be like to live on a houseboat......
 

Or I wonder if maybe a simple riverside property would fulfil my dreams

 




When its very hot I'm tempted to stop in here for some "light refreshment" before I reach the office...


But somehow I don't think old father Thames would approve!



Saturday 19 May 2012

Crisis averted?

After all the anxiety of last weekend I was rather surprised at just how calm I felt today as I strolled down the garden to inspect the hive.  This was possibly because I was having a crisis on another front but more of that later........
They'd been building wax so well last week that I'd already decided that I would add more frames to the hive so that if there had been the vaguest chance of the Queen having got out to mate she would soon have more space to lay eggs...... so I took four down the garden with me.
Just as well that I did as soon as I opened the hive and saw all the syrup gone I knew they'd need them - look they are already walking over the fifth frame and starting to draw out the wax there...

 

But what I really wanted to see was proof that the Queen had got out and mated during the few warm days we'd had last week.  All the books I've read seemed to be in agreement that she really needed a warm sunny day, blue skies, minimum of 18'c, and not much wind.  Personally, I was hoping she wasn't such a fussy little minx and had done the deed round the back of the compost heap with the first nice drone she's met. (clearly I'll be giving my own son's very different guidance when the time comes) 
And then I saw them..... you've really got to look carefully...... peer really far into the cell...... can you see them too?


Tiny little eggs... they look like tiny little snips of thread right at the base of the cell.  I'm not going to worry that a few cells have more than one in, she's young and she'll make a few mistakes - hopefully the workers might move them so they each get a cell of their own.
As I kept on looking and watching what they were doing I could see they were busy feeding 3 day old grubs...

 

The grubs hatch at three days old and look like a lovely milky white "C" in the bottom of the cell.  The sight of so many lovely fat white healthy looking grubs made my heart soar.  The workers will feed and tend them for 5 days before packing the cell with "brood food" - a combination of "bee milk" the nursing bees secrete from glands in their heads (hence all the heads poked down into the cells and high protein pollen.  The ones on the left are probably younger than those on the left which are fatter and appear to be floating in the brood food - probably ready to be sealed in.  Because on day 8 (after laying) the grub is sealed into its' wax cell with its final packed lunch of pollen and bee milk and left for a further 13 days to moult and pupate into a new bee...


So it would be really encouraging to find some actual capped cells ....there were only a few but Ta-dah!! 


This is such a good sign -to see there flattish capped cells.....the chances are these are worker bees and therefore she is fully mated and able to keep this colony flourishing, if they were domed cells they would be drone and therefore she wouldn't yet be mated and a colony of boy bees wont last long in this world.

And the girl that's the star of all this excitement..would I get to see her? would she have changed since she strolled up the green cloth and into the hive just three weeks ago?
Oh yes.....isn't she lovely....


No wonder they all turn to face her as she walks past.  She is noticeably longer... not so much bigger, but longer than her workers, particularly her abdomen.  Isn't she lovely?

Happy happy bee keeper - even 'im indoors came and quickly peaked over my shoulder to see her....

So now its all about keeping her happy ..her workers will keep her fed and tended and she will lay eggs - up to 3,000 a day in the height of the season, for the rest of her life.
I added all four frames I brought down the garden, removed the syrup feeder, put the roof back on and walked back to the house with a stupidly big grin on my face.

EDIT:
Those more in the know than me have taken a good look at the picture of "my queen" above, laughed quietly and told me SHE is in fact a drone i.e. a HE.  All I can say is "oooops I'm a beginner" and look at the really good drag costume he is wearing - those 5 workers to his right are clearly convinced by his act and have turned to face him.
This Sunday's inspection means I will be looking a whole lot harder for the real queen
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