Newsletter June 2005

Shropshire Beekeepers' Association

Newsletter : July/August 2005

You will see from the Committee report elsewhere in this Newsletter that membership of the Association is recorded as 133. A further three members have joined since then. Welcome to them. With so many members now 'on roll' I would welcome an increase in contributions for this Newsletter. So far this year there have only been three articles and three letters (half of those from the same person - thank you Graham) but I am sure that there are many of you who have interesting stories to tell, advice to offer or questions to ask. The next Newsletter is due early in September so please find half an hour during the long summer evenings to pen something for your colleague beekeepers - it will be much appreciated.

This season, perhaps because of the extended period of wet and cold weather in Spring, there seem to have been far fewer swarms than usual in May. I had some luck when an unanticipated swarm (bad beekeeping!) from one of my colonies chose to set up home in an unoccupied hive. In the last two weeks I have discovered two other colonies producing queen cells so have been making preparations to deal with them. All my colonies are in WBCs so sophisticated approaches to swarm management, like using Snelgrove Boards, are very difficult. I therefore go for the simplest techniques available. In the light of this, even though it is quite late in the season to be writing about how to control swarming, I thought it might still be useful to include some basic information about ways of pre-empting the process. What do you do? Write in and tell us!

The final apiary meeting this season is at our own Radbrook Apiary site on Saturday 16th July. As well as providing an opportunity to check on the health and welfare of the colonies there, it is also intended to demonstrate the ways in which members can establish nuclei from their own stocks. Anyone who has just one or two colonies, which would be vulnerable if there were to be a wet autumn and/or winter, might find this a particularly helpful session. Both existing and new members are, as always, very welcome.

There is no apiary outing next month because the major event in the Association's calendar then is the SHREWSBURY FLOWER SHOW on 12th/13th August. There is still time to become involved: as a steward, as an exhibitor or both. All members should have received a schedule for the show under separate cover that gave further details. This year there is a separate schedule of Junior Classes. A schedule for this can be requested from the editor. There is also additional advice below from Keith Newman, the Honey & Wine Stewarding Secretary.

The next Newsletter will be sent out in the first week of September.

Resignations: The Chairman, Ray Green, opened the meeting and thanked everyone for attending. He advised that he had received resignations from the Committee since the last meeting from John Perkins and Chris Perkins.

Association Apiary: Brian Goodwin reported that he had approached the Local Council for a detailed map of the area and the planning proposals currently lodged on the Radbrook site. The College had confirmed that they were prepared to offer the use of the land at the front of the Main Building for relocation of the Apiary but this would not be on a long-term basis and it was felt that a more permanent site should be sought. Brian to contact the developers and investigate other alternatives.

Treasurer's Report: The Bank balances remained the same as at 22 March 2005 - £6,951.40. Membership remained at 133 members. The Chairman advised that he had written to one member who had been in default of his membership fees but to date no reply had been received. The Alliance & Leicester Bank Account application is still being processed.

Correspondence Received:

This year has passed at a tremendous pace. The old saying, "The older you get the quicker time flies" comes to mind! However as I write this, another begging letter, I feel slightly in limbo. The problem is that our Show Committee decided to open some new junior classes to try and create new interest with children up to the age of sixteen. New schedules were circulated to most local schools and other appropriate places. This, it is hoped, will revitalise and bring in some new blood - something we are all aware of and try to address each year. The main Flower Show committee thought this a move in the right direction, and decided to follow with new junior classes themselves.

Great! Something new! The trouble is that until all the entry forms have been processed in the last week of July, it will not be known how many entries there are, how much exhibit space will be required and then, my headache, how many extra Stewards will be required. You have to remember that we have a responsibility to the exhibitors to safeguard their exhibits as best we can, whether it be artwork, confectionery or any other product. As anyone who has stewarded at the Show will tell you, the public has a huge craving for knowledge but some, unfortunately, want to examine the exhibits a little too closely and have to be restrained. No malice is intended but the exhibits need to be protected and an explanation given to the people.

Somehow I suspect that extra stewards will be required this year. Can you help? Please remember for a couple of hours help on either or both days, you can enjoy and soak up the atmosphere of this great premier Show. Not only that, you can come as a working team with your family and they don't have to have a vast knowledge about bees.

I look forward to seeing you all.
Keith Newman (Stewarding Secretary. Tel: 01743 741461)

Most beekeeping tomes are written by enthusiastic amateurs rather than practical beekeepers or experimental scientists. This has resulted in many fallacies being regurgitated often enough to become accepted as the truth when a little thought should raise suspicions.

We see a honeybee colony's peak population often quoted as some 60,000 bees. Others then boost this a bit as their colonies must be bigger so say 70,000 and the extreme goes right up to 100,000 bees. However, if we look at the work of researchers, who are working with a colony as a unit, they need close approximations to the real population level. Thomas D.Seeley, who records his experiments in The Wisdom of the Hive, brings back full colony populations to 35,000 bees. This in upper New York State with Italian strains in multiple brood chambers where we perceive colonies to be much larger than our own! Here is a discrepancy worth pursuing.

There are established methods for counting bees. One is to seal and cyanide the colony then count the corpses, useful in cold conditions to get a snapshot of all that was happening in that colony on that day. Another is to assess numbers on combs from photographs of that comb size with known numbers of bees. The original comb numbers got by knocking out the bees with C02 and counting. With practice and cross checking by knocking out bees and counting, this is a very viable procedure but it requires hives of single comb size. There is a derivation of this technique where a wire grid is used and differing comb sizes can then be accommodated. A labour intensive method is to seal a colony in at night, weigh the total then remove each frame and box, shake free of bees, weigh and rebuild the hive. The total weight of the sealed hive less the weight of its bee-free components rebuilt gives the weight of the bees from which the number of bees can be worked out.

Results from actual counts by E.P.Jeffree in Scotland, at Rothamstead and at the University of Hohenheim in Germany show many colonies peaking at no more than 20,000 bees. In southern England 35,000 bees is a very big colony (from Italian derived bees), while 38,000 bees is given as a top population in Germany.

It is of course possible to achieve a 60 or even 100,000 strong colony using a multi queen set-up but it is a complex bit of manipulation and how many of us are prepared to try it and for what end?

All of us should be a little less ready to take what "the book" says at face value and be prepared to question because there are a number of questions that need to be asked.

From The Four Seasons, magazine of the Galtee Bee Breeding Group
Reprinted in Cornwall BKA's Newletter October 2004 Courtesy of Bees

Ludlow & District BKA: Sun. 17th July: Open Day from 10.30 a.m. at Michael Collier's, Cadbury; Sat 6th. August: 'Extraction & Marketing: Tom Hall, Westhope; Sun. 21st August: visit to Organic Farm: Phil Moore, Hopesay; Sat 3rd. Sept. Honey Show at Craven Arms Community Centre. Further details: Andy Vanderhook Tel: 01299 841379

North Shropshire BKA: Saturday July 16th. Out-apiary afternoon at Pim Hill 2.00 p.m. Details: Mike Harris Tel: 01939 232302

Oswestry BKA: Saturday July 16th at 3.00 p.m. Invitation of Mrs. Tina Welsh, The Maples, Dudleston Heath, Ellsmere. Demonstration and talk. Details from G. Jones Tel: 01691 654448

These notes are more about swarm control than swarm prevention. The factors associated with the latter are well known and include having young queens in the colonies and making sure that the bees always have plenty of space both in the brood and the supers. However, unless you are very lucky, some colonies will prepare to swarm and the notes below (drawn from a variety of sources) suggest ways of dealing with that.

If you are an experienced beekeeper with too many hives to do a regular weekly inspection then prevention using the radical '1st May' method is a possibility. This involves visiting each stock and removing the Queen (preferably storing her nearby in a 5 frame nuc.). Four days later visit each stock again and remove all queen cells except the best open one. This ensures a new vigorous queen each year, hopefully in time for the honey harvest! The nuc. can later be dequeened and reunited with the original colony for extra workers.

The less experienced beekeeper should aim to make regular weekly inspections. As soon as occupied queen cells are found, you should prepare to instigate an artificial 'swarm', the purpose being to create the conditions that a natural swarm creates. The simplest and most commonly described method is first, to move the colony in question about a metre to one side of its original position. A new floor and broodbox is put on the old site. The queen is then located and the frame she is on examined for queen cells, any that are found being removed. This frame, plus the queen, is then placed in the new box on the original site. The remaining spaces are filled with frames of foundation or, preferably, drawn comb. The queen excluder, supers, crown board and roof from the old hive are then added. The flying bees will join the queen so you have effectively created a 'swarm', i.e. the queen is in a new home with all the active foragers.

The 'old' box, now housing young bees, brood and queen cells, should have a frame of foundation added to replace the one taken out and then be closed up. One week later, or before any of the queen cells are due to hatch, this box should be moved to another site in the apiary. Any new flying bees stranded by this move will enter the nearest available hive, i.e. the one containing the original queen. This strengthens that colony and at the same time reduces the likelihood of casts coming out of the old box with a newly hatched queen.

So far, so good. But what if you can't find the queen in the first place. Well, pretend that you have! Put an empty box on the old floor and transfer any food combs and one comb of brood in all stages (but no queen cells) into it. Brush the rest of the brood combs clear of bees into this box, i.e. on the old site. Fill it with as much drawn comb as you have and complete with foundation. Next put on the excluder and then any supers with bees. Finally add the original box of cleared brood comb followed by the roof. These combs will be repopulated very rapidly by the young nurse bees, leaving the queen and the flying bees down below on the new comb. On the next day, put the top box onto a new floor near the original colony and then continue as described before. N.B. You will need to feed this new colony since you have left all the food frames behind with the old queen and her workers.

The same approach can be used to expand the number of colonies in your apiary beyond the minimum. It is more than likely that the colony that was planning to swarm started several queen cells at the same time. Instead of leaving it to the bees to tear down the superfluous ones you can start two or three small nuclei off by distributing the frames around several boxes, making sure that each has a healthy looking queen cell and some frames of food. Additional feeding will also be required until new foragers begin to appear.

[Information in these notes has come from a variety of sources and particularly the Galtee Bee Breeding Group Newsletter Summer 2005 and various articles in BeeCraft by Adrian Waring]