Starvation

This morning I went and checked on the bees.  I hefted the hives - this means getting hold of one end and slightly lifting the hive to feel how heavy it is.  Heavy is good it means food.  They both felt heavy the
Garden hive was heavier than the Temple hive.  I took the roof off the Garden hive and all the sugar fondant I gave them before Christmas had gone.  The insulation I put in the roof had fallen out on top of the crown board so I removed all of it, I'm not sure insulation is really necessary.   I gave the Garden hive another piece of fondant and closed it up.  The Temple hive hadn't really touched their fondant and the insulation I put in that hive had also fallen out so I removed it completely and checked the fondant.  It still felt soft on the underside where the bees were feeding so I left it with them.  I will check on the bees every two weeks now to see if they need more fondant.  Starvation is a real risk from now on as the weather gets warmer and the queen may start laying eggs.  Since there are no flowers yet for the bees to forage they are completely dependent on their winter stores until March.

Lecture by the seasonal bee inspector

Last night the warleambees had a lecture by the seasonal bee inspector Julian Routh. His lecture was very useful. Telling us about notifiable diseases like Americam foul brood and how to recognise them. He also was encouraging us to register our apiaries with Beebase which is a database of beekeepers run by FERA (part of DEFERA). It was a really interesting meeting.

Enough of your beeswax: Beekeeping Basic Assessment

http://www.britishbee.org.uk/examinations_and_assessments.php

Beekeeping Basic Assessment

This winter some of us fledgling beekeepers are getting together to work through the syllabus for the basic assessment (equivalent of a driving test for beekeepers).  You can take the test once you have kept bees for a whole year.  It is an oral test with some practical elements for instance you may have to demonstrate that you know how to light a smoker or make a frame for a beehive.

It has been fun getting together and trying to remind ourselves of all we learnt last year.  We are led by Tim who tries to keep us on schedule but often we digress and start chatting and telling anecdotes about how we got on this year.

The thing that really puts me off doing the basic assessment is that you have to do the test infront of an audience.  I'm not very good with audiences, I can be quite good at doing things if no one is watching!

Treating for Varroa

Beehives in the snow and Giles with all the stuff.  This was
just before Christmas and we needed to treat the bees for the
Varroa mite by sprinkling them with a solution of Oxalic acid.
Oxalic acid burns the mouthparts of the mites so that they cannot cling on to the bees.  The first hive we treated was the one on the right hand side - we have named this the garden hive.  These bees were very quiet and didn't make much fuss.  We put some icing sugar fondant on the crown board as an extra feed and shut them up again. 

The hive on the left we have named the Temple hive - this is the hive that swarmed a second time in June and then went to the heather and made 10lbs of heather honey.  when we opened up this hive they started to come up out of the frames and fly around some of them landed in the snow and couldn't get up again.  I tried to hurry up but just knocked over my oxalic acid bottles in the snow and only just had enough to treat the hive.  I shut them up as quickly as I could but alot of them had got out and landed in the snow.  They also got some fondant for extra winter feed.   I didn't realise at the time that if I had picked up the bees and warmed them in my hand I could have thrown them back into the air and perhaps saved a few but at the time I didn't realise this.   I'm not sure whether I'll be treating with Oxalic acid next year.