Count me in please
Eric
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________________________________
From: oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf
of K T <kft108@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2022 5:52:33 AM
To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [oxnatbees] Re: oxnatbees Digest V6 #102
Hello
I'd like to attend on the 25th June. I'm also learning in the background with
no hives yet.
Best wishes
Kausar
On Thu, 26 May 2022, 02:05 FreeLists Mailing List Manager,
<ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
oxnatbees Digest Wed, 25 May 2022 Volume: 06 Issue: 102
In This Issue:
[oxnatbees] Re: Next OxNatBees meeting - 25th June 2022
[oxnatbees] Re: Next OxNatBees meeting - 25th June 2022
[oxnatbees] Re: Next OxNatBees meeting - 25th June 2022
[oxnatbees] Re: Next OxNatBees meeting - 25th June 2022
[oxnatbees] The 'why' bit.. Re: Occupied Warre - free to a g
[oxnatbees] Re: Strange goings on?
[oxnatbees] Re: Next OxNatBees meeting - 25th June 2022
[oxnatbees] FarmEd Ecological Beekeeping Day
[oxnatbees] Part 2 of the Dee Bee swarm saga!
[oxnatbees] Part 2 of the Dee Bee swarm saga!
[oxnatbees] Re: Part 2 of the Dee Bee swarm saga!
[oxnatbees] Re: Part 2 of the Dee Bee swarm saga!
[oxnatbees] Re: unexplained swarming
[oxnatbees] Re: Part 2 of the Dee Bee swarm saga!
[oxnatbees] Re: unexplained swarming
[oxnatbees] Re: unexplained swarming
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Robin Willis"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
("willisrobin69")
Subject: [oxnatbees] Re: Next OxNatBees meeting - 25th June 2022
Date: Wed, 25 May 2022 07:34:53 +0100
Hi Paul
I sit in the background learning all I can as I don’t currently have bees. But
hope to make it to the gathering at Gareth’s apiary. It would be interesting to
learn all I can about Warre hives.
Regards
Robin K Willis
0782 507 6863
On 23 May 2022, at 2:50 pm, Oxnatbees
<oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Following the excellently excessive tea drinking and bee bothering binge at
Jane's last weekend, the next meeting will be held at Gareth's apiary, where
we can benefit from his 40+yrs of keeping bees, and see his hives which
include many styles of customised Warres, Einraumbeutes, a Freedom Hive, and
various others including experimental one-offs.
Date: 25th June 2022
Location: Gareth John's apiary near Burford, West Oxfordshire
Details will be fine tuned and circulated nearer the time - this is just
advance warning so you can plonk it in your diary.
Paul
Hi Paul
I sit in the background learning all I can as I don’t currently have bees.
But hope to make it to the gathering at Gareth’s apiary. It would be
interesting to learn all I can about Warre hives.
Regards
Robin K Willis
0782 507 6863
On 23 May 2022, at 2:50 pm, Oxnatbees
<oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Following the excellently excessive tea drinking and bee bothering binge
at Jane's last weekend, the next meeting will be held at Gareth's apiary,
where we can benefit from his 40+yrs of keeping bees, and see his hives
which include many styles of customised Warres, Einraumbeutes, a Freedom
Hive, and various others including experimental one-offs.
*Date:* 25th June 2022
*Location:* Gareth John's apiary near Burford, West Oxfordshire
Details will be fine tuned and circulated nearer the time - this is just
advance warning so you can plonk it in your diary.
Paul
On May 25, 2022, at 7:34 AM, Robin Willis ("willisrobin69")
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi Paul
I sit in the background learning all I can as I don’t currently have bees.
But hope to make it to the gathering at Gareth’s apiary. It would be
interesting to learn all I can about Warre hives.
Regards
Robin K Willis
0782 507 6863
On 23 May 2022, at 2:50 pm, Oxnatbees
<oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Following the excellently excessive tea drinking and bee bothering binge at
Jane's last weekend, the next meeting will be held at Gareth's apiary, where
we can benefit from his 40+yrs of keeping bees, and see his hives which
include many styles of customised Warres, Einraumbeutes, a Freedom Hive, and
various others including experimental one-offs.
Date: 25th June 2022
Location: Gareth John's apiary near Burford, West Oxfordshire
Details will be fine tuned and circulated nearer the time - this is just
advance warning so you can plonk it in your diary.
Paul
On 25 May 2022, at 07:40, Helen Hitchman
<hitchman24@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:hitchman24@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
I will be there, looking forward to it
On Wed, 25 May 2022, 07:34 Robin Willis,
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi Paul
I sit in the background learning all I can as I don’t currently have bees.
But hope to make it to the gathering at Gareth’s apiary. It would be
interesting to learn all I can about Warre hives.
Regards
Robin K Willis
0782 507 6863
On 23 May 2022, at 2:50 pm, Oxnatbees
<oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Following the excellently excessive tea drinking and bee bothering binge at
Jane's last weekend, the next meeting will be held at Gareth's apiary,
where we can benefit from his 40+yrs of keeping bees, and see his hives
which include many styles of customised Warres, Einraumbeutes, a Freedom
Hive, and various others including experimental one-offs.
Date: 25th June 2022
Location: Gareth John's apiary near Burford, West Oxfordshire
Details will be fine tuned and circulated nearer the time - this is just
advance warning so you can plonk it in your diary.
Paul
Hugo's sister would like to donate her Warre hive complete with bees, to
an OxNatBees member. See details below.
If you are interested please *respond by 19:00 on Thursday 26th May* providing
contact details and *why *you'd like the hive, to
oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>
The donor will decide upon the recipient.
*Hive details:*
- Warre, with 4 boxes, 2 full of comb, 3rd nearly complete, 4th full
of bees today. See photos.
- All have windows with polystyrene insulation
- Hive is on a solid floor (no mesh, no stand)
- Location: Oxford
- Reason for donating: they were inherited about a year ago and she
doesn't have the time to spend on 'looking after' them and would like to
use the space for other things.
- The bees were originally a local swarm and have not been treated for
many years. They've been very well behaved in the short time she has had
them (about a year since she inherited them).
Paul
ʻ(~G�¦)àm����ݱ硊Èb�ë0†'!Šw%�צj|�·)^��ܺËhš+ uf���ÿ)ëj�›zë^����睢a���ڝ�ڮ*.�‹az»"�Énv)à{ ^®)��֥¢w����ü6{��¶ n���Ûbèq«b¢ Æj���š!�û
On Saturday at the Dee Bee tea we had a lovely swarm go into our
neighbours garden. After many attempts we very sensibly decided that the
swarm was not possible to reach. My neighbour Martin was away when we had a
go, but I showed him the swarm on the Sunday. He was very keen to put up
some tower scaffolding but we persuaded him that it really was not worth it
and also tricky to get at it. We both have been watching them in the hope
that we would see them fly off to an easier place. Last night I noticed a
very tall ladder leaning against the very slender tree with the swarm in it
but decided to ignore it. I really did not want Martin ( 75 years old)
going up it!
This morning the doorbell rang very early and to my absolute surprise and
joy was Martin plus the swarm! He had been going up and down the ladder
since dawn, cutting off a side branch one at a time and then letting them
settle. How he managed to carry down the branch from a very high ladder all
by himself…he had used a butterfly net as a bee veil. It was a wonderful
sight to see!
I did a bit more trimming and shook them into a skep, the bees were
delighted to have a dark cosy place, and I have never seen such a quick
gathering in. After advice from Paul I decided to put them in the queenless
TBH straightaway. I used a leaderboard as a divider and they have separate
entrances on different sides of the TBH. No mad frenzy or fighting and so
hopefully it works and they are not too exhausted.
Martin is a gentle soul and would love a hive to watch over. He has
recently lost his beloved cat William, who was his only companion. If
anyone has an old hive they don’t want, any shape, sort or condition we
would love to take it on as a project with him. He is extremely practical
so could make do and mend! His garden is a wild oasis and I think he has
shown that he loves bees and is even maybe a bee whisperer!
Cheers Jane
On Saturday at the Dee Bee tea we had a lovely swarm go into our
neighbours garden. After many attempts we very sensibly decided that the
swarm was not possible to reach. My neighbour Martin was away when we had a
go, but I showed him the swarm on the Sunday. He was very keen to put up
some tower scaffolding but we persuaded him that it really was not worth it
and also tricky to get at it. We both have been watching them in the hope
that we would see them fly off to an easier place. Last night I noticed a
very tall ladder leaning against the very slender tree with the swarm in it
but decided to ignore it. I really did not want Martin ( 75 years old)
going up it!
This morning the doorbell rang very early and to my absolute surprise and
joy was Martin plus the swarm! He had been going up and down the ladder
since dawn, cutting off a side branch one at a time and then letting them
settle. How he managed to carry down the branch from a very high ladder all
by himself…he had used a butterfly net as a bee veil. It was a wonderful
sight to see!
I did a bit more trimming and shook them into a skep, the bees were
delighted to have a dark cosy place, and I have never seen such a quick
gathering in. After advice from Paul I decided to put them in the queenless
TBH straightaway. I used a leaderboard as a divider and they have separate
entrances on different sides of the TBH. No mad frenzy or fighting and so
hopefully it works and they are not too exhausted.
Martin is a gentle soul and would love a hive to watch over. He has
recently lost his beloved cat William, who was his only companion. If
anyone has an old hive they don’t want, any shape, sort or condition we
would love to take it on as a project with him. He is extremely practical
so could make do and mend! His garden is a wild oasis and I think he has
shown that he loves bees and is even maybe a bee whisperer!
Cheers Jane
On 25 May 2022, at 2:48 PM, Barbara Elizabeth Robinson
<liz20swan@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:liz20swan@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Dear Jane
We attended your lovely tea/bee party on Saturday and therefore familiar with
events!
I have quite a few ancient national brood and super boxes plus a roof and
can donate a brand new floor from Thornes which just needs putting together.
The boxes and roof were rescued from last year's 5 Nov bonfire. Very old Very
much smelling of honey/propolis but reasonably sound and sturdy. No bars or
frames tho - I use Warres.
If you think these will do I can bring them over.
Best wishes,
Liz Robinson
On Wed, May 25, 2022, 19:27 Jane denby
<dmarc-noreply-outsider@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply-outsider@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
wrote:
On Saturday at the Dee Bee tea we had a lovely swarm go into our neighbours
garden. After many attempts we very sensibly decided that the swarm was not
possible to reach. My neighbour Martin was away when we had a go, but I
showed him the swarm on the Sunday. He was very keen to put up some tower
scaffolding but we persuaded him that it really was not worth it and also
tricky to get at it. We both have been watching them in the hope that we
would see them fly off to an easier place. Last night I noticed a very tall
ladder leaning against the very slender tree with the swarm in it but
decided to ignore it. I really did not want Martin ( 75 years old) going up
it!
This morning the doorbell rang very early and to my absolute surprise and
joy was Martin plus the swarm! He had been going up and down the ladder
since dawn, cutting off a side branch one at a time and then letting them
settle. How he managed to carry down the branch from a very high ladder all
by himself…he had used a butterfly net as a bee veil. It was a wonderful
sight to see!
I did a bit more trimming and shook them into a skep, the bees were
delighted to have a dark cosy place, and I have never seen such a quick
gathering in. After advice from Paul I decided to put them in the queenless
TBH straightaway. I used a leaderboard as a divider and they have separate
entrances on different sides of the TBH. No mad frenzy or fighting and so
hopefully it works and they are not too exhausted.
Martin is a gentle soul and would love a hive to watch over. He has recently
lost his beloved cat William, who was his only companion. If anyone has an
old hive they don’t want, any shape, sort or condition we would love to take
it on as a project with him. He is extremely practical so could make do and
mend! His garden is a wild oasis and I think he has shown that he loves bees
and is even maybe a bee whisperer!
Cheers Jane
“by 'run them in', do you mean literally dump the second cast into the hiveI mean place a board with a cloth over it in front of the hive and tip the
where the first are, or something a bit more subtle?”
On 25 May 2022, at 22:20, rich tetlowcan think of, & there are probably many more. i know a lot of you guys' advice
<rich.tet@xxxxxxx<mailto:rich.tet@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
thanks yet again! i should just ask you guys every time i get stuck on
something, shouldn't i? trouble is, theres so much of it, & i'm often not
sure whats important & what i'm just over thinking.
anyway, thats about the most useful thing about varroa i've ever heard. one
of my books has some tables of exactly what different levels of daily/weekly
mite drop mean for the colony, which i shall now feel much happier about
ignoring.
by the by, my latest issue of BBKA news has just arrived, with a short
article about varroa resistant bees that someone has just spent decades
breeding, including the observation that 'honey bees of all types express it
(VSH) at some level'. not the impression i'd been under before!
if i'd thought of it, i'd have definitely merged those casts. by 'run them
in', do you mean literally dump the second cast into the hive where the first
are, or something a bit more subtle? also, would this be ok with casts from
different hives too? sort of assuming ones from the same hive still smelll
the same & accept each other for a bit as a result...
its been 13 days since i hived mine now, & i'm torn! i didn't want 2 extra
colonies just now, but i'd love to see how they get on now they're here. the
first one just looks like a normal, bustling hive, second is a bit
quieter...& the parent colony has gone quite quiet too, i guess theres a
chance they could lose, or have lost, their new queen since i saw her. i'm
also thinking i've a fair chance of more swarms, casts & possible princess
losses later this year, & maybe i'll leave this lot for now, see how they do
& merge them with another weaker colony later in the year if applicable. does
that sound sensible?
.
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 10:49 AM
From: "Gareth John" <gj.garethjohn@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:gj.garethjohn@xxxxxxxxx>>
To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [oxnatbees] Re: unexplained swarming
I have read that if you merge 2 casts in the evening it is straightforward -
by choosing bad flying weather you force the bees to choose the best queen
themselves.
I invariably merge small (and even not so small) casts. Simply run the second
cast into the hive which contains the first cast. I do this for up to 10 days
after the first cast was hived and have never seen a problem. I would
hesitate with a prime swarms as they have a much greater sense of identity.
The point about mites is exactly as Paul says. You are looking for evidence
of a dynamic balance. A decade or more ago I spent many hours counting mite
fall. I learnt two things: 1) it is variable, going up and down about an
average (indicating a stable balance) and 2) when mite numbers do take off,
because the balance has been lost, the increase is dramatic. One could be
seeing first hand the effect of exponential population growth, or it could be
because the bees are having a clear out. In the latter case numbers begin to
fall again. In the former, not. Ultimately there is only one metric that
counts and that is colony survival. Accepting this is the point at one gives
up treating and gives up counting.
Gareth
Sent from my iPad
On 24 May 2022, at 09:46, Oxnatbees
<oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
I would consider merging that 3-tennis-ball sized cast with its parent colony
on a day with poor flying weather. That's because I find really small casts
often struggle and fail, and you have Langstroths which are much bigger than
my hives and need more bees to keep warm (especially with open mesh floors).
I have read that if you merge 2 casts in the evening it is straightforward -
by choosing bad flying weather you force the bees to choose the best queen
themselves.
Gareth taught me that there's no threshold above which mite drop is a
"problem", the question is does it suddenly increase which signals it is out
of control. So let's say you see 5 / day or 35 / week. That's not great, but
if it's always 30-40/week they are adapting and controlling the mites. After
a couple of years it seems to drop to much lower levels. But the bottom line
is do they survive without treatment? Making mite counting somewhat obsessive
and unproductive, although it's educational in your early years.
Paul
On Mon, 23 May 2022 at 22:48, rich tetlow
<rich.tet@xxxxxxx<mailto:rich.tet@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
thanks all!
thanks gareth for the mating swarms info, that explains some of my
bees'recent goings on to perfection, specially if a princess or 2 has gone
off & then not made it back. i did spot a very nippy young queen in the
first hive that swarmed, had about 2 seconds to go, i think thats a....,
then she was off buzzing round my head. at which point i stopped that
inspection, having realised there was nothing i could possibly find that i
was going to be able to do anything useful about.
my thought with the one queen cell was, if i leave 2, current form suggests
i might get another cast, which might again ignore my bait hives & go off to
bother the neighbours. i figured it'd be quite bad luck to not get a viable
queen from either that cell or any of the ones i moved out, & if only one
succeeds i've left the 2 colonies next to each other so i can just recombine
them. i'm quite happy if they stay as one colony, & i daresay if they have
strong feelings to the contrary they'll try again!
i did read somewhere about this unhelpful practice of resealing queen cells,
so i gave the one i left a little gentle poke on the end with the hive tool,
& it seemed solid. though as always, i'm only guessing how much force you'd
need to dislodge a resealed end without damaging a full cell...
good to have a size benchmark for swarms too. i think my second cast
probably wasn't much over 3 tennis balls' worth, so it'll be interesting to
see how they do. up to now i've resisted merging colonies unless one of
them had lost its queen. would you kill one of the queens yourself, or leave
them to fight it out?
i'm aware i'm opening my colonies much less than conventional beekeeping
recommends, & often having to guess whats going on within as a result. if i
was living my best life i'd probably do a lot more looking in for a year or
2 just so i had a sense of what different behaviours meant, prior to leaving
well alone in the future. to be honest, it is sometimes a bit harrowing
going through them though. the biggest one, & occasionally one of the
others, tend to ignore the frame spacings & just build straight from one
super down into the next, so the process of getting frames out involves
ripping the tops off a load of drone brood. i'm always astonished by how
well the bees put up with this, but i still feel bad about it. i had
wondered if going in more often would discourage them from joining frames
top to bottom, but not enough to actually try it.
i think we're done with swarming for the moment. yesterday was very warm,
still, overcast & humid, which i understand is quite swarm inducing weather.
all my colonies were acting like they wanted to swarm, even the ones i know
for a fact haven't started making queen cells yet, but none of them actually
did it. my lady, lou, was wondering whether a hive might swarm with a
princess from an adjacent hive? ie where i've moved all my queen cells to a
new box next door, the bees might still consider themselves one colony?
lynne, i think you're probably right, with the addition that most beekeepers
are making their interventions with the intention of getting more honey
rather than helping the bees to thrive. i abandoned that approach before i'd
really started, because i'm not ruthless enough, & i do think we modern
western humans are doing well enough at the moment that we don't need to
define our relationships with everything else by how much profit we can
wring out of it. i do want honey acquisition to be part of the equation, &
i'm not really in a position to eschew all though of profit & just help the
bees, especially if they're going to keep multiplying at their current rate,
but currently my more important issue is, i don't have sensible, locally
adapted bees that can be trusted to know how to behave. i've got buckfasts,
which might easily keep making casts all year in a way that might work well
if they were in italy, & have never had any need to sort out their own
varroa, to name 2 things i
so, thats my feeling on low intervention at the moment; its a journey i'm on
rather than a destination i can go straight to. & thanks again to everyone
for all the many useful bits of advice on what bees will naturally do, what
their actions might mean, etc. all helping me get there quicker!
cheers
rich
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 11:20 AM
From: "Oxnatbees" <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>>
To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [oxnatbees] Re: unexplained swarming
Hi Rich
To add to Gareth and Pauly replies, I can relate to your desire to take
action here. I know we all like to know what's going on and to reduce what
we see as a "problem" with our bees. A very natural human perspective.
My personal philosophy is that the key thing about low-intervention, more
natural, beekeeping is to try not to interfere with the bees' natural
behaviours and processes, or only as little as possible.
It is a great human trait to want to understand and "help", but we rarely
can really do so, mostly our actions result in us tending to "interfere" and
try to control. Our understanding is necessarily limited as we are not bees
and their 30 million years of evolution has produced lots of epigenetics,
mechanisms and behaviours tuned to things of which we are only vaguely or
not even aware.
For me, enabling a colony to thrive is really best done by by providing a
suitable environment then largely standing back, so they can pursue their
own needs, like making their own choice of which is the healthiest
best-placed princess to take over (not something we can determine).
So even if there are 12 queen cells left, following natural beekeeping
principles rather than conventional ones, I would not remove any. I've
often seen a prime followed by one or two casts, the greatest number of
swarms I've seen from one hive is 4, others may have seen more, but that was
notably unusual. The multiple queen cells are insurance, the bees do not
allow all princesses to successfully hatch and take a cast, they control it
and will determine the end point for themselves given the balance of their
competing drivers.
Of course, in taking this approach things can still go wrong, princesses may
not mate successfully, may prove defective down the line, or may be lost,
but the risk probability only goes up when we don't leave it to the bees and
try to "help" by limiting their choices
I always try to remind myself to relax and ask if my taking action is really
going to be helping anything or just disrupt. I find the drive to "do
something" while coming from a positive place is often more about making me
"feel" like I'm helping while really I'm not.
For me, being a low intervention beekeepers means trying to resist the
temptation of being all too human!
Lynne
On Sun, 22 May 2022, 09:57 Oxnatbees,
<oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Rich,
some similarities with this:
yesterday we inspected one of the hives at Jane's to determine if something
was wrong with it. It is a swarm from one of her hives which has been
grumpy ever since she hived it 14 days before. Every comb - about 9, not
full size yet - was being used for hone / nectar / pollen but there was a
very noticeable absence of brood. In other words, not queen-right. Maybe
she disappeared on a mating flight.
Previous to that, the hive it came from had tried to swarm several times
but gone back in to the hive. This is characteristic of a colony that is
trying to swarm, but the queen can't fly. They eventually swarmed after a
few days, maybe with a princess, who has now died. The colony should be
savable by merging with another swarm or colony, or possibly by giving it
combs of brood from another colony (though Gareth has previously said that
needs to be repeated a few times and just weakens the donor colony).
Generally speaking you are opening your hives more than I would, but I
opened mine a fair bit in my first 2 years and the upside was, it taught me
a lot. And as you have framed hives it is less disruptive than opening
TBHs. But, you will probably find their temper is more relaxed if you open
them less.
I think most beekeepers don't remove ALL extra queen cells because there is
a reasonable chance (15%) that a given princess will not be successful on
her mating flight, so best to leave 1 or 2 spare heirs in the hive if you
do decide to remove or kill some.
If you catch a swarm which is just 3 tennis balls in size, that's too small
to be viable - very high risk of dying after a few months - merge it into
another colony, ideally the one it came from. Luckily your small one
returned to the hive.
Paul
On Sat, 21 May 2022 at 23:19, rich tetlow
<rich.tet@xxxxxxx<mailto:rich.tet@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
just wondering if anyone can suggest a reason for a recent behaviour of
one of my hives. i've already had one lot swarm out, missed the prime
swarm then had 2 biggish casts, which i caught. a few days ago the next
biggest hive issued a swarm, i'd say about football size. they sat in a
tree for about an hour, then just as i was going to get them picked
themselves up & disappeared into the distance. so quite sprightly, &
purposeful, given the last few have emerged & then hung around for a day
checking out my bait hives. to my shame, i don't actually know if this was
a prime swarm, or if i missed that & it was a very big cast. i suspect the
latter because i immediately looked through the hive, finding about a
dozen sealed queen cells, one in the act of hatching & another with a hole
in the side- ie they'd clearly been there for a bit, & one but not all had
been killed, presumably by another queen. although we didn't see any
hatched queen cells.
anyway, i moved all the frames with queen cells on except one, along with
their bees, into a new brood box. not sure if this is standard practice,
but i've about had enough of casts this year & figured the foragers would
mostly go home, the young bees would stay & rear the princesses & other
brood, & the new colony wouldn't have anywhere near enough bees to swarm
so the princesses would have to sort it out amongst themselves.
the new colony, next to the first, has stayed very quiet, the old one
carried on as before, then a few days later they swarmed again. got a
front seat view because i was working in the greenhouse right next to
them, it was only a little swarm- maybe 3 tennis balls' worth- & they went
& sat on a post about 20 yards away, on top of which i then put a
cardboard box. they immediately started walking up into it, so i went away
for half an hour, but when i came back the weight of bees had dislodged
the box & there was a lot of flying about again. i wedged it back a bit
more firmly, noticing in the process that they'd secreted a lot of wax
scales in their brief stay on the post, & tried again. when i got back
this time the box was empty, & my observation in the interim was, they'd
all gone back to the hive, with a lot trying to rejoin the new brood box
initially, then by the end of the day everyone back in the old hive.
slightly reluctantly i disturbed them again the next day, thinking maybe
there was a queen or princess we'd missed, & expecting the queen cell to
be either hatched or torn down, but no, we had a good thorough look this
time & could find no queen, or princess, & the cell still intact. we did,
embarrassingly, find another one we'd missed previously, which i moved
across to the new box with the rest.
so, this is the second time this year i've had a swarm come out, sit for a
bit then go back in. first time i thought their queen had suffered some
accident, but i thought that was a bit tenuous then, & i refuse to believe
its happened twice. i wonder if they sometimes follow a princess out when
shes off on a mating flight? it occurs to me as well that princesses must
surely do a bit of hanging around outside before they go off or they'd be
very hard put to find their way back...
anyway, seems like all i can do with this hive currently is leave it
alone. if they swarm they swarm, & if they don't have a laying queen in a
month or so i'll join them to the new colony, assuming one of their queens
makes it. but the trouble with being all hands off is, i don't know whats
actually happened & am basically guessing, which is why i wondered if
anyone else could shed any light?
“by 'run them in', do you mean literally dump the second cast into the
hive where the first are, or something a bit more subtle?”
I mean place a board with a cloth over it in front of the hive and tip the
swarm onto the board in exactly the same way as one would with any swarm.
The only difference is that the hive already has a swarm in it rather than
being empty. Do NOT just dump the bees in. The second swarm needs to go
through the procedure of gaining entry via the entrance so as to acquire
permission to be in the hive.
EVERYTHING with bees is subtle!
Gareth
________________
Gareth John
On 25 May 2022, at 22:20, rich tetlow
<rich.tet@xxxxxxx<mailto:rich.tet@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
thanks yet again! i should just ask you guys every time i get stuck on
something, shouldn't i? trouble is, theres so much of it, & i'm often not
sure whats important & what i'm just over thinking.
anyway, thats about the most useful thing about varroa i've ever heard.
one of my books has some tables of exactly what different levels of
daily/weekly mite drop mean for the colony, which i shall now feel much
happier about ignoring.
by the by, my latest issue of BBKA news has just arrived, with a short
article about varroa resistant bees that someone has just spent decades
breeding, including the observation that 'honey bees of all types express
it (VSH) at some level'. not the impression i'd been under before!
if i'd thought of it, i'd have definitely merged those casts. by 'run them
in', do you mean literally dump the second cast into the hive where the
first are, or something a bit more subtle? also, would this be ok with
casts from different hives too? sort of assuming ones from the same hive
still smelll the same & accept each other for a bit as a result...
its been 13 days since i hived mine now, & i'm torn! i didn't want 2 extra
colonies just now, but i'd love to see how they get on now they're here.
the first one just looks like a normal, bustling hive, second is a bit
quieter...& the parent colony has gone quite quiet too, i guess theres a
chance they could lose, or have lost, their new queen since i saw her. i'm
also thinking i've a fair chance of more swarms, casts & possible princess
losses later this year, & maybe i'll leave this lot for now, see how they
do & merge them with another weaker colony later in the year if applicable.
does that sound sensible?
.
*Sent:* Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 10:49 AM
*From:* "Gareth John"
<gj.garethjohn@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:gj.garethjohn@xxxxxxxxx>>
*To:* oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [oxnatbees] Re: unexplained swarming
I have read that if you merge 2 casts in the evening it is straightforward
- by choosing bad flying weather you force the bees to choose the best
queen themselves.
I invariably merge small (and even not so small) casts. Simply run the
second cast into the hive which contains the first cast. I do this for up
to 10 days after the first cast was hived and have never seen a problem. I
would hesitate with a prime swarms as they have a much greater sense of
identity.
The point about mites is exactly as Paul says. You are looking for
evidence of a dynamic balance. A decade or more ago I spent many hours
counting mite fall. I learnt two things: 1) it is variable, going up and
down about an average (indicating a stable balance) and 2) when mite
numbers do take off, because the balance has been lost, the increase is
dramatic. One could be seeing first hand the effect of exponential
population growth, or it could be because the bees are having a clear out.
In the latter case numbers begin to fall again. In the former, not.
Ultimately there is only one metric that counts and that is colony
survival. Accepting this is the point at one gives up treating and gives up
counting.
Gareth
Sent from my iPad
On 24 May 2022, at 09:46, Oxnatbees
<oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
I would consider merging that 3-tennis-ball sized cast with its parent
colony on a day with poor flying weather. That's because I find really
small casts often struggle and fail, and you have Langstroths which are
much bigger than my hives and need more bees to keep warm (especially with
open mesh floors). I have read that if you merge 2 casts in the evening it
is straightforward - by choosing bad flying weather you force the bees to
choose the best queen themselves.
Gareth taught me that there's no threshold above which mite drop is a
"problem", the question is *does it suddenly increase* which signals it
is out of control. So let's say you see 5 / day or 35 / week. That's not
great, but if it's always 30-40/week they are adapting and controlling the
mites. After a couple of years it seems to drop to much lower levels. But
the bottom line is do they survive without treatment? Making mite counting
somewhat obsessive and unproductive, although it's educational in your
early years.
Paul
On Mon, 23 May 2022 at 22:48, rich tetlow
<rich.tet@xxxxxxx<mailto:rich.tet@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
thanks all!
thanks gareth for the mating swarms info, that explains some of my
bees'recent goings on to perfection, specially if a princess or 2 has gone
off & then not made it back. i did spot a very nippy young queen in the
first hive that swarmed, had about 2 seconds to go, i think thats a....,
then she was off buzzing round my head. at which point i stopped that
inspection, having realised there was nothing i could possibly find that i
was going to be able to do anything useful about.
my thought with the one queen cell was, if i leave 2, current form
suggests i might get another cast, which might again ignore my bait hives &
go off to bother the neighbours. i figured it'd be quite bad luck to not
get a viable queen from either that cell or any of the ones i moved out, &
if only one succeeds i've left the 2 colonies next to each other so i can
just recombine them. i'm quite happy if they stay as one colony, & i
daresay if they have strong feelings to the contrary they'll try again!
i did read somewhere about this unhelpful practice of resealing queen
cells, so i gave the one i left a little gentle poke on the end with the
hive tool, & it seemed solid. though as always, i'm only guessing how much
force you'd need to dislodge a resealed end without damaging a full cell...
good to have a size benchmark for swarms too. i think my second cast
probably wasn't much over 3 tennis balls' worth, so it'll be interesting to
see how they do. up to now i've resisted merging colonies unless one of
them had lost its queen. would you kill one of the queens yourself, or
leave them to fight it out?
i'm aware i'm opening my colonies much less than conventional beekeeping
recommends, & often having to guess whats going on within as a result. if i
was living my best life i'd probably do a lot more looking in for a year or
2 just so i had a sense of what different behaviours meant, prior to
leaving well alone in the future. to be honest, it is sometimes a bit
harrowing going through them though. the biggest one, & occasionally one of
the others, tend to ignore the frame spacings & just build straight from
one super down into the next, so the process of getting frames out involves
ripping the tops off a load of drone brood. i'm always astonished by how
well the bees put up with this, but i still feel bad about it. i had
wondered if going in more often would discourage them from joining frames
top to bottom, but not enough to actually try it.
i think we're done with swarming for the moment. yesterday was very warm,
still, overcast & humid, which i understand is quite swarm inducing
weather. all my colonies were acting like they wanted to swarm, even the
ones i know for a fact haven't started making queen cells yet, but none of
them actually did it. my lady, lou, was wondering whether a hive might
swarm with a princess from an adjacent hive? ie where i've moved all my
queen cells to a new box next door, the bees might still consider
themselves one colony?
lynne, i think you're probably right, with the addition that most
beekeepers are making their interventions with the intention of getting
more honey rather than helping the bees to thrive. i abandoned that
approach before i'd really started, because i'm not ruthless enough, & i do
think we modern western humans are doing well enough at the moment that we
don't need to define our relationships with everything else by how much
profit we can wring out of it. i do want honey acquisition to be part of
the equation, & i'm not really in a position to eschew all though of profit
& just help the bees, especially if they're going to keep multiplying at
their current rate, but currently my more important issue is, i don't have
sensible, locally adapted bees that can be trusted to know how to behave.
i've got buckfasts, which might easily keep making casts all year in a way
that might work well if they were in italy, & have never had any need to
sort out their own varroa, to name 2 things i can think of, & there are
probably many more. i know a lot of you guys' advice on natural beekeeping
would probably be 'start with something else', & if i was starting again
i'd do exactly that, but i am where i am, & i wouldn't feel right about
just standing back & letting these bees take their chances. i hope they'll
mate with local, wild bees, & pick up enough acumen from them to get by,
but i've no idea how long it might take. or how to check, really. i'm
guessing locally adapted bees won't swarm & make casts more than is useful
for them, so i can look for that. i'm also starting to suspect that the
famous varroa sensitive hygiene isn't that deeply buried after all- one of
my hives had varroa quite badly in autumn, & i did treat for it, but this
spring i was seeing evidence of partly uncapped brood with nothing
obviously wrong with it (although this colony does/did have chalkbrood
too), which on the one hand, i've seen in books as a last, desperate sign
that the hive is about to collapse due to varroa, but also i think is the
same behaviour that all varroa resistant bees have adopted. so i'm trying
to keep an eye on mite levels & colony behaviour ( not very successfully.
this is why i'm still using mesh floors, which neither i nor the bees like,
& they don't even work at the moment, they're full of ants & the bees have
been dropping stuff on them so fast this spring, i've no idea if theres
mites in there or not. or what it signifies if there are, since lots of
dead mites might signal a really high population...or that the bees are
getting rid of them as fast as they emerge). ..where was i? so its not just
that i have to get used to low intervention, my bees have too, & neither of
us are expert enough to guide the process confidently.
so, thats my feeling on low intervention at the moment; its a journey i'm
on rather than a destination i can go straight to. & thanks again to
everyone for all the many useful bits of advice on what bees will naturally
do, what their actions might mean, etc. all helping me get there quicker!
cheers
rich
*Sent:* Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 11:20 AM
*From:* "Oxnatbees" <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>>
*To:* oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [oxnatbees] Re: unexplained swarming
Hi Rich
To add to Gareth and Pauly replies, I can relate to your desire to take
action here. I know we all like to know what's going on and to reduce what
we see as a "problem" with our bees. A very natural human perspective.
My personal philosophy is that the key thing about low-intervention, more
natural, beekeeping is to try not to interfere with the bees' natural
behaviours and processes, or only as little as possible.
It is a great human trait to want to understand and "help", but we rarely
can really do so, mostly our actions result in us tending to "interfere"
and try to control. Our understanding is necessarily limited as we are not
bees and their 30 million years of evolution has produced lots of
epigenetics, mechanisms and behaviours tuned to things of which we are only
vaguely or not even aware.
For me, enabling a colony to thrive is really best done by by providing a
suitable environment then largely standing back, so they can pursue their
own needs, like making their own choice of which is the healthiest
best-placed princess to take over (not something we can determine).
So even if there are 12 queen cells left, following natural beekeeping
principles rather than conventional ones, I would not remove any. I've
often seen a prime followed by one or two casts, the greatest number of
swarms I've seen from one hive is 4, others may have seen more, but that
was notably unusual. The multiple queen cells are insurance, the bees do
not allow all princesses to successfully hatch and take a cast, they
control it and will determine the end point for themselves given the
balance of their competing drivers.
Of course, in taking this approach things can still go wrong, princesses
may not mate successfully, may prove defective down the line, or may be
lost, but the risk probability only goes up when we don't leave it to the
bees and try to "help" by limiting their choices
I always try to remind myself to relax and ask if my taking action is
really going to be helping anything or just disrupt. I find the drive to
"do something" while coming from a positive place is often more about
making me "feel" like I'm helping while really I'm not.
For me, being a low intervention beekeepers means trying to resist the
temptation of being all too human!
Lynne
On Sun, 22 May 2022, 09:57 Oxnatbees,
<oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Rich,
some similarities with this:
yesterday we inspected one of the hives at Jane's to determine if
something was wrong with it. It is a swarm from one of her hives which has
been grumpy ever since she hived it 14 days before. Every comb - about 9,
not full size yet - was being used for hone / nectar / pollen but there was
a very noticeable absence of brood. In other words, not queen-right. Maybe
she disappeared on a mating flight.
Previous to that, the hive it came from had tried to swarm several times
but gone back in to the hive. This is characteristic of a colony that is
trying to swarm, but the queen can't fly. They eventually swarmed after a
few days, maybe with a princess, who has now died. The colony should be
savable by merging with another swarm or colony, or possibly by giving it
combs of brood from another colony (though Gareth has previously said that
needs to be repeated a few times and just weakens the donor colony).
Generally speaking you are opening your hives more than I would, but I
opened mine a fair bit in my first 2 years and the upside was, it taught me
a lot. And as you have framed hives it is less disruptive than opening
TBHs. But, you will probably find their temper is more relaxed if you open
them less.
I think most beekeepers don't remove ALL extra queen cells because there
is a reasonable chance (15%) that a given princess will not be successful
on her mating flight, so best to leave 1 or 2 spare heirs in the hive if
you do decide to remove or kill some.
If you catch a swarm which is just 3 tennis balls in size, that's too
small to be viable - very high risk of dying after a few months - merge it
into another colony, ideally the one it came from. Luckily your small one
returned to the hive.
Paul
On Sat, 21 May 2022 at 23:19, rich tetlow
<rich.tet@xxxxxxx<mailto:rich.tet@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
just wondering if anyone can suggest a reason for a recent behaviour of
one of my hives. i've already had one lot swarm out, missed the prime swarm
then had 2 biggish casts, which i caught. a few days ago the next biggest
hive issued a swarm, i'd say about football size. they sat in a tree for
about an hour, then just as i was going to get them picked themselves up &
disappeared into the distance. so quite sprightly, & purposeful, given the
last few have emerged & then hung around for a day checking out my bait
hives. to my shame, i don't actually know if this was a prime swarm, or if
i missed that & it was a very big cast. i suspect the latter because i
immediately looked through the hive, finding about a dozen sealed queen
cells, one in the act of hatching & another with a hole in the side- ie
they'd clearly been there for a bit, & one but not all had been killed,
presumably by another queen. although we didn't see any hatched queen
cells.
anyway, i moved all the frames with queen cells on except one, along
with their bees, into a new brood box. not sure if this is standard
practice, but i've about had enough of casts this year & figured the
foragers would mostly go home, the young bees would stay & rear the
princesses & other brood, & the new colony wouldn't have anywhere near
enough bees to swarm so the princesses would have to sort it out amongst
themselves.
the new colony, next to the first, has stayed very quiet, the old one
carried on as before, then a few days later they swarmed again. got a front
seat view because i was working in the greenhouse right next to them, it
was only a little swarm- maybe 3 tennis balls' worth- & they went & sat on
a post about 20 yards away, on top of which i then put a cardboard box.
they immediately started walking up into it, so i went away for half an
hour, but when i came back the weight of bees had dislodged the box & there
was a lot of flying about again. i wedged it back a bit more firmly,
noticing in the process that they'd secreted a lot of wax scales in their
brief stay on the post, & tried again. when i got back this time the box
was empty, & my observation in the interim was, they'd all gone back to the
hive, with a lot trying to rejoin the new brood box initially, then by the
end of the day everyone back in the old hive.
slightly reluctantly i disturbed them again the next day, thinking
maybe there was a queen or princess we'd missed, & expecting the queen cell
to be either hatched or torn down, but no, we had a good thorough look this
time & could find no queen, or princess, & the cell still intact. we did,
embarrassingly, find another one we'd missed previously, which i moved
across to the new box with the rest.
so, this is the second time this year i've had a swarm come out, sit
for a bit then go back in. first time i thought their queen had suffered
some accident, but i thought that was a bit tenuous then, & i refuse to
believe its happened twice. i wonder if they sometimes follow a princess
out when shes off on a mating flight? it occurs to me as well that
princesses must surely do a bit of hanging around outside before they go
off or they'd be very hard put to find their way back...
anyway, seems like all i can do with this hive currently is leave it
alone. if they swarm they swarm, & if they don't have a laying queen in a
month or so i'll join them to the new colony, assuming one of their queens
makes it. but the trouble with being all hands off is, i don't know whats
actually happened & am basically guessing, which is why i wondered if
anyone else could shed any light?
