Beginners Course

North East Worcestershire Beekeepers Association are part way through their annual beginning beekeeping course.  I have given a talk on where to site your apiary.

Here is a copy of my presentation. Link to Tim's Presentation

Making an Observation Hive

I am asked to provide exhibits at a number of shows and events throughout year.  As far as possible I like to take along an observation hive. It is an excellent way to allow the public to interact with bees.  People can view the bee colony close up without needing protective clothing and as beekeepers we can talk about the way the colony works.

My observation hive in use.  Our stand won second prize!

Removing a colony of bees from Avoncroft Museum

Avoncroft Museum of buildings (http://www.avoncroft.org.uk) have a good relationship with my local beekeeping association, North East Worcestershire Beekeeping Association (http://www.bbka.org.uk/local/northeastworcestershire/).  We are called in from time to time to remove swarms from their buildings.  One building, the 'String of Horses', seems to have a fascination for bees, with swarms regularly landing there.

Processing Beeswax

Beekeepers often ignore the beeswax that they remove from the hives as they extract honey.  However it can easily be processed to give a product that can be used in a number of ways.  You can use it to make into a number of products such as hand cream, candles or furniture polish.  Even if you are not craft minded, it can be cast into small 1 ounce ‘ingots’ which are then bought by all sorts of people for their own craft needs.  Even if you cannot be bothered with these, you can simply take large blocks of wax to the equipment manufacturers and they will ‘swap’ it for wax foundation.

There are as many ways to process wax as there are beekeepers.  This is my way, which seems to be fairly simple.

Propolis, plant resin collected by bees.

We all know that bees collect nectar and pollen, but did you also know that bees collect plant resin to use as a disinfectant, glue and varnish inside the hive?  This substance, called ‘Propolis’, is collected by the bees from sticky buds and tree wounds.  The bees bring it back to the hive in the same way that they  carry pollen, in the ‘pollen baskets’ on their back legs.  The only difference is that it is so sticky that they cannot unload themselves and instead, another bee has to nibble the propolis off.

What do we use beeswax for?

Over the years there have been millions of uses for beeswax.

The most important use for beeswax as a beekeeper is of course to give the honeycomb back to the bees so that they can re-fill it with honey.  It 'costs' the bees to recreate the honeycomb, so giving it back means that they can collect more honey next season. The bees will re-use honeycomb, but they will not take flakes or pieces of wax and re-use them, so once the wax is damaged, or removed from the honeycomb, it can be recycled into something else.  The list below is just some of these uses.

How do bees make honeycomb?

Bees build their home out of wax (beeswax!).  Unlike wasps, who collect the material to make their home, bees create the wax themselves.  Underneath the worker bee abdomen there are 4 pairs of glands.  The bee body, like all insects is made of a hard material.  So that the bee can flex its body, this ‘exoskeleton’ is made up of a number of hard overlapping plates, joined by flexible membranes.  The wax glands are hidden in the overlapping area between two of these plates, so that the wax appears as a small flake between the plates.

Putting a swarm into their new hive

Today we were called by a neighbour who had seen a swarm of bees passing over their house and settling in a tree in a nearby garden.  The swarm was several meters high from the ground but we were able to capture it with our home made swarm bag, which looks like a pillow case on a stick!

We got the swarm into a box, and took it to the National Trust apiary at Hanbury Hall.

Making 'house signs' so bees can find their own hive

Everyone knows that foraging honey bees can find their way back to their home and that ‘guard’ bees will stop any ‘foreign’ bees from coming into their hive. 

Well, actually, this is not quite true.  In the wild, colonies of bees would set up home with their hives well separated from each other.   However, for the convenience of the beekeeper, we tend to put our beehives within a few feet of each other.  Also, the guard bees are quite practical.  If a worker bee turns up at the doorstep with a full load of nectar, they will generally just let it in ... well, why not!

This all tends to create a bit of a problem for the beekeeper.  If the bees cannot tell the difference between the hives, then they tend to just go to the nearest one!



Lady Georgina Vernon, Hanbury Hall beekeeper.

I keep my bees at Hanbury Hall in the village of Hanbury in Worcestershire (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hanbury-hall/) which is now owned by the National Trust.  When it was still in private hands it was owned by the Vernon family (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hanbury-hall/history/page-1/).  Lady Georgina Vernon (1840 - 1928) was one of the family who lived at the property who was reputed to be a beekeeper.

Lady Georgina Vernon (c) National Trust

Out of interest, as the current beekeeper, I did some investigation to find out about Lady Georgina's involvement with beekeeping and any mention of Hanbury and beekeeping, the rest of this post shows my findings.

The boomerang swarm

Every year I get phone calls from people who have a swarm in their garden.  Once I have checked that the 'swarm' are not wasps or bumblebees I will usually go out and collect it. This should be as simple as putting the bees into a skep (looks like a wicker waste paper basket) taking them to the apiary and putting the bees into a new hive. However the bees this year don't seem to be reading the same book as me!

I was called on Saturday afternoon and told that there was a swarm at my apiary at Hanbury Hall.  The swarm was not in the way and the gardeners quite liked pointing out the bees to the visitors. I have been caught out by rushing to collect swarms too quickly in the past. I think the bees like their 'taste of freedom' and if you try to put them in a hive too soon then they don't remember that they have swarmed and so they leave their new hive and swarm again.

First proper inspection of 2012

It is only the first of April but the weather has been great for a week.  The bees are busy flying so it was a good opportunity to check them fully for the first time this year.  There was quite a crowd at Hanbury Hall watching our first full inspection of the year. 

Why do bees make honey?

The bees we call 'honey bees' (Apis Melifera) form a permanent colony.  Although each bee may not live for long, the colony of bees should continue indefinately, if disease, weather or predation don't get to it!

In the areas of the world where bees are native, there are generally distinct seasons, so plants do not flower all year round.  This means that the bees have to have some means of storing food to keep them going during the part of the year when they cannot collect nectar.  Larger animals get through the winter by storing food as fat inside their body and then using this energy over the winter.  Since one bee may not survive the winter it makes more sense to the colony to store its food supply externally.  This is honey. 

How do bees make Honey?

I was asked this question at Hanbury Hall last week. Here is a description of the work that the bees do to turn nectar into honey.

These bees are filling wax cells with honey, ready  for sealing like the cells at the top of the photo

Inspecting and feeding the bees

Most weekends we inspect the bees at Hanbury Hall to make sure they are OK.  The honey has been extracted now and so we are feeding the bees sugar syrup to replace the honey we took from them.  Here is a short video showing how we go about opening the hive and looking at the bees.

Ouch .. Lucy got stung

We were looking at the bees today and one of the gardeners at Hanbury Hall came over.  So I gave a frame of bees to Lucy to go and show to her.  As I passed the bees on their comb over I thought 'they seem a bit lively!'.  Ten seconds later, Lucy got stung!  Fortunately the gardener, who was not in a bee-suit was left alone, but Lucy, in a bee suit, got stung through her leather glove!  Lucy, who has been beekeeping since she was tiny, brought the bees back and put them in the hive, then smoked the area she had been stung (it hides the smell given off when a bee stings. The smell attracts other bees to come over and sting the same area).  Only after that did she walk away to remove her glove and inspect the damage.

When I went to find out how she was, I found that the bee had left its sting in her glove and she was busy showing visitors the sting!

Bee sting stuck in a leather glove

As you can see from the photo, when the bee tries to pull away, they leave their sting in your skin (or in this case the glove) and also leave behind their sting gland, which continues to pulse and force venom into you.  If you get stung by a bee, then quickly flick off the sting gland with a fingernail.  Don't try to pinch it off, or you will squeeze more venom into you.

The story had a happy ending for Lucy.  Because the sting had to go through her glove, by the time it got to her finger, it only scratched her, so the pain and swelling were minimal.  Anyway, as a beekeeper, you expect the occasional sting .. it reminds you to treat your bees considerately!

Getting that sticky stuff in the jar!

Lots of beekeeping books recommend that you extract your honey into buckets and store your honey in the sealed buckets until just before you sell it.  Before you can put the honey into jars, you have to warm up the honey in the bucket, which needs some kind of warming cabinet (or I guess an airing cupboard if you chuck all the clothes out of it first).  Then you tip the warm honey into a 'ripening tank' (tank with a valve at the bottom), possibly filtering it when you tip it in.  Then you leave the honey for several days so that any bits float to the top.  Then you can skim off the 'skum' from the top (actually mostly tiny bits of beeswax).  Finally you can put the honey in jars.  Then you clean everything ready for the next time you want to bottle some honey!

Thanks for cleaning the supers

On Sunday we went to Hanbury Hall to take back the supers from the bees after they had cleaned them up.  The bees have taken all the honey out of the extracted 'wet' supers and stored it for thier own use.  They also tidied up the broken edges of the honeycomb.  Have a look at the picture in an earlier posting of the smashed-up honeycomb after I had messed it up with a combination of scraping open the cells with the uncapping fork and then spinning out the honey.

Using bees to clean up the supers

Spinning the honeycomb in the extractor gets out most of the honey but there is still a film of honey over the inside of each cell.  To clean this up we need a cleaner which is small enough to get right inside each cell and recover the honey.  What does the beekeeper have available that can get inside honeycomb cells ... oh yes ... bees!

Extracting honey - or how to coat the entire house with a thin layer of honey!

So, we got the supers with honey in them back home without too many bees.  Luckily I can get directly into the room where I do the extracting from the back door, only walking over lino flooring.  Even so I try to save large pieces of cardboard (the box the chicken run came in was great ... covered the entire floor) to walk on.  You cannot avoid getting drips of honey on the floor and it then gets spread everywhere you walk.  I have tried putting down newspaper, but as soon as there is any honey on the paper, the paper sticks to your foot and then you end up trying to walk about with half a newspaper flapping off your shoe!