Queen temperament

It's late winter, on a warm day for winter. I opened the hive lid of the first hive. Bees hardly noticed, the next hive the same thing, but when I lifted the lid of the third hive a thick cloud of bees flew up looking for something to kill. This hive has been this way since re-queening. I am just amazed at the differences in bee temperament.

The second hive although quiet is the first one up and the last one to bed. It does not get the sun first. They just seem to be harder working.

Dead bees over winter -- Yes we killed our first hive!

April 2012
Nearing winter now. The club hives have had to be feed to keep them alive. But our hives are still bringing in pollen and nectar. That's because there are in town with lots of trees and peoples gardens. The variant means as long as the weather is not continuously cold the bees are happy. Since the hives are in our yard we check actively almost daily, when it came time to treating I took off all the honey boxes to avoid contamination from the treatment. We made sure that there was some empty comb in case the nectar was still coming and we had some full honey frame for feeding. Two of the hives were strong and had a lot of bees so I put an empty honey box on, without any frames, just so that they would not over heat. 6 weeks later and both empty boxes were absolutely chocker with newly made comb, all capped. Attached to the top board right down to the top of the frames in the bottom brood box.

Not only that but the comb was chocker full of capped honey! Incredible when there was not supposed to be any nectar source. The hive next to these was smaller and we had left it with some space and only the brood box. On inspection this hive had not eaten supplies but had not increased the honey either!

Must be all down to a different type of bee in these 2 hives from the other 2 hives. Both strong hives came from the same queen stock. I'll be breeding off this queen next year.

Now what to do with this unframe honey. I had to break up the full box of comb honey to get to the bottom box. When I finished I put all the broken pieces of capped honey on a tray to get robbed down into a new box of drawn out frames.

Tasting this honey was an experience. It had a very bitter after taste. This could have been Apistan, but it was more likely to be dandelion. The dandelion honey was all crystallised.

July 2012

I had periodically gone out in our finest days throughout the winter to cut up the remaining dandelion honey so that the bees could get it and rob it down below. All the hives were busy with pollen most days in winter.

One day I went out to visit the hives in the morning, as I normally do, and I saw that all the hives except one were busy with activity. Someone (my wife, Jane, will not be mentioned of course ;-), someone had got in the mood to melt down all the wax from last season and decided to take the dandelion honey boxes off. Thinking that all the honey had been robbed down below.

This was true of one hive, but the other one had been eating the honey directly from the top box and not storing it in the frames below. The bees had not had any honey for 3 days. When we looked into the hive there were dead bees everywhere. Only a little wing movement from 10 or so bees. Oh dear, the realisation that we killed the hive was a bit heart rendering.  Nearly every cell had a bee stuck in head first. We made up some sugar-syrup and poured this over all the bees on all the frames. I did not expect anything except the neighbouring hive to rob this dead hive. And this they did so I blocked up the entrance.

But the next day we had 2 frames of normal looking bees. When I unblocked the entrance bee boiled out for a while (the robber wanted out). A little later the bees were busy taking out dead bees one by one. 90% of the hive was dead. We found a "happy" queen and enough bees to say that the hive is functioning ok.

The next week I collected several scoops of dead bees and clean up the hive. Soon all will be forgotten...if our on very experienced queen start breeding again. :-)

Treatments and wintering the hive

It's past time for preparing for winter. Sorry for the late post which should have been in the beginning of March (4 weeks before Autumn kicks in). Here is a brief list of things to do:

• Take the eating honey off the hive. Should have already been done. The nectar collected is eaten by the bees.
• Treat for varroa. Do now if not started yet!!!. Hopefully the queen lays during the treatment and these new bees will be varroa free!
• If in a cold area insulate the hive. Bees eat less and die less in a warm dry hive.
• Make the entrance smaller (<7 mm) so that mice do get in.

 If your honey is still not capped here are tips.
1. Add a feeder and feed the bee sugar water. They will finish the honey off, if they are well feed.
2. Create a robbing situation. Uncapped honey is robbed down (if it is warm enough).


Mark any honey frames you leave on while treating, so that you don't accidental eat this honey. The frame is contaminated until the wax is changed. We feed our bees, if needed, during treatment and then give them back the honey boxes we took off.

Insulation of the hive
For a strong, healthy hive there nothing special that needs to happen, besides clean air and sunshine.

For a small hive and/or a cold place:
1. Keep the hive in the sun as much as possible. (I.e. move it if needed)
2. Have good ventilation (e.g. hole at bottom and top to allow air flow). Dry air is easier to heat by the bees than damp air. Water condensation and water dripping inside indicates bad ventilation.
3. Replace outer frames (or the wrap the outside of the box) with polystyrene or a hot water cylinder wrap, or that favourite woollen jersey. Make sure the bees can't eat the polystyrene by lining with corflute.

We haven't insulated any of our hives and don't plan to. But if you get regular frosts then it is worth thinking about how hard is it for the bees to keep warm.

Snow is an insulator so this is not really an issue (for the one or two days of snows we get a year).

Please add your comments on other things you do to winter down the hive.

Keith

A long time ago unheated honey was best

I remember way back in the 70's my wife's father telling me about the evil people who heat honey and the damage this does to the quality. So this is not a new issue. People are more aware of the heating issues now than then and hopefully we honey eaters have the ability to chose better quality - why would you chose lower quality food! I realise that heating honey depends on temperature and time and has it's uses, so I am not saying that heating is bad.

Keith

Heat treated supermarket honey

Peter Bray of Airborne Honey Ltd (NZ) has sent a well written statement about the heating of honey and the loss of quality. The quality of honey on NZ shop selves varies. Imported honey (currently happening, but illegal) is imported because it is cheap and therefore quality will be much lower than "home-made". You should note that honey is bacterial resistant and does not require processing to make it safe.

I will say more on this topic of heating honey later. Please comment below and tell me what you think and how it works for you.

Keith

“The question on heating, raw, pasteurized etc. is the single biggest question we get from consumers.   Since there is no legal definition of "raw", it is difficult to compare claims.  Some think raw is "uncooked", "unheated" etc. To others it is closer to "raw materials" in meaning.

However retail honey is usually presented with visible impurities removed (bees legs, wings, wax particles etc.)  and in a processed state - it has been extracted, packed in bulk containers (drums, pallecons etc) re-liquefied, strained, perhaps creamed, and then packed into retail containers.  The degree of heating to liquefy and the amount of filtering or straining is where most changes can occur with the removal of pollen, reduction of enzymes, volatiles and other flavouring agents etc.

The US market is unusual that virtually all honey is sold in a liquid form, even when the sources are fast crystallizing honeys such as Canola.  To achieve this they filter all particles (including pollen) from the honey that might act as a nucleus for crystals to form around. They also heat it to ensure that all crystals are liquefied.  Here in New Zealand, more than half of the market is creamed honey (crystallized) so fast crystallizing honeys can be processed into creamed honey products and slow crystallizing honeys turned into liquid honey packs.

As you know Airborne has a patented liquefication process for our honey.  We assess heat damage by routinely measuring HMF (see http://www.airborne.co.nz/HMF.shtml) on every incoming sample and every outgoing product we produce plus we collect and measure samples of various honey brands from supermarket shelves all over New Zealand for HMF along with a range of other parameters including pollen.

We can say definitively from this process that some manufacturers are removing significant amounts of natural pollen from honey in New Zealand and some are applying significant amounts of heat.  This is not consistent but overall it is significant.

So How Do We Stack Up?

We know that Airborne's HMF levels are consistently the lowest in the country - a reflection on the lack of heat induced changes in our product.  Our average is 6ppm for our finished products and the country average for other manufacturers is 27ppm.  Some products are over 100ppm (our standing record was 1,132ppm!) and there are many over the EU regulated limit of 40.  However not all this is due to processors damaging the product they are handling.  There is still a significant amount of damage done by beekeepers at extraction time and during storage.  Some of this is deliberate due to beekeepers storing their "manuka" honey at elevated temperatures in and effort to increase their NPA scores, a natural reaction to being paid on those scores (rather than on quality parameters assuring a manuka source).

For our own products we print the HMF and pollen levels on each and every jar so consumers can see for themselves the quality they are getting.

If consumers are interested in the quality of their product, they should read the labels carefully, and read any material that the manufacturer makes available, websites being a prime source.  They should also contact the manufacturer if they have any further queries.

Peter Bray

Airborne Honey Ltd

PO Box 28, Leeston 7682, Canterbury”

Are you suffering from ‘fat bees’?

Derek's story below seems to fit the problem we (and many other this year) have. That is, even though there is lots of nectar around the honey boxes don't seem as full as normal.

The main points:
* The bees grab lots of nectar and become bigger
* In the hive they don't want to get through the queen excluder
* Remove queen excluder, during big honey flow
* With more nectar going up stairs the queen has more room
* Queen is happy to stay below

Keith

Are you suffering from ‘fat bees’?

At a meeting last night several people around the table were reporting that the upper brood boxes on their two brood box hives were jammed packed with honey and yet the honey supers above the queen excluder were hardly touched by the bees.

Rather jokingly, Kevin said that the bees are too fat to get through the queen excluder. After the initial spurt of laughter things started to get serious as we realised that he was not far off the truth of the matter.

Jeff, being a really smart beekeeper, had already sussed out the problem and the solution much earlier in the season. As he put it, the season was a one in ten year boomer with lots of nectar to be collected. Foraging bees found large amounts of nectar and gorged themselves on the bounty.

Back at the hive they would typically make their way up to the honey supers where they would usually offload and then return to the field for another load.

This is where some imagination is required. When the loaded bees could not get through the bars of the excluder they merely dumped the load into the nearest cells which just happened to be in the upper brood box. Very quickly, the upper brood box was filled. The nectar flow was still heavy so they filled out the brood frames even more to the point where adjacent combs were almost touching and in the process they caused the queen to cease laying.

Some beekeepers, myself included, saw this happening and placed the very full upper brood box above the queen excluder, after giving the hive an empty upper brood box. The bees promptly filled the new brood box in the same way that they filled the first – and still ignored the honey supers above.

In fact, the upper honey supers in both cases were isolated from the lower part of the hive and the bees naturally thought the hive was filled. Along with the queen who found no more room to lay brood, they soon swarmed. This was what promoted the heavy swarming early in the season!

Instead of getting a super honey crop some of us got just the two filled brood boxes. Oh dear I hear you say. I wish I had realised it early in the season.

Clever clods, Jeff had; and his solution was to put the filled upper brood box at the top of the hive, give them another brood box – and REMOVE the queen excluder. Now the bees had no impediment to getting to the honey supers and they filled the whole hive, and quickly.

I thought that the queen would move up and lay in the honey supers but it turns out that she is quite happy to stay in the lower boxes and make brood.

Oh dear, we live and learn, as they say. Well done Jeff.

At the field meeting it would be nice to hear from others who think they have experienced this phenomena during this season. I have lots of apiaries and it has been the same at all of them.

Derek T Skinner

Bee transport

My sister-in-law followed a car with a trailer carrying a quite few hives, really they were just the honey boxes. The car/trailer hit a few road works where it had to stop. While stopped a cloud of bees circled around the road workers and my sister's car.

She was concerned with the hazard the bees were to workers and other motorists.

The second concern she had was with Varoa other other diseases, weren't those escaped bees spreading any diseases that the hives on the trailer had?

When transporting bees the hives should be secured and strapped. The hives also should be sealed, but have ventilation, so that no bees can escape. If the truck/trailer tips over then it prevents the bees from adding to the problem. Police, fire and ambulance will not attend where they are loose bees.

Having said all that I know that a few bees will always hang around the honey supers when it is loaded.

Keith

nine frame gauge

The 'nine frame gauge' is very useful to get the frames in the honey super spaced exactly.

"When the frames are left at the standard spacing using ten frames it will be seen that the bees do not build out the comb beyond the top bar and then they cap the comb with wax. This makes it extremely difficult to uncap prior to extracting the honey in a centrifuge (spinner). If the boxes of honey are sent to a commercial extraction plant they invariably look at the job with dismay as the uncapping is almost impossible to do with automated uncapping machines. Even with a hand held uncapping knife it is difficult to uncap the honey comb."

With only nine frames, the bees will build the comb beyond the top and bottom bars so that uncapping becomes very easy (and quick) because the uncapping knife can simply run along the top bar and under the wax capping. This leaves a smooth and regular, flat comb from which the honey is easily extracted by spinning.
The gadget shown below can be made from a plastic oval pipe or from a damaged roadside marker. Of cause, other suitable materials can be used so that you do not have to get permission to uplift the damaged marker. The thickness of the plastic should be no more than 3 millimetres so that the tines fit snugly between the edge of the box and the end bars of the frames.

We hope that you can follow the hand drawn sketch above. Please contact me if further information is needed on how to make it.
It must be said that I always start my honey supers off with foundation waxed frames with ten frames in the super. This gives the necessary ‘bee space’ for the bees to work with and begin the process of drawing out the wax comb. After about two weeks I remove the frame nearest the edge of the box and then use the gadget to space frames at nine per super. By this time the bees will be filling the new comb with honey. They will continue to draw out the comb beyond the bars and then fill the combs with honey.
Some beekeepers take this a step further and remove another frame so that the bees have only eight frames in the honey super but I find this move unnecessary. See the demos at the next club meeting.
Good luck with the project!!
Derek & Jan

Bee repelling caught on video

Yesterday we videoed an attempt by a foreign bee to gain access to a nuc.

This hive, in Christchurch, NZ was a new nuc and had hardly any bees. It gets attacked by wasps and other bees so the entrance is small. Here we see a foreign bee trying to gain entry. The bee is probably a NZ native. Notice that a wasp is also being repelled. This seems to be happening all day. The day before I saw 2 wasps being carried away by 3 bees each.

Any comment on the native type?

The visitor is hairless, about the same size as the others no black strips, just one black patch on the end. This is the second bee of this type I have seen. Other one was already inside this hive and was not being repelled.

A bigger version can be seen on YouTube. http://youtu.be/ej70qqjtil0

These photo were taken on the next day. I think it is the same bee back for more.

The honey tastes a bit smokey or "smoke gets in your hive"

May I ask what the point is of smoking the bees? Do they think that there's a fire so they all run round in panic or do they like smoking and think they are being cool like some people idiots I know. Oops, wrong hobby horse.

How much smoke is enough. I heard one beekeeper say they don't use smoke, and yes, they do get stung. The reason he doesn't like smoke is that the smoke permeates through their clothing and isn't that a bad look. ;-)


The smoke calms the bees, not because of the smoke but because of the sugar high they get...all chill out. A little smoke tells them something isn't right so they gorge on honey in preparation for an exit. Too much smoke and they will just get agitated, buzz loudly and may look for something to express frustration on. A few puffs into the hive entrance should do. Smoking the hands can keeps the hands free of bees (so does keeping them clean and honey free). Although I would like to get some more opinions on this in the comments below.


A few years ago, while my wife was going through the hive I would pump smoke wildly at all the flying bees because I had been told that the smoke calms them down. They normally just ignored me, while poor Jane coughed and splutter her way through the hive. Then I went the other way and didn't even light the smoker. At the end of the honey season the bees need to be smoked as they rightly think you are taking their honey. Also some bees are more aggressive than others so it all depends on the hive temperament.

Ellen and super helpful hubby, Tom (not their real names) were inspecting the hives as usual. Ellen going through the hive and Tom continuous smoking anything that moved. Ellen pull out a frame of honey to extract. All the while Tom is busy smoking all the bees off the frame. Some coughing bees decided to leave but most were pressed face down into the honey of the uncapped portion. This only made Tom more vigorous in smoking the last bees away.
Later, in the kitchen Ellen tastes her newly won honey. "Put your finger in the honey and tell me what you can taste?".
Tom goes "Hmm... that's nice". Then he stops and he goes "It's not like last years. It definitely tastes different".
"Does that taste like smoke to you?"
"Arr, yes it does." Tom takes another finger swipe of honey. The light slowly becoming visible on Tom's face with his finger still stuck in his mouth.
The wee bowl of honey sitting on the bench is for Tom to have on his toast until it is all used up. Ellen doesn't think he is going to run a muck with the smoker any more.

Keith

Hive traits

While going through the the hive today I noticed one bee preening another. Cleaning it for about a minute before trying to the same thing to another bee. This is good behaviour and must help the bees fight off Varoa and parasites. From the same hive a couple of warps got in the hive. Three bees had each grabbed a wasp leg and were manhandling the wasp to the top of the frames. Once there they rotated around until they could all fly off in unison carrying  the wildly struggling wasp. They took the wasp off to a nearby bush and dumped it there. A few minutes later another wasp with 3 bees was delivered off into the sunset (figuratively).

 I had split this from another queen's brood into a new queenless nuc. When the queen was new she became very active, more quickly than any other hive I had requeened at the same time. My new queenless hive made a few queen cells and eventually out popped a queen and this is her first brood.

By paying attention to these things we breed more hygienic bees. The more hygienic the more house keeping they do. To compare hive for hygiene use a glass (any shape and size will do) and press it into a section of brood. Then prick all the brood in that area. The bees will inspect and remove all the brood in the area. The bees that do this best are in the most hygienic hive. Use this queen to breed from. If you buy queens from various people you could compare their queens.

Of course there are swings and roundabouts in breeding. Breed for one trait and you may find an unwanted trait pops up or a wanted trait is not so apparent. Also each generation of queen may be different from the last.
Remember the bees in the hive have DNA from a number of drones and the queen, just like your children they will all be different.

Anyway, all this to encourage you to look at your hives in terms of traits, particularly hygiene and seek queens that fit the kind of bees you want.

Keith

Starting with Bees

So, you are thinking of becoming a beekeeper. How exactly do you start and where do you begin? Joining a club is cheap and will give you all the information needed.

Our club has field days once a month where the club hives are opened for beginners to see inside the hive, handle the bees and ask any question. This is normally followed by the talks on all sorts of subjects from experienced beekeepers. I am always impressed with the willingness and enthusiasm of these people. The field day is open to anyone to come. A visit to a club will help you find out whether you are comfortable working with bees. The web site has past field days pictures and videos. field day

Joining the Christchurch Bee Club allows access to more help and information as well as access to hire equipment. Sharing information amongst the beginners also helps you grow. People learn by mistakes and we make many as we learn. join-now. There are legal requirements with bees; joining enables you to understand these. In particular every beekeeper must be registered and have their hive checked for AFB and other diseases.

These days there is a lot of “stuff” to read (books and the net) and watch (e.g. YouTube or bee websites). There are books available in our club library.

At some point you can then buy a hive and get started. When my wife and I started, I budgeted $500 for equipment for the three of us (plus daughter). This was for bee suits, books, hive boxes, tools and of course bees. I didn't spend anyway near this and got over 30kg of honey in our first year, then 60kg in our second year (2 hives). Third year we split hives into 7 hives and didn't get very much honey as the hive hadn't built up bee numbers. We do bees to have fun and learn, as well as get honey and save the world.

This year we went to the sawmill and brought our own timber, made our own boxes and Jane (my wife) painted them all in our colours. That is green for brood boxes and blue for honey boxes. I have to admit they do look pretty in our back yard.

Yes I have been stung a few times every year. But no one has been stung that wasn't going through the hive and even those going through the hive got stung because they were careless. We often has visitors (and their kids) come round and watch as we go through the hives. Yes it is showing off, but that is another reason for keeping bees. :-)

There are a number of courses you can go to to help you with beekeeping. Firstly an Apiary course will teach everything you need to know about bees. These courses vary in length and depth (See the club for details). The other course is the DECA. Every hive must be checked for disease by a person holding a DECA agreement. You can hold this agreement by doing this one day course, and passing of course. Once you have this you can do your own inspections for disease.

Place the new honey box next to the queen excluder

This story is typical of many hobbyist bee keepers. A new beekeeper had a hive with a full honey box. After being told to put on a new honey box on, because the bees need more room, she did so. About 2 weeks later a visit revealed the front of the hive and whole area round the hive were black with flying bees for about 5 metres out from the hive. She said "My bees are so distressed". The new honey had been put on top of the full honey box. Not a bee was in the new box. The bees didn't even know about the new box. She should have put the new box close to the broad box instead of forcing the bees to walk all that way through the full honey box. An inspection revealed nearly every bee was outside the hive. 

The hive was reassembled with board box, queen excluder, new honey box then the full honey box. The new honey box had 10 frames so one was taken out to make it 9 frames. It was an unbelievable sight as the bees went straight into the hive, every one of them. It went from the sky being black with bees to only 10 or 15 bee still outside within 5 minutes. 

It is so important to place the new honey box next to the queen excluder during the honey flow.

Creaming honey

Scared silly about what will happen if you cream honey? Do you even know how? Read this advice picked up from some Christchurch bee keepers.

What you do is lift the cream rods up and down for a few minutes twice a day, morning and night or whenever you walk past. After 3 days you have creamed honey. Add  some creamed honey foe better texture. Much, much better than going to the gym. It's so simple to cream the honey. For a small amount honey you could use your kitchen beater. Beat slowly then leave to relax then do it again and soon your have creamed honey.

To make an automated creamer you need a stainless tank with a reciprocating pump to circulate the honey around top to bottom (and bottom to top). Switch the pump on for a few minutes twice a day for 3 days and then pour it off. It's called "pump creamed" when done this way. It make a really nice soft honey. Using a starter sets the quality of the creamed honey. If you add nice fine creamed honey as starter then that's what it will turn out like.

The secret to nice creaming is to cool the honey to 15.2°C (use a fridge and thermometer) before you start. The process is far easier. If it is too warm it hardly creams; it is too cold it will jam up the creamer and the thick viscosity may even burn out the motor.

You can even use a variable speed drill to cream, just like you would use it to mix paint. If you really wanted to, you could stick you arms in and swish around a bit. :-)

One person has made a plunger which is moved up and down several times to mix the honey and this works...good for the arms too.

The club has captured Derck Skinner on video and can be play from youtube

Keith

Wax melting and oven honey

There is a massive amount of honey in the cappings. A hot box is traditionally used to extract this honey from the capping wax. This is then sold as oven honey. Oven honey has special properties and not heated too much so that the flaviods and pollen, all the goodness of honey, separate from the honey and float to the top, mixing with the wax.

A hot box is a rectangular open metal box, about 500mm deep, with an element underneath. They would fill this box directly from the cappings being cut from the frame. It has 2 taps on it. What would happen is the honey separates from the wax. Because honey is a lot heavier than wax it goes to the bottom. The honey is run off until the white wax starts to come out, then you run off your wax. The commerical guys will sell what is called oven honey.

Top heat is better than an element at the bottom. You don't want to cook your honey.

The normal solution to melting wax for the hobbyist is to buy an old deep frier. Get an engineer to drill a hole and put a tap in it. Then it's really easy to to run the wax out. Fill the bowl with a little water. When the wax melts it separates into 3 layers; water then honey, then wax. Turn the tap until the water stops and honey pours out then the wax.

The solar melter doesn't use power and works even on semi-sunny days.

One suggestion is to put all your wax into ice cream containers and stick it in the microwave with a cup of water (to prevent stress on the magnetron). Put it on for between 8 and 10 minutes, take it out and place it on a cooling slab and in an hours time you have honey with a nice film of beautiful wax on top. It is said that as long as the honey does not go over 73°C it does no damage and it is still healthy. The honey derived this way is fine. The magic 65°C /73°C is over heating the heating and “all” supermarket honey is over heated deliberately so as not to crystallise and last longer on the shelve.

This hot/oven honey is lovely. The water has been driven off so it is thicker, like axle grease and it does not tend to go hard.

Keith

Dislipstick

Just to let you know that I am full of enthusiasm for writing the blog but have a problem with dyslexia This means that I can't spell for peanuts. I proof read for many times but this often doesn't work good enough to catch all the odd ball spellings especially the ends of words is missed off. I'll try my utmost to improve - sorry for the mistakes.

By the way I have been this way forever and learnt to read at about 13 years old. I read the dictionary from cover to cover at 16 and now read 2 or 3 book at a time. I been to university at age 46...so all you parents with dyslexic children and other dyslexic adults take note that it is not the end of the world.

New queens

New queens make a huge difference, a friend tried to graft some new queens early in spring but they all failed. So there were no new queens in the hives. It now is showing in his honey take. The amount of honey is very poor. At the club hives the queens were all new in December. The queens all took off producing bees. There was a single box and now, 1 month later, there is a couple of boxes of honey. It's just the power of a new queen. With a honey flow the new queen just goes for it. With more bees - more honey.

Keith

Hello

I hear lots of stories from all sorts of people about their experience with bees. To tell you these stories with a local flavour is a great idea, so I will retell as many as I am allowed. Not all the detail will be correct and I will not attempt to verify any of this, it is just stories heard. Any story that reveals unwanted information about a person will be removed on request or reworded to be less specific. Stories this year would have included lots about people losing queens, the lack of varroa, bumble bees and wasps.