Feed Those Bees!!

Swarming season is truly underway. We have collected quite a number. The key to success is FEEDING. A newly developing colony needs a surplus of food to convert into beeswax and honey. If they have a continuous supply then the workers will feed the queen who will in turn increase her egg laying. So you get a faster, stronger developing colony who are able to draw out all your new foundation.

A simple feeder bucket can be used. Mix a solution of 1 kilo of CANE sugar only and 1 pint of water. Make up about 20 liters. If you don't use it now, you'll need it at the end of the season for their winter feed, around Aug-Sept. time. The sugar solution will keep for over a year. Mix until crystal clear. Invert the filled bucket over the holes in the crownboard. Careful not to drip! Wasps will smell it and you will point them to your swarm. They will kill your bees.

Use an empty broodbox or super to hide your bucket. The roof will then fit neatly on top and be stable. Don't just balance the roof on the bucket. The first good wind will blow it off. Also rain and insects will find their way inside. Feed your swarm until they have drawn out the foundation and have filled 70% of the frames with food stores. Then its time to remove the feeder and put your queen excluder on and supers.

This I will show you shortly so watch this space!

photo copyright 2009 ©-The Hive Honey Shop

Swarms of Bees are about!

Wow, last week was full of calls for picking up swarms. Best swarm activity in years! Around 11am on Monday in Tooting I was about to get in my car when I heard a loud roar overhead. I thought to myself, that sounds like a swarm of bees? I looked up and there was a prime swarm of bees in flight passing among the chimney breasts of the Victorian terraced houses. I jumped in my car and gave chase, but lost them a few streets away.

The next few days we were busy collecting swarms here and there, but mainly in SW London. Now is the time to super up your hives. Give the bees plenty of room to reduce the chance of swarming.

We have also been busy doing divides. This means we look at colonies that are very strong and showing signs of wanting to swarm, producing queen cells, over populated. We leave the queen and five frames of sealed brood behind in the original hive position. We take the other remaining frames and put them in an empty hive, add the remaining frames of foundation and remove all but two queen cells. BINGO you have the makings of a new colony. Once the queen hatches and starts laying this will grow in size and if they too expand quickly, produce queen cells, you can divide them.

Feed all new divides (nucs) to encourage the queen to lay and the bees to draw out the wax foundation.

photo copyright 2009 ©-The Hive Honey Shop

Little Pollen Traps Work a Treat!

Well the pollen is going in fast and thick. We have tried a new kind of pollen trap, one that attaches to the front of the hive entrance. Its quick to attach and remove and the bees fill it up quite quickly. The photos show it in action. The tray was filled within one day.

photo copyright 2009 ©-The Hive Honey Shop

Repairing a Bee Feeder

  
If you put off fixing old tired bee feeders, your not alone! I get caught out too. I have a list of beekeeping repairs to do and the list gets bigger and bigger. So the pile of feeders I was looking at repairing last spring are now needed and I am slapping myself on the wrist!- should have done this earlier James.

So here's a few tips on bringing your old feeders back to life and what to avoid when buying a new feeder. I bought many Miller feeders (a central access for the bees with 2 filling chambers) Not a great design. Some say this is better because your bees will find the syrup easier via the central entrance, as apposed to the Ashford feeder with only an access for the bees at the extreme side of the feeder. Nonsense-bees will find it no matter.

I love the Ashford feeder (photo 3) as there is only one big filling chamber making it easy to fill and more importantly to empty. The Miller as illustrated in photos 1&2 above have two chambers and when you try to empty it, the syrup runs over the central access for the bees and you end up spilling quite a bit. Seewww.beesource.com/plans/mrfeeder.pdf

Also the Ashford feeder is simply built better. The wood used to wall off the syrup is not plywood, but 8mm solid pine and lasts longer. Hence you may not need to do the repairs I am about to explain!

The plywood walls of wood that separate the bees from the open filling chamber will rot and the ply will separate it time due to the on going exposure to moisture from the sugar syrup. So do not toss your feeder away, it can be fixed and serve you for many years to come.

First gently remove the old plywood dividers and use one as a template to create an exact copy. I bought a 4ft x 3 ft 6mm plywood board from Wicks for £5.00 ( Homebase wanted £9.95!) I was able to get 20 dividers from that. If you only need to repair one or two feeders you can use the rest of the wood to make a coverboard, roof  liner etc. Have a look at my first photo, this shows the tools needed to do the job.

Now all the suppliers of feeders seem to supply a central GLASS panel piece to view the bees, Miller or Ashford. This will always break in time. Dumb design fault. I break them by accident when I am cleaning them, using my hive tool, trying to remove it, set something on it, it falls out and breaks... Why do they not use perspex! So in time I am forced to replace them myself with perspex that then lasts forever. Photo 2, shows cutting new viewing windows. The trick to cutting perspex is to use a Stanley knife and score the perspex several times, cutting deeper each time. Then lay it on the very edge of a table that has a Sharp corner. Use a fully supported downward force to snap the plastic. Do not attempt to saw the sheet-it will break everywhere but where you want it to. Once you get the confidence its easy.

I use a flame torch to clean and sterilise the wood before each feed. I paint the inner chambers in December. This gives me 4 months for the paint to dry and fumes to clear before I use them for a spring feed if necessary.

So get to it if you haven't already!

photo copyright 2008 ©-The Hive Honey Shop

Honey Harvest Time.

This is one of the last of my annual harvests. I did manage to get a bit of spring honey. The city sites in and around Wandsworth produced well. I can always count on my city sites each year as there is an abundance of nectar producing flowers in the city and the temperature is warmer and more consistent.

Just a few tips about extracting honey and hygiene: keep your extracting room spotlessly clean! I stack my supers on the trailer and before bringing them into the extracting room, wipe them down on the outside with a mild disinfectant and rinse with clean water. It's just nice to know that no mud, grass, twigs or bees will be brought into the building. Health & Hygiene laws set out useful information to follow when designing your extraction room. 

A modern kitchen will in most cases do. The basic requirements are wipeable walls and  floors. The ceiling should be clear and free of dust collecting items. Hot and cold water supply. Your extractor should be stainless steel, not the basic metal ones of days gone by. They are nice to look at, but as honey is corrosive and reacts to metal-not a safe idea. Food grade plastic has replaced metal for that very reason.

Now lets talk about Ripe Honey! I have a vast private collection of honey from all over the world and I am amazed at how many on offer for sale have fermented in the jar. If the lid is slightly convex (bowed) its a sign that there is a build up of internal pressure in the jar. If the water content in honey exceeds 20% there is a good chance that the shelf life of that honey will be greatly reduced and natural fermentation will occur. The honey is spoilt.

So to avoid this, here are few tips.

1- If the frame of honey is predominately uncapped, it might be a sign your bees have not driven out the water from the nectar yet. Bees are remarkable little creatures and if left to their own devices they will 'ripen' the honey by removing a vast amount of the water contained in the nectar, reducing it to around 20-18% water. The lower the percentage of water the better. Shake the frame of honey downwards if any nectar falls out, the honey is not ready to extract.

2- Buy a refractometer

This is a simple little telescope like device. It has a flip lid and you simply put a drop of honey on the inside of the flap. Look through the lens which has level lines showing 1-60%. It measures the water in the liquid. Quick and very accurate. 

3- Wash and DRY all jars. You don't want to contaminate your perfect honey with water at this point.

Filtering your honey.

There is a lot of controversy over this issue. At present the EU are setting new guideline laws in respect to the filtering of honey. They want to see producers label their honey with, ' Filtered Honey' if they use a fine filtering system. The idea is that consumers should be made aware of this fact, as fine filtering does filter out a considerable amount of the nutritional value of the honey. Fine filtering consists of heating the honey, pumping it under high pressure through a micro mesh filter system. Most hobbyist beekeepers will never have to worry. Like you, we use a gravity system using muslin cloth of a wide grade. It allows trace elements of pollen and propolis through, which most consumers will want and appreciate.

Filtering also ensures there will not be any surprises in your honey. Your honey should be clear of wax and foam bubbles. To avoid the foam ( air bubbles trapped in the honey during the extraction process) decanter the freshly extracted honey into a large food grade bucket. Allow this to stand for 48 hrs before bottling. All the trapped air bubbles will rise to the top of the bucket. Your tap is located at the bottom, so all the honey that comes out will be free of bubbles and crystal clear!

Store any jars of honey out of direct sunlight. Its funny how many times I see shops displaying their honeys in the windows of their shop. It looks great but UV sunlight ruins honey and should not be sold thereafter. Avoid this please. 

This should be enough for now. I'll tell you more about the storage of supers, feeding and closing your hives down for the year next! Let me know what you have collected this year and how your bees are!

photo copyright 2008 ©-The Hive Honey Shop

Honeybees starve to death!

Now is the time to take any surplus honey off your beehives and feed your bees. This year has been a relatively poor year and your bees could starve to death if you do not feed them now!

Late August if a perfect time to feed your bees and take any measures to rid your bees of Varroa. Remember-NEVER feed your bees with supers (honey boxes) on! Remove all your supers and only feed when you have the brood breeding box in place to avoid a cross contamination of sugar or medication with your honey.

For those of you reading this and not hands on beekeepers I will explain.

We are asked all the time by the general public if we feed our bees sugar. They assume that if we feed our bees sugar then our honey must contain the sugar that we feed our bees. People hear about bees being fed sugar and again assume that there must be a percentage of sugar (refined processed cane sugar) in the honey as a result. NOT TRUE!

Professional, responsible beekeepers will NEVER feed bees a sugar solution during a honey collection period. They will only feed their bees a sugar feed AFTER or BEFORE that period. All the honey boxes (supers) will never be placed on a hive during a feed period, thus avoiding any possible contamination of processed sugar within the pure honey.

The European Commission (EC) have VERY strict laws governing this and frequent random tests are carried out throughout the EU states. Heavy fines and prosecutions are enforced if any high levels of sucrose are found within a sample of honey for sale. These measured are welcomed by the UK honey community to ensure a pure natural product throughout the UK & Europe.

With that said, why feed bees? Well one theory is that in the middle of a wet cold winter, bees can find honey too rich and this can trigger Nosema and other stomach complaints. By feeding your bees CANE SUGAR, ( beetroot sugar is a no no!-too complicated for bees to metabolise) this will be in abundance in the brood area ( breeding area) and your bees will find it a simple sugar, easier to digest in the winter months. Your are also topping up their food supply. In recent years many bee colonies just do not collect enough honey throughout the year to see them through the winter, even if you leave them ALL the honey they collected.

So feeding-no harm to your honey or bees, great because your bees will not starve to death. GREAT because this August feeding will encourage your queen to lay, thus ensuring lots of young bees going into the long winter period. We need young bees late in the year because they will need to survive the six months of winter to see the new generation of young Spring bees get going.

Now here's a TIP! Make your own DIY sugar syrup container and keep it filled throughout the year! Having a ready supply of sugar syrup on hand will make your life SOOOOOO much easier. At this time of year it is a must, in the spring it will be a life saver!  You will need to feed your bees approx 2 gals of syrup per colony. I just keep feeding them until they stop taking it down. In the spring I begin feeding again once the days become a bit mild. I do this to promote colony growth and avoid starvation. Feeding is vital. I get people suggesting to me that it is unnatural to feed bees. Yes this is true and in nature they would starve to death and die. Nature is cruel, I am not. Bees die on mass each year and are under threat at present. I afford them every luxury and tend to them with the utmost respect and attention. I do not subscribe to the theory that just because they are wild insects they should be left to their own devices and chance. I believe, when necessary, we should intervene to help the survival of these wonderful creatures by means of feeding, monitoring, cleaning and eradicating any parasites or diseases.  

But I digress. How do you make sugar syrup? Take 2 kilo's of CANE sugar to one pint of hot water. Mix well until it is crystal clear. I make over two tons of this per year! So now what container to keep your sugar solution in? Well EBAY is a great place to start! Many food companies get large food grade drums sent to their factories containing lime juice, lemon juice etc. These drums are offered on EBAY and are perfect to store your sugar solution in. You might be thinking, but James I only have two hives! Once you make up the solution, it never goes off and if is better to have too much in store than not enough! 

I just did an EBAY search on, 'Plastic drums' and 33 items came up. Average price was between £2.99- £7.99 for a 238 liter food grade drum. (not bad) I just cut a hole near the base and inserted a water butt tap. BINGO you have a very professional syrup storage unit. 

This can be easily upgrades to a mixer unit as well by simply buying a small motor and have a shaft with a paddle made to insert on the motor shaft. (its easy and costs around £70) The motor is mounted on the drums lid. I'll show you a photo of this next week.

The beauty of this unit is that you can keep it on site, in the outdoors, ready within reach when you need it. So feed your feeds now. 

PS. do not feed syrup in the cold months of winter. It stimulates the bees to fly out in search of nectar-feed fondant instead. Don't worry, I'll tell you about this in December.

photo copyright 2008 ©-The Hive Honey Shop

Bespoke Period Beehives now available!

                                                              

Now in its 5th year Custom Timber Build are makers of bespoke period beehives. They specialise in reproduction period beehives, but are happy to quote to build a beehive from your own personal drawings.

Some of the beehives built for clients are the Stewarton Hive. Invented in 1819 the Stewarton possed a unique management system. Movement of bees in the hive was controlled by beech slides set between the top bars of each box. With the centre most slide left in to create a solid roof to the brood area.

The queen was inhibited from moving into the honey supers. The outer sides were withdrawn during a nectar flow forcing the bees to draw comb from the sides inwards.

The beekeepers could monitor progress through the windows on both sides. This hive is truly a show piece and is fully functional. All boxes are adjusted to give a degree of interchangeability with the modern British standard shallows. They are made to order and can be finished in your choice of colours from the Fallor & Ball historical colour range, waxed or stained. Assembled the price is £1800 delivery POA

Have a look at their website. See www.customtimberbuild.co.uk

email info@ customtimberbuild.co.uk

photo copyright 2008 ©-The Hive Honey Shop