Time To Protect Your Hives!- 5 tips keeping them safe.

Photo copyright© The Hive Honey Shop 2013

There are so many things that bees need to fight off, just to stay alive. You can help these little ones by providing some added protection in October. Heres a brief check list.

1 Wire Mesh Protection

Woodpeckers love beehives. They see the insects flying out and will peck the thin areas of the wooden hive ( mainly the grooved out finger grips) until they produce a good sized hole. They feast on the bees as they emerge one at a time. They will ruin your hive and kill your bees. I have had sites that for years never had any woodpecker interest- then out of the blue all the hives over night have holes. So we need to protect the hives in the Autumn until May time, after that there are plenty of other woodland insects in abundance to interest our woodpeckers and hopefully not our hives. We cover them with smallish chicken wire mesh. It’s easy to remove if we need to inspect a hive. It keeps the woodpeckers a safe distance off our hives. They can be used for many years.

2 Mouse Excluders

Even if you have never seen a mouse- they are out there and will find your hive! A mouse excluder is a strip on metal with holes big enough for a bee to come and go, but ‘excludes’ a mouse. If these are not put on in autumn a mouse will climb into your beehive, via the entrance, and nest there eating one bee at a time until none remain.

3 Paving Slab On Roof

Gale winds can blow a roof off and your bees will get drenched with fallen rain. We did tie the roofs down but found some roofs warped in the winter weather. So we use a heavy paving slab on the top and the weight keeps the roof shape in order as well as providing additional rain guard and wind weight.

4 Fencing & Screening

As hedges die back, hives are exposed. This can present problems. If you have animals near by, they can wander up, knock hives and disturb and stress your bees, who will in turn dwindle and die. Another problem is vandals and robbing of hives. In this current time of a shortage of bees, thief of hives have risen by 25%. It is important- ‘Out Of Sight, Out of Mind’. Screening by natural  means or artificial, provide wind protection, but allows an open air flow without condensation build up.

5 Match Stick Air Gap

Condensation within your hive is a bad thing! Bees die as a result of wet, dank, cold conditions. You can help them by providing ample air flow for them to expel any water vapor build up. A match stick placed across the four corners of the brood box, below the overboard provides a tiny gap, too small for wasps and other bees to enter, but large enough for a good flow through of air.

October Beekeeping Advice- Plan for next year now!

You should have your beehives just about closed down for the winter. We always change the brood box, floor and coverboard for nice clean dry ones. We also change over as many frames with drawn new foundation that we prepared in the summer. We like to collect full brood boxes of honey and keep these back to feed to our hives in the run up to winter. They do really well with a full fresh honey feed in October.

So planning ahead is key to successful beekeeping. Now that you have a bit of quite time it’s a perfect opportunity to gather your thoughts on how you will strive to be a better beekeeper next year. What steps can you take to ensure the well being of your bees? 

Here’s a few idea:

Pro-active measures that can be put in place.

Here at The Hive Honey Shop we all sit down and write our ‘New Season Bee Planner’. We discuss what areas we could build on, what was lacking last year, what improvements could be put in place. We make a list of equipment that needs to be repaired or replaced. We look at apiary sites that need better securing, wind hedging, animal proofing. Can a site hold more hives, less hives. What hives need to be re-queened, how will we implement nuc building and keep our strains of bees pure.

Our planner has a sort of ‘wish list’ of ideas set out month by month. We aim to be as realistic as we can and work towards achieving those goals month by month in the new year. We find that by questioning our beekeeping management we are far better prepared for the year ahead, not letting it lead us, but we lead it.

In the end our beekeepers are happier and our bees are far happier too!

Photo copyright© The Hive Honey Shop 2013

2 Most Important Bee Items to Keep Clean

The Beehive is obviously the main item that gets all the cleaning but I have noticed over the years two important items that get very overlooked. So its time to highlight these and in doing so I hope it will make your bees and beekeeping a more happy event.

Smoker

This is one of your most personal items, used every time you open a beehive. Whatever fuel you use to make your smoke, be it, bits of leafs, wood, cardboard, hessian sacking, all of those fuels will produce a build up of tar in the smoker chamber, lid and base. Over time this makes opening and closing the lid difficult and can lead to the seam of the lid splitting under force.

The tar build up also creates a smelly harsh smoke that your bees will not like and as the tar build up comes under heat will drip out of the funnel end of the smokers onto your bees and frames. I notice these dark brown patches all over the equipment of others and this is very easy to avoid.

Simple Cleaning Method

Don’t bother trying to scrap the hard tar from the inside and out of your smoker- it will take you days to clean. Just fill a large bucket with cold water and a teaspoon of soda crystals. Then place your smoker spout first into the bucket. Take care that the water level is not so high that it touches your bellow. If the bellow gets wet the wood could swell and split. Let this soak for 24 hours then using a soft washing up brush you will be able to remove most of the tar with ease. Any thick layers may need a bit of gentle scraping. Take care never to apply to much force to your smoker. Most smokers are made using a pressure pinch seam and not welded, so with force can come apart.

We clean our smokers in this way once a week. We have useable smokers over 30 years old.

Bee Suit

I visit apiaries around the country and find a common occurrence- bees following the beekeeper once they step outside their house. They tell me that their bees come up to them  straight away and bother them before they have even stepped near the hives. I ask ‘When did you last wash your bee suit’? They reply, ‘Well I don’t do a lot of beekeeping, its been a while’.

The problem they are creating is that any bee venom on the suit is a natural ‘Bee Alarm’, the bees natural defense signal to rally the troops. So after a session of beekeeping no matter how careful you believe you have been, there will be bee venom on your suit and that will stay there until you wash it. Days later when you put it on again and step outside your door your bees will be alerted to you and of course come flying in to investigate.

Also studies show that once the venom has dried on the material it turns to powder and is lifted into the air. You will breath in this airborne venom and have unnecessary expose to bee venom even though you have not been stung or secondary exposure to those around you. It has been known that beekeepers over time build up a toxicity level to bee venom, thought to be caused by too many bee stings, but taking in the fact of exhaled bee venom this increases the risk of over exposure even if the beekeepers is careful to avoid direct bee stings.

Simple Cleaning Method

One of the main reasons beekeepers are reluctant to wash their suits is the fear of contaminating there washing machine with beeswax and most importantly PROPOLIS! I have so many article of clothing with permanent brown stains due to the fact that a tiny bit of propolis residue was on the side of the washing machine drum and spread onto all my other cloths when I did a new load. So always hand wash your bee suit in a designated big bucket that will only ever be used to wash a bee suit. I use a 20 liter plastic builder bucket. This eliminates the cross contamination of wax and propolis within your clean washing machine drum. 

You can use any detergent, just don’t over do it. About one egg cup is enough to remove bee venom, dirt and sweat. There is a myth that bees will sting you if you use deodorant, perfume or washing powder. I have found that I aways use deodorant and it has never caused any problem with our bees over the past 90 years of beekeeping. Perfume I believe is not a must and could be applied after beekeeping to limit any possible problem. Washing powder I have always found the bees teat me with very little interest when my suit is freshly washed so I can recommend this highly.

Drying Your Suits

Again do not use your lovely clean home dryer for this. If you do propolis will contaminate your dryer drum and ruin many future load of your cloths. What I do is put the bee suit in a large old pillow case and seal the end. Then I put this in my washing machine and put it on the spin cycle only. This removes 80% of the water and I can then leave it to air dry in the room. Veils should only ever be hand washed in cold water and air dried due to the fragile nature of the mesh.

I have found that after a good cleaning of both my bee suit and smoker the bees seem far more relaxed and happy with me. And I hope this little info helps you too! Spread the word and sign up for alerts when we update this blog by clicking on the Subscribe to this Feed on the website. If you have any questions feel free to email me at info@thehivehoneyshop.co.uk

Cheers 

The Hive Honey Shop

All photos & text copyright protected The Hive Honey Shop Ltd- 2013©

Hot Weather- bees need water too!

All photos & text copyright protected The Hive Honey Shop Ltd- 2013©

Don't forget to top up your water source for your bees. If you don't have a water supply then shame on you! Get going now as your little bees get hot and thirsty too.

It's simple to make a water source. we found a disused child's sand pit lid, unturned it and filled it with gravel, old bits of wood, bit of soil and within a few weeks it was a desired water source for many bees around.

Don't make the mistake to give bees fresh water- they will not touch it. They prefer well mature mineral rich water sources. A bucket of tap water will not attract bees. So plan ahead and give your bees plenty of areas around the water to land safely on without drowning. We line the edges of all our water sources with moss, bees love it and use the moss to filter the water before drinking or filling up to take the water back to their hive.

TAKING ORDERS FOR LIVE BEE NUCS 2013

We are breeding a small amount of nucs this year and as always it is on a first come first served until stocks last basis. See our products pop down menu on the home page and navigate from there to Live Bees For Sale. There you will find all the details and prices.

What is the difference between a Swarm and a Colony of Bees?

All photos & text copyright protected The Hive Honey Shop Ltd- 2013©

A common question we get asked is, ’I want to buy a swarm, do you have one?' Over time we began to realise that many new comers to beekeeping were confusing a Swarm with a Colony. So here's a quick guide.

1 SWARM OF BEES

This is a wild cluster of unknown bees that have left an established colony of bees. There will be a queen (unmated?) and around 10-30,000 bees only, no frames or honeycomb in which to breed yet. 

NEVER BUY A SWARM! A swarm is an unknown quantity, possibly with disease, bad tempered or just love to swarm. Ask yourself, why did these bees swarm in the first place? We find the top answer to be, the owner beekeeper left them alone because they were so bad tempered and aggressive. In time the bees built up in size and without proper management from the beekeeper (really only a keeper of bees!) the bees swarmed. A swarm is fine in the hands of a seasoned beekeepers but no fun if you are a beginner. Chances are you are just taking on someone else's problem bees.

2 COLONY OF BEES

This is an established working group of bees with a mated laying queen and worker bees on frames of drawn comb. There will be eggs, open brood and sealed brood (all stages of development in spring & summer). This is what you buy and pay for. But beware-since the recent boom in beekeeping interest loads of ‘over night bee breeders’ have emerged from nowhere. Bee breeding is a very involved scientific matter. Very few come close to being able to say they are bee breeders let alone sell bees.

It appeared to be an easy way to make money, so hundreds of amateur beekeepers are not publicising bees for sell. Like most things, you get what you pay for! A Nuc of bees (nucleus) is the small beginnings of what will grow into a full colony. Normally a nuc will consists of five frames of drawn comb full of eggs, open brood, sealed brood, around 20,000 worker bees, one mated queen and some drones. Most bee breeders sell nucs rather than full colonies. If they are selling a colony ask WHY? In most cases it is not the standard reply, 'I have too many hives and want to cut back.' Nope it more likely they don’t like the bees, they swarm too much or they are diseased so they are looking to shift them. So please take our advice:

A-Ask many questions even if this person is the head of a beekeeping Association this does not mean they are qualified to sell bees or have applied selected breeding technics. Most beekeepers in time can fumble through making a nuc but not of a quality that you should be paying for.

B-Don't let them push you around with, ‘I have been a beekeeper for over 30 years!’ I knew of a beekeeper, head of his county beekeeping association selling bees. He asked me about queen cells on a frame he had which turned out to be drone brood, a VERY basic thing that most beekeepers know. I was shocked and worried for all those who had bought his nucs.

C-Examine the nuc before you buy. Never buy bees that are posted to you. A convenient way to get your bees, only to be disappointed once you open them up. Bees that are posted never do well in transit. If you pick them up yourself, you are able to look them over, find the queen, see all the stages of development and care for them on the journey home. If it is a long distance then take a spray bottle full of fresh water and 3 tablespoons of cane sugar. You can spray the bees through the travel air mesh to keep them cool so they do not over heat. I hear far too many sad stories about bees overheating and dying when posted, as there is no one to cool them down or handle them with gentle care during transit.

Remember this is going to be your hobby. If you want to enjoy your bees spend your money here, you can save money elsewhere. Do your research before you go out asking about buying bees. The better information you have on hand will arm you with the ability to make the right choice from the right person.

Don’t miss our next article- Buying Beekeeping ‘SECONDS’ A nice way of saying Defective! A must read before you buy. Save money and time. Subscribe now not to miss these updates.

Happy Valentines Day! ♥ Sunny in SW London

photo copyright ©-The Hive Honey Shop

                          

Happy Valentines Day! ♥ It's so nice to see blue sky and the SUN again! Even our bees look happy. The hives have bust into action with 1000s of bees having a bit of a ‘stretch of their wings’ after being stuck in the hive because it was so cold.

Remember though that in order for your bees to fly out, using great amounts of energy, they need FOOD. So they will be dipping into their saved honey stores. Take care to feed them if you suspect food is getting low. Try not to disturb them much when feeding, it upsets them at this time of year.