GBKA  Registered Charity Number : 1014600

  Are You Doing This?

This should be the month of the main flow so be prepared to add supers if they are required, do not give too much super room at this time.

Keep checking for varroa. If you have never tested for pyrethroid resistant varroa then do it now.

Beware of robbing.

If you want to take bees to the heather you will need strong colonies with a young queen and brood box with stores by the end of the month.

If your bees can reach heather then extract your main crop before the heather starts to flower if you want to keep it separate to aid extraction. Excursions

We think it would be a good idea to hire a coach to take us to Stoneleigh next year. The cost would depend on the size of coach, we are hoping a charge of £10—£15 would cover the cost.

Please would you phone /email me if you are at all interested. Otherwise who would like a trip to a garden, eg Wisley?     Bridget

Comment.

My latest assessment of varroa infestation in my colonies demonstrated 1 or 2 dead after 10 days. One of these colonies had made some brace comb and filled it with drone brood. I decided that as the brace comb was not where I wanted it I could sacrifice the drone brood in the cause of varroa control. So I forked them out and found the highest level of infection that I have ever seen by uncapping drone brood. It was decidedly horrifying. However this state of affairs was not indicated by the mesh floor inserts. In the July Bee Craft Malcolm Fraser-Urquhart describes his method for measuring fallout from his colonies. He suggests using ‘Tenza’, a very sticky, transparent, self-adhesive plastic film used for covering books, maps etc. You attach it, sticky side up of course, at the corners with bits of sellotape. The set back with this is that you MUST make the insert beeproof or bees will get stuck to it. Depending on the type of mesh floor you use this can be easy or impossible. He also suggests 15 days as the optimum time suitable for a realistic picture. I find that for me a week is best, otherwise there is so much debris that I cannot identify anything. This is a case of experience and the more you do the better you are at distinguishing things. Malcolm monitors continuously from March to November, he finds it keeps him informed about the changing activity in the brood chamber, giving warning of  swarms and queenlessness as well as demonstrating the presence of different pests and diseases.

Bridget

Apiary News

            The apiary meeting on June 10th was a great improvement on last months, we were able to open all the hives, the bees were good tempered, and there was a  keen group of beekeepers. Eric was able to begin queen rearing using the strongest colony which he had been feeding to build it up. Following a Jack Berry method he made up a second brood box using frames of brood with eggs brushed clear of bees interspersed with frames of food and foundation. The original box was made up with foundation and the new one(devoid of bees) was placed over a queen excluder on top of it. Then tea was drunk. Meanwhile nurse bees moved through the excluder to cover the frames of brood in the new box.

            After half an hour the brood boxes were changed round so that the new one was on the original floor, and the original brood box (with queen) was above it over a closed Snelgrove type board opening to the back. Thus the flying bees would leave the top box and return to the bottom one increasing the number of workers there. So we had managed to separate the queen from the workers without having to find her. The bottom queenless box was now expected to raise queen cells.

            On June 20th we returned (despite the rain) to do the next manipulation. The top brood box (the original) was placed on the bottom floor, (opening now to the front), and the bottom box was placed over it, on  the Snelgrove board with the opening to the back. We then went through this box and found several sealed queen cells. We removed two frames of brood including a decent queen cell, a frame of food and a frame of foundation and placed them into a nuc with its entrance stuffed with grass. This was put ten feet away and given candy.  Having removed all the small scrub queen cells, leaving one good one, the rest of the frames were pushed together with a divider board and left on top of the original brood box. This queen, when mated and laying can be used to requeen the colony, the other one can be used elsewhere. To find out whether the operation has been successful come to the apiary meeting on July 8th.

May apiary meeting in the rain

June queenrearing exercise

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