The swarm in the hive - part two

We got back to our neighbours to sort out the colonies in the abandoned hives this afternoon. There were two and both had built comb all over the place.

The first one we opened turned out to be without any queen and no brood whatsoever. We had already tied most of the wax into frames (lots of honey in them too) so we put them into a nuc and closed them up.

The second hive was a different kettle of fish. The main box was sitting without a floor on a tyre - see above. We knew that there was a stack of wax built onto the roof and that another pile of wax was lying in the tyre. We opened it up carefully.

With our hearts in our mouths we carefully turned the lid upside down. So many bees and we still didn't know if the queen was in the lid or in the tyre - or not there at all perhaps. Very gradually we removed plaques with honey and put them to one side and concentrated on the plaques with brood - this is when we knew there was a queen present so long as we hadn't already killed her. This is all fresh comb and there was a reasonable amount of brood - about four plaques - so we reckoned the queen was probably up here somewhere and not down in the tyre. Tying wax - which is heavy when it has brood and honey in it - into frames is not easy. We did our best and I just hope we improve with experience.

The reward was great. Having put four frames of brood into a nuc I suddenly saw the queen still on the lid. We managed to catch her and having put her to one side we had a moment of reflexion on what to do. There were so many bees!

We finally decided to put the colony back into a big hive. We didn't have one with us so we had to make do with the various elements around us. Brood box, crown board and roof were no problem. The floor we found was rotten and fell apart so we made do with another roof. We then put the frames of brood into this box and surrounded it with frames of honey which I had bought up with me.

The discussion and finding the bits and pieces took approximately five minutes. During this time the bees had found the queen in the cage and were gathering around her. It's amazing how nature works so efficiently! In the picture above you can just about see the cage - look at the breeze block in the middle; the cage is under the pile of bees on top, at the front on the right. (OK, you have to know exactly where it is to see it!)

We put this DIY'ed hive just behind the original placement and once the frames were organised we dropped the queen in over a frame of brood. The picture above was taken less than five minutes later. The bees have found her majesty and have started signalling to the other bees who are now marching out of the tyre and into the hive. This has to be the best part of hiving a swarm - or colony in this case.

My only regret with the whole exercise was not marking the queen. It doesn't matter. We know she's in there and next week we'll take another look to see how things are going.

In the meantime there is the orphaned colony to deal with. More thought is required but I suspect that we will go back tomorrow and unite the two. I would be happier if the colony with the queen had more bees to forage and bring in food.

This final picture is the rest of the comb that we couldn't save or fit into frames. Despite being able to support a huge weight of honey or brood - not to mention bees climbing all over it - comb is incredibly fragile once you start trying to manipulate it and breaks easily. The bees are all over it because there is so much honey in there. We will work out tomorrow how to save the honey. I rather suspect that we won't regret it!

Our work was further rewarded when we drove back down through the wood and past our neighbour's house. He was waiting for us and he and his wife called us in for an apero. This is not to be underestimated. Firstly the glasses are HUGE. Secondly it was fizzy. Thirdly having finished more than I normally consume in a week my glass was refilled.

Forgive me if I leave you now - hic...hic!

More Muscovy

Mason came out today with her twelve babies. Since the one we hatched was named Brian (born on Easter weekend) the ducklings have been awarded the title of the 12 Apostles. It's all the fault of Monty Python mad children.

They are very sweet and fluffy. It's slightly alarming that she has chosen to sleep on the bank tonight. Hopefully if the fox comes (he last visited three weeks ago and took a chicken) she can just tumble them all down the hill and into the moat.

Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'll inspect the hives and try and sort out the two in our neighbour's garden.

New Life Up the Garden Path

Our Muscovy (Mrs Mason and her husband is Mr Fortnum) has been sitting for ages. Finally today we saw her babies. The larger one in the front is Brian - born one week ago in the incubator. Mrs Mason has taken him (her?) in without a murmur.

The chicken came out yesterday with her four golden chicks. Gorgeous.

Wild Bees

I finally went up with Max to look at the bees that have taken over some abandoned hives in a neighbour's garden. The hives themselves are fairly rotten although one of them might be usable for this season and another brood box in fairly good condition was lying next to them (fairly good is a relative term - it's fairly good next to the one that is crumbling!) But inside these abandoned hives the bees have been busy constructing comb wherever they can.

The two colonies have clearly been there for a while and look strong and healthy. They are far enough away from our own hives that there is no risk of cross-contamination if there are any diseases lurking around. Each time we come back I soak the hive tools and the gloves in a bleach solution.

All we have to do now is transfer the comb into frames and then into a hive in better condition. I think we have a fifty fifty chance of being successful - as usual it all depends on the queen being transferred and we are unlikely to know this for sure for some time.

But there was a bonus today. Some of the comb was stuck to the roof of the hive and we took the opportunity to take some of this away with us. Honey in the comb was part of my childhood but you don't find it very often nowadays. It's harder for the bees to produce as they have to build the fresh comb as well as fill it with honey but I suspect too that people just don't like eating wax with their honey and there is very little demand. I usually put four small frames (which fit into one normal size super frame) into each hive after the OSR honey has been taken off and we keep it carefully for people we know appreciate it.

But today's comb honey doesn't come neatly packaged:

Just dripping in golden goodness.

A busy day

Yesterday we took another 25 kilos of honey. This makes a total of 45 kilos of spring honey from four hives. For us, that is a good harvest and certainly the artifical swarms played a part. If the bees swarm, we lose about half the honey.

So today I spent the morning bottling the liquid gold. It takes time and organisation. We don't have a handy little tap so the ladle is used - lots of drips. I start with a bowl of water and two (clean) sponges to mop up drips and also to wipe the jars clean. The photo shows a frame of honey, totally capped with wax, just before it went into the extractor. In case you are interested, one frame such as this holds approximately 2kilos of honey.

Then we had an afternoon building shelves - or at least Max and Ralph did. Last week I visited our neighbour who is selling her house. She has given me all her preserving jars which is a really generous if you check the prices. However, we need somewhere to store so many and we finally sorted out a shed and put in some DIY shelving.

In the past I have used these jars for chutneys and tomato ketchups, but I have never preserved fruit and vegetables. Since she also gave (yes, GAVE) us a steriliser and burner, this year will be one of new experiences and experiments.

Max took the opportunity of emptying the shed to wash the empty bottles so that they would be ready for filling in two weeks. We buy red wine "en vrac" and then bottle it here. We have carefully kept bottles for this purpose. The wine is a good table wine and buying it this way is a lot cheaper. Please note - the picture shows a bottle collection of many months!

Spring harvest 2011

The same day that we inspected the artifical swarm we also decided to collect some of the spring harvest. The oil seed rape is very early this year and you are advised to harvest the honey as soon as the petals start to fall so that it doesn't crystallise in the frames - at which point you can't get it out. We only took the frames with the honey covered with wax so a second harvest will be needed this week.

It was a fun day. Some neighbours have young children and they came over to help us with the extracting. Everyone takes a turn spinning the honey out and watching it run from the extractor is a great reward.

And of course they bought an empty pot with them! For once we managed to keep all the bees out of the kitchen while we were working which made it a more relaxed operation. We took a honey bet on how much there would be - the prize was honey of course - and the final score was 23 kilos.

Artificial Swarm part two

Well, it worked! We went down to the hives earlier this week and had a quick look. Sure enough, there was a small patch of new brood in a very busy hive. We didn't look for the queen herself as it seemed pointless to upset the bees during the OSR season but we did take the opportunity to put on a super.

The original hive is obviously less busy - less bees - but there was fresh brood so the queen is still laying. We have decided not to unite these two hives. I have two queens arriving shortly and we will replace the original queen and then work on building up both colonies for the summer harvest.

We also did an artificial swarm with a second hive back at the house. It was packed with bees and brood but queen cells were there in force so we decided to deal with it in the same way.

In case you are wondering, the blue mark on the bottom of the hive means that we found and marked the queen. Blue was last year's colour - this year, 2011, is white.