Tag: honeybees

Bailey Comb Change

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This sounds like quite a complex procedure however its really not. This is a way of changing all the frames in one go.

You will need a new brood box with a full set of new frames and foundation. Place this new box on top of your existing brood box, put a feeder and syrup feed on top and let the bees start drawing out the comb. Once the bees have drawn out some of the comb find the queen and place her up in the top brood box. Put a queen excluder in-between the two boxes, so that the queen cannot get back down.

You can use a split board if you have one; this is a queen excluder with an entrance on it. If you do use a split board open the entrance and close off the bottom entrance. You can, if you prefer, rotate the floor so the bottom entrance is now at the other side, the bees will leave by that entrance but return to the other side of the hive and find the new entrance above. Close the bottom entrance the following day. If you decide to not rotate the floor but just close the entrance in the position it is in, the bees will find the exit so don’t worry.

Equally, if you don’t have a split board just use a queen excluder and the original entrance. The advantage of using the split board is that the bees won’t travel through the lower box storing pollen around the brood that is still down there. Instead, they will store pollen in the top box where the queen is now laying. Make sure you put a feeder with syrup on the bees and keep feeding for as long as needed.

After 3 weeks all the brood will have emerged from the frames in the lower box and you can now remove it along with the queen excluder. The wax can be rendered or burn along with the frames.

How do I change my Brood Frames

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Brood comb must be replaced regularly in the hive to help with colony hygiene and disease control. Opinions on this topic do vary but the NBU (National Bee Unit) say that brood comb should be used for no more than 3 years. The old comb should be rendered or burnt.

There are a few different ways you can change the comb. Below I have detailed 3 common one. The one thing they all have in common is that you will need to offer your bees syrup to help then to draw out the new foundation you have given them.

Replacement of just 1 third of your brood frames early in the season

It is suggested that you replace 1/3 of your brood frames each year, this way you will never have frames older than 3 year.

This is relatively easy to do but its not a quick way of changing frames. The process involves you gradually moving the frames you want to change so that at the end of the season they are sitting at the outer walls of the brood box.   The following spring you can remove these frames and replace them with new frames and foundation. Remember to feed them syrup, especially important if changing the frames in spring when the season is only just getting going.

Bailey Comb Change

This sounds like quite a complex procedure however its really not. This is a way of changing all the frames in one go.

You will need a new brood box with a full set of new frames and foundation. Place this new box on top of your existing brood box, put a feeder and syrup feed on top and let the bees start drawing out the comb. Once the bees have drawn out some of the comb find the queen and place her up in the top brood box. Put a queen excluder in-between the two boxes, so that the queen cannot get back down.

You can use a split board if you have one; this is a queen excluder with an entrance on it. If you do use a split board open the entrance and close off the bottom entrance. You can, if you prefer, rotate the floor so the bottom entrance is now at the other side, the bees will leave by that entrance but return to the other side of the hive and find the new entrance above. Close the bottom entrance the following day. If you decide to not rotate the floor but just close the entrance in the position it is in, the bees will find the exit so don’t worry.

Equally, if you don’t have a split board just use a queen excluder and the original entrance. The advantage of using the split board is that the bees won’t travel through the lower box storing pollen around the brood that is still down there. Instead, they will store pollen in the top box where the queen is now laying. Make sure you put a feeder with syrup on the bees and keep feeding for as long as needed.

After 3 weeks all the brood will have emerged from the frames in the lower box and you can now remove it along with the queen excluder. The wax can be rendered or burn along with the frames.

Shook Swarm

This is a very effective way of quickly changing all your brood frames and will result in removing all pathogens from the hive, it can however be quite stressful for the bees, so you need to ensure you have a good quantity of young bees in the colony before you carry out the shook swarm. 

The best time to do the shook swarm is late spring, you should have plenty of young bees by this point. The method is quite simple: Lift your brood box off the floor and move it to one side. Place a queen excluder on the floor then place a a new clean brood box, containing brand new frames and foundation, on top of the queen excluder. Remove 5 or 6 of the center frames to create a gap.  Now go to your original brood chamber and remove the first frame. Shake all the bees off this frame into the gap you created in your new brood box. Repeat with all the frames, look for the queen as you go. Personally I would lift the queen off the frame and place her into the new brood box, you can just shake her in if you prefer. If you didn’t see the Queen throughout the procedure do check the walls of the old brood box and make sure she is not there.  Shake any bees left on the brood box walls into your new box too.

Gently replace the 5 or 6 frames back into the gap in your new brood box, place the crownboard on top along with a feeder full of syrup.  Keep this feeder topped up until your bees have sufficient stores in their new frames.  The queen excluder on the floor will stop the queen from leaving and taking the bees with her. Once your queen is happily laying you can remove the queen excluder (2 weeks is a good bet)

The old frames you removed that have stores in them can be extracted and the wax rendered, any frames with brood in are best burnt. If you do extract stores from these frames, make sure you are confident they are stores of honey and not syrup that you may have offered in your winter preparations.

Carrying out a shook swarm on a colony with a good volume of young bees will very quickly work the new foundation in your frames, you may be quite surprised how quickly this happens. Do ensure they have a constant supply of syrup.

Why did my Honey Bees Abscond?

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Recently I have taken a number of calls from beekeepers who are telling me their bees have absconded. So what does mean and why is it happening?

Let’s look at what Absconding means first – This is when the entire colony leaves the hive, they will be preparing in advance of going, just like they would if they were swarming. The queen will be slimmed down so she can fly, the workers will have scouted for a new place to move to and they will fill their stomachs with honey when they go. But, unlike a swarm, the whole colony will go leaving not a single bee in the hive. You may find you still have some sealed brood and stores left behind but that will be all.

So, the next question is why have they gone? Well the truth is that there is still very little understood about why bees abscond. There are however some observations that can draw us to certain conclusions for individual cases. It is known that certain conditions have been present when bees have absconded:

  • Nectar dearth – a severe shortage in nectar flow which will inevitably see a reduction of stored food in a colony, especially a colony that is growing fast.
  • Predators – if the colony is constantly under attach by predators, this could be wasps, hornets, ants, wax moths etc
  • Constant disturbance – if the colony is constantly being disturbed by animals, humans or even noise, this can be a driver in seeing them move on.
  • Sever hot weather – overheating in the hive, especially a hive that is overcrowded.
  • Varroa – High levels of varroa cause a lot of stress on a colony.

Honeybees have a natural instinct for survival so you can see why the reasons above make sense – moving to a new home due to lack of forage in their current location, or being invaded by other insects does sound like a good plan! Equally if the bees were being constantly disturbed you can see why they may like it and decide to move home.

Hot weather will generally see our bees bearding. This is where they hang outside of the entrance of the hive. It has been reported, that in prolonged extreme temperatures, the bees have been known to leave the hive and not return. However I have heard of this happening in the UK.

The point about varroa is defiantly worth taking onboard. It is known that in un-managed colonies high levels of varroa have been found in whats left of the brood nest. So, it would not be wrong to suspect that the same can happen in managed colonies where the varroa levels are high too.

I hope that this in someway provides maybe an insight into what happened to your bees. There maybe somethings you can do to mitigate it happening again.

How to requeen an Aggressive colony

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Before I start on the topic of how to requeen an aggressive colony I would just like to talk a little about what we term as Aggressive.  I have been working with honeybees for over 12 years and in all of those years I have only ever encountered 2 colonies that were “Aggressive”. One of those was not a colony we owned but one we did end up with and it was troublesome to requeen. I have also experienced bees that “buzz” and “bounce” off you, and whilst this is perhaps not the most desirable trait it definitely does not fall under the description of “Aggression”. Often there is a reason for the colony behaviour. If, your normally nice bees suddenly turn nasty almost overnight then there is probably a very good reason.

The other experience I encountered with a colony that was extremely aggressive was with one of our own colonies; it was on a pollination contract at the time and it just went for me literally straight away.  I can recall there being of lot of activity as I removed the roof and as soon as I lifted the crownboard that was it.  I am pleased to say that I have never experienced that again, and I hope I never do!  I did find out why the bees were so aggressive towards me and actually they had every right to be as they were defending themselves. They were pollinating raspberries and, rather sadly the grower did not have orders for the forthcoming fruit crop, so they turned the water supply off to the greenhouses as they could not afford to keep the plants alive.  The nectar source had suddenly been turned off and therefore their food stores were now very precious to them as it was mid-season and the colony numbers were big and still growing. 

Bad handling of your colony can upset them as well inappropriate use of smoke.  Bees are still wild animals and they have a naturally evolved defence mechanism that is there to ward off predators. If you go in all guns blazing with lots of smoke and noise and rough handling, you should not be surprised if you bees are less than happy to see you!

If you do have an aggressive colony there is always something that can be done.  I have heard beekeepers say they are so aggressive I have no option but to kill them.  You do have options and whilst killing them may be one of them, it should always be as a last resort.

If you are feel you are able to inspect the colony to locate the queen then do so. You will probably need to use more smoke than usual, which could be counterproductive as it may make the queen run more and she may end up being somewhere you’d least expect her to be. You can try using sugar water in a spray instead off smoke, as this will also stop the bees flying and they will hopefully be side-tracked by the sugar water too. If you inspect at the height of the day on a nice warm sunny day then most of the flying bees should be out and therefore you will have less bees in the colony to deal with.

If however, the colony is so evil that it makes it impossible to inspect, then you can try doing something to reduce the volume of bees you are dealing with. Again you should make sure it is a nice warm sunny day as you need the flying bees to be out flying.  The idea is that you move the hive several feet away from it’s existing location, place a queen-right nuc or small colony on the original location and you will find the flying bees, and these are more likely to be the ones that sting you, will return to original site and go into the new colony there.  It would be a good idea to cage the queen in this new colony to protected her from the returning bees, unless of course this queen was one you were going to replace anyway and then it won’t matter if they do overwhelm her.

If you move the hive in the morning then by early to mid-afternoon, depending on what time of the year it is, the vast majority of flying bees will have gone out foraging and will return to new colony you located on te original site. The activity at the entrance will be much less and there should be mainly young bees left in the colony. These younger bees will be far less aggressive and therefore will make it easier to inspect.  This will also mean there is a much better chance of them accepting the new queen too.  Now go through the colony, find the queen and kill her. Do not under any circumstances be tempted to keep her!

Put your new queen, still in her introduction cage with the tab on so it is sealed, into the colony and reassemble your hive. Leave the colony for 48 hours then go in and do an inspection and either remove the tab from the queen cage to let the bees let her out, or you can carefully open the cage and release her yourself.

If however, the colony is still too difficult for you to go through and you can’t find the queen, then you could try splitting the colony down. Take out some of the frames and bees to make up 2 or 3 smaller nucs which you can leave for a few hours and then go back and inspect and see if you can find the queen.  You may see from the behaviour of the bees which colony is likely to have the queen in. Once you have found the queen and killed her you can replace the combs back into one hive and add the new caged queen as described in the previous paragraphs.

If you did manage to find the old queen in the colony without splitting it down and reducing the bee numbers etc then do bear in mind that the bees may well overwhelm the new queen when you put her in. We have had a better acceptance rate by removing the old queen and leaving them for a few hours before putting the new queen cage in. I would suggest that at this stage you do spray the bees with sugar water before putting in the new queen and again leave the cage sealed for 48 hours so you can check she is still ok.

You may find the bees temperament improves just with the new queen heading the colony but in most cases you may need to wait until the new brood emerges that your new queen has laid to see a change in temperament.

If your bees do kill the queen and you try again only to find they kill her as well, the best thing would be to let them make a new queen using a frame of eggs from a colony that you do like the temperament from. Or you may have a queen cell that you can carefully take from another colony and see if they accept that.

Hopefully this will be of help to you, whatever your plan, remember to stay calm and focused, and do ask a friend to be there for reassurance and support if you can.

How do I make a split / Make up a nuc?

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We make up splits or nucleus for various reasons. It may be that you want to increase your colony numbers and making your own splits, if you have strong healthy colonies is a good cost-effective way of doing this. Depending on the time of the year you do the splits it may affect your honey harvest from the colony. Splits are also made as part of swarm control /prevention.

There are a couple of things you need to take in to account when making up splits. Firstly, if you are to keep the new colony in the same apiary as the parent colony the flying bees will return home. You must therefore ensure you shake extra bees into the nuc to mitigate this.

If you have several colonies, but none that are exceptionally strong, you can make a split up by taking frames from multiple colonies. It would be best practice to take bees from 3 colonies not 2 as it is said that bees from 2 colonies will fight but from 3 or more, they will not as there will be confusion with the different pheromones.

And lastly, you need to make sure that the colony/colonies you are splitting from, are strong and disease free.

Equipment you will need is a nucleus hive, these usually take 5 or 6 frames. These are available in both wood and polystyrene; the advantage of the polystyrene is that they are lighter, which makes moving them much easier.

A rule of thumb is that a split is made up with 2 frames of brood and 1 frame of food. You can of course put in an extra frame of brood but ensure that you have enough bees to cover all the brood. So, all frames of brood that go into the nuc should be covered with bees. Make sure these brood frames have plenty of sealed brood rather than wet brood on them, this will ensure you have young bees quickly which will help the nuc to grow.

If you are making up a split from a colony that is throwing up queen cells and plan to use one of the cells as your new queen, make sure you remove all other queen cells on the frames and only leave one. If you are leaving the nuc on the same site as the parent colony you will also need to shake in 3 frames of bees to compensate for the flying bees that will return home! Do make sure you don’t accidentally shake the queen in from the parent colony!!

Fill the rest of the Nuc box up with new frames and foundation. If you are adding a new queen, you can do this at the same time but do observe the reaction that the bees have to the queen. You may need to leave them for an hour or two before adding her. Some beekeepers will leave the bees for a few days before adding her. The bees will of course start to make queen cells in this situation so, if you do this, ensure you go back through the frames and remove any queen cells they start before putting the queen cage in. Leave the tab on the cage and then check the frames again 2 days later for more queen cells. Remove them all and remove the tab on the queen cage at the same time. Ensure the small nuc has plenty of food, offering them syrup will help them with the new foundation they have to pull, make sure you give them enough food to last them until at least your next inspection. We recommend leaving then for 10 days now before you check to see if the queen has taken.

If you are making up a nuc using a queen cell, select a queen cell that is not sealed. This will allow you to estimate when your new queen will emerge; it will be 8 days after the cell has been sealed. The queen will hopefully mate successfully and start to lay anywhere between 2 to 3 weeks, the weather may affect this. I leave my colonies for 3 weeks before I check them for eggs. Do however, keep an eye on this colonies food stores and offer them syrup if they need feed.

Replace the frames that you have taken from the parent colony/colonies with new frames and foundation.

If it’s in the earlier part of the season that you make your nuc up, you will need to keep an eye on space and make sure you have a full hive ready for when it’s needed. If you are making your splits late in the season, they overwinter well in the nuc box.

Summary:

  • Ensure parent colony is strong and free from disease
  • If you are letting bees make their own queen, make sure you select an unsealed queen cell
  • Ensure the new colony has sufficient food to last until at least the next inspection
  • Make sure you have enough bees to cover the brood in the nuc
  • If you are leaving the bees on the same is site as the parent, shake in an extra 3 frames of bees to compensate for the bees that will fly home
  • Don’t make a nuc up from 2 colonies as the bees will fight, make it up with bees from 1 or 3 colonies

This Nuc is 2 weeks old. It was made from a single colony taking 2 frames brood, 1 frame food and adding 3 new frames with new foundation. Fed with Ambrosia Syrup.