Splitting the Colony

Sunday 26th April (later the same day)

Before taking any drastic steps in this crisis I phoned a very experienced local beekeeper for advice. Following his recommendations we have decided to go ahead with the colony divide, just as we had been planning to do before the queen swarmed away.

This may sound odd, with such a small colony to split, but the logic is that if there is just a slim chance of our single queenless colony surviving then there's double that slim chance if we have two small colonies in the same situation.

The best part of this plan for me is that I can now save two of those seven precious queen larvae - one for each hive. If one of them turns out to be a complete genetic dead-end (it's very hard to tell her character when she just looks like a grub) then there's still her sister in the hive next door. It also means that there is a desperately slim chance that both queens will each be as fabulous as their mother was and will each raise their own colonies to the same strength that Amidala did last year.

It was quite late in the day by the time we'd reached this decision (having spent a large part of it fruitlessly searching for the departed swarm!) so we had to do a bit of a rush job in clearing a site for the second hive. I quickly fetched all the components while my wife started hacking the nettles back.

There wasn't enough time to do a proper job of preparing the ground at all, like I had for the other hive. Just for now it will have to be enough to lay the crates on a flat board for stability - at least this hive won't be so tall as the other was last week (I'm trying hard to think of losing all those food reserves as a positive thing!)
The stand with the landing board sits on top. We decided to position both hives facing in the same direction as it makes it easier to avoid standing in a flight path during an inspection.
The varroa floor goes on next, followed by the empty brood box sitting on top.

The empty frames go in next.
There are 12 frames in these brood boxes so we need to put in six empty frames, three each side of the centre. We won't be doing an exact 50:50 split because this new colony will start at a huge disadvantage - every bee which has already learned to fly will navigate back to the other hive when it flies out to forage and only the house bees which are not old enough to have done their initial flights yet will treat this hive as their permanent home and stay here.
For this reason we selected the six frames (marked A) for the new colony, leaving in this original hive the four frames (marked B) plus the two mostly unused frames we put in last week (the ones at each end).
Of course we had to make sure that just one open queen cell with a healthy looking larva swimming in a pool of royal jelly goes into each hive. Unfortunately I couldn't get a photo which was in focus and we didn't have time to mess about trying to for long!
With all the frames in place, this new brood box shown above is completed.
Above is pictured the original hive with four full frames, two quite empty ones, and six completely empty ones.
Of course there is now a massive amount of wax building to be done by these small colonies but there are enough honey reserves for this purpose. We split the honey stores almost equally - one full super on each hive and a small amount extra in the 2nd super on the original hive. I think we've done all we can to give these colonies the best chance possible, now we just have to hope for the best...

The Swarm

Sunday 26th April

Last week I made a classic error of a complete amateur (which, to be fair, I am!) by not recognising the signs that our colony was actually just about to swarm! I did of course notice that there was a massive amount of bees in the hive when they should have been out foraging on a lovely sunny day - it turns out that they weren't out foraging because they were all there in front of us, busy packing their bags ready to swarm away from the hive! As shown here, we had quite a surprise this week to find that most of our bees (and more importantly, the queen too) have just vanished!

Last week:
This week:
It seems that, probably on Thursday, approximately 70% of the bees swarmed out of the hive with the queen, taking about 30% of the honey reserves with them. I've always read that a swarm leaves with 50% of the bees and 50% of the honey, but maybe that's just an estimate, depending on the local conditions.

We've searched all the barns, attics, chimney pots, sheds, trees, even the empty owl-box in the field nearby but there's no trace of them.
I thought I'd cut off all the queen cells last week, as I have been doing every week as a routine, but this was not enough to put them off - it seems they just swarmed anyway!
What I should have done is recognised that the colony was on the verge of swarming and split them straight away, even without finding the queen. Doing an artificial swarm without finding the queen is possible, it just takes much longer.
I now have only one massively smaller colony with much smaller food stores and no queen - a really huge setback to our year. This colony will be able to raise a new queen because Amidala left them with enough provisions to survive and they have already started growing a new queen to replace her.
There are three long queen cells hanging on the bottom of this frame, each containing a larva in royal jelly. This is the last chance for this colony to survive as a queen can only be raised from eggs less than 3 days old and there are no more of these left in the hive now.
We checked every frame, handling them extremely gently so as not to damage any precious queen cells, and found a total of 7 viable queen larvae. The colony will only tolerate one queen - they'll either destroy any surplus queen cells before the queen hatches or otherwise the first queen to hatch will immediately search the whole hive and destroy every other developing queen herself by ripping a hole in the side and stinging the pupa before it emerges. If two queens hatch at the same time (which is quite possible as these eggs would be very nearly the same age) they would meet and fight to the death, with worker bees helping by choosing which queen to defend.
Another scenario which is quite possible is that one, two, three or even more queens could swarm as soon as they hatch, each one taking another 50% of the bees and stores with them [this is known as a 'cast']. This would be certain disaster for the colony and that's why I have to select what I consider to be the 'best' (?!?) queen cell and destroy all the others myself.
All hopes for this colony then rest on this queen. She quickly learns her flying and navigational skills (not wasting time doing all those days of cleaning duties like the other bees do), then we'll be hoping for a fine spell of weather because she only mates while in flight and is only fertile for about five days of her entire five year lifespan!
This is a staggering amount to expect of one bee (especially one that right now looks like nothing more than a curled up grub in a pool of white goo!)

Supering Up

Sunday 19th April

I noticed the other day that the plastic crate supporting the hive was starting to buckle under the increasing weight. To avoid any risk of the whole thing toppling over as the bees store more honey we're going to take the whole thing apart, replace the crates with some stronger ones, then rebuild it on the same spot. We're also going to add another super to the hive [known as 'supering up'] so they have plenty of room - this should help reduce the natural swarming instinct.
Having removed the lid, both the full supers and the queen excluder we selected the two poorest frames from the brood chamber and replaced them with two empty new ones. We pushed all the existing frames together and added the new frames at each end, as shown, so that the brood nest would not be split.
We plan to replace three old brood frames every year so that we can be sure that none of them is older than four years. This should reduce diseases and pests which thrive on old dirty comb.
I lifted the whole brood box with floor and stand together (it was awkward like this but meant there was no risk at all of the queen dropping out of the bottom of the brood box onto the ground) while my wife quickly swapped the old crates for the new stronger ones. I then put the brood box down in the original spot. This is important because the bees memorise precisely where their hive is in relation to local landmarks - if the hive is moved too far from the original spot they'll just sit on the ground unable to ever find their way home again. This isn't true of course if the hive is relocated a long distance away. The rule to follow is only ever to move a hive 'less than three feet or more than three miles'. Having made sure it was standing in the same spot, at the same height and facing exactly the same direction, the queen excluder is replaced.
Next we put the new, empty super on. We swapped a few full frames over from another super to persuade the bees to just carry straight on filling it up.
The second-oldest super super went on next. This one is almost entirely filled with capped honey now.
The third super is the one they overwintered with. It has been emptied and restocked since then and is completely full. Very little work will need to be done by the bees in this super, other than general maintenance, so it can sit furthest away from the brood box.
It isn't easy to replace these heavy boxes without trapping bees on the edges. The trick is to stand it on at an angle as shown above...
... and then gently swivel it into position, trying to persuade any bees not to stick their noses in the way!
The crownboard sits on top...
... and finally the lid. It seems like a skyscraper compared to what it was just one month ago!
It's fascinating to be able to look closely at the old frames we removed from the hive. Seeing them close up without a veil on you can really appreciate the many different colours of pollen stored here. Bees don't mix pollen from different varieties of flowers, they store them in separate cells and they sort them all out in the pitch black inside the hive!

First Drone Bees of the Year

Sunday 12th April

One of our first drone bees of the year can be seen here:

Here's a close-up of him. He's massively larger than the worker bees and has much larger eyes and wings.
We're still unable to spot the queen but the pattern of egg-laying's ideal so we're not really worried about her.
The sheer quantity of bees to search through is making it seem like a completely impossible task to find her. I think we're going to have to just spend a whole day going through the hive again and again until we do find her! I wouldn't be at all bothered about finding her but I would like to have her clearly marked before attempting the artificial swarm - I don't want to have to spend hours searching for her on that day as well as everything else! That's not going to happen for a few weeks yet though as the swarming season doesn't even begin normally until May and runs through June and July too.
We're looking forward to splitting this colony - it's great to see such a strong and healthy one but the quantity of bees in there right now is just staggering! Also, we did the inspection in full sunshine today so a large portion of the colony wasn't even here but out busy foraging. It must be crammed to the rafters at night!

First Drone Cells of the Year

Sunday 5th April
I added a new super on top today because there seemed to be very little spare room inside. I swapped several of the frames over in each super so both of them have some full and some empty frames. This should encourage them to fill the empty ones more quickly.
As usual, they've filled up any spaces they can with brace comb so I scraped it all off as normal. I need to build myself a wax melter soon so I can start saving all this surplus wax rather than just dispose of it. They're very expensive to buy but I'm sure I can make a basic solar-powered one quite quickly.
There are two queen cups here, a bit of practising for the swarming season. I checked they had no eggs inside - if a worker had actually transferred an egg in there it would show that they're getting pretty serious about swarming. Finding an actual larva in one means they will (almost definitely) swarm within the next 5 - 7 days so it's vital to check every single one of these I find, just in case.
The swarming instinct is practically unavoidable as it is the bees' natural method of reproducing - the whole colony splits in two, one half leaving with the old queen, the other half staying behind to raise a new queen. Of course I don't want to lose half my bees and a good queen so I'm planning on attempting an 'artificial swarm' when the time is right - it's a method of fooling the bees into believing that they have swarmed, and involves manually dividing the colony.
The presence of drone cells on the bottom of the frame above is a good sign - the queen actually chooses the gender of the bee as she lays the egg by either fertilising it as is laid to create a female, or laying an infertile egg to create a male - it sounds like the maddest science fiction but it's absolutely true!
She will usually only lay drone eggs when the colony is strong enough to keep them - drones are notoriously hungry and lazy. They do no work whatsoever, not even guard duties [they have no stinger so can be handled without any danger at all] - their only purpose in life is to find a virgin queen, mate with her, then die immediately after. Until that happens they just lounge around looking impressive!
Judging by how many drone cells have been built here I think the colony can probably afford to lose a few! Leaving a portion of drone brood like this for a while is a good idea because varroa mites prefer drone cells to breed in. Once these cells are sealed I can just slice them all off and dispose of them. It means losing a large number of [mostly useless] drones and hopefully an even larger number of varroa mites.
We've had no luck spotting our queen Amidala yet. This seems like an impossible task right now but we do need to find her before attempting the artificial swarm - we're hopeful that we've got several more weeks before we need to worry about that though.