The one thing that has been on my mind lately is that the bees generally  speaking  know best. I am not saying that we should abandon our bees to the things like varroa or also some methods that also benefit us too. But I have come to realize that the natural way, or the way bees have been doing things for the past 4 million years, must have some importance. Or otherwise why would bees have developed this way of life. So I came to the conclusion that I haven’t always been asking the right questions. I believe that it is quite possible to learn something  from anything in nature if you just ask why. It could be a very small thing that is being observed. But you never know were it might take you, if you simply ask, why does nature do it this way? Of course with this goes the realization that nature really does know best. Bees have their own ideas, take the swarming  impulse. What a great idea of furthering on the species. It has been at-least my conclusion that allowing bees to raise queens in the natural way has proven best to me. The queen cells made are better looked after and never get a chance to get chilled. They tend to be fatter too, making for better layers. They also tend to raise only two or three of this description, witch indicates that they put all there effort into these two queen cells. It is  these that then would become the secondary swarm and new parent colony queen.

So I have had a bit of a mad year with the foul brood  and having to deal with that mess. Things are better than i could have hoped for, as I have now 20 colony’s going into the winter. I started with 16 colonies in spring, 4 of them got the foul brood. These were my strongest ones. Out of the 16 there were about 8 good ones or so, 5 alright ones and the rest was not great. Now at least there are 20 all with a new queen and all full of honey. I only took of one supper the hole year.  So now I can sit back and wait till next year, as I wont be able to go at them again in till next spring. Best wishes David.

I use a treatment called Apiguard that is just thyme in a jell, I use this in conjunction with the mesh floor. The mites fall of and can’t get up again. If you use this treatment you will need to do it right away as now is the time when the temperature is still above 15c. If it it goes below this then the effect diminishes. I did start mine a month ago as that is the best time for treatment, for this is the time when the bees start to make the brood that has the life span of 6 month. ( Worker bees live for 6 month in winter) This is important for  if these bees are born health than you will have more bees for conserving heat in the winter.

I also have only new Queens going into the winter, this means again I will have more bees in the hives. This is because a young Queen lays more eggs. It is important to feed the ones that are low on stores, eaven if you have to resort to white sugar.

Please be careful when using this treatment. Even though this is a natural treatment, I have observed Brood dying in the Comb below the little tray. So put the tray to one side away from any brood and you should have no trouble.

There has been allot of hives preparing to swarm and I even had to deal with some of my colonels getting American foul brood. Now it really pays of having kept notes on my hives, it is nice to have it all clearly laid out.

There is a way to deal with American foul brood in a way that does not require us to burn everything. This is of course against government agreement, it is called the shook method. This is used allot in Denmark and in this method the bees are saved but brood and equipment are still burned. It is important to not move treated colonels and use separate gloves and hive tools, in order to not spread the problems to other coloneys in other aperies. There is also an issue with all the other coloneys in the area, these could be the ones responsible for causing the problem in the first place. It could be that a wild swarm took up residents in your area, died and now the honey gets brought home by our coloneys, and there you are we have a problem. We also need to be carefull not to alow any swarms from our coloneys to escape. What you do is up to you and doing the shook swarm is not legal in this country.

It was a nice challenge keeping track of all the swarming so far and arranging these colonels around by preparing artificial swarms for each. I made up some nukes as well, one from each swarming colony. They got one swarm cell each ( ones that were well covered with bees, indicating that queens were alive) and were checked after 6 days to make sure no emergency queen cells were started. I going to wait now for 2 weeks and have a look to see if the queens have mated and are laying. there is also allot of new suppers going onto my hives at the moment.

The day went quite well with lots of info shared and nice chatting by a warm fire and a cup of coffee. The one thing that made it really worthwile was that for the first time I actually heared the queens in the hive. The queens made a very quiet sound: one was a kind of tuuting, with the other one responding with a quacking. The “tuuting” one was the laying queen and the “quacking” one the virgin in the queencell. It was easier to hear them because the beekeeper took out the varroafloor board for a moment, while at the same time the moving queen and the queencell eggs were at the bottom of the hive.

The beekeeper told me that these sounds from the queens are a sure sign that in just a few days the hive will swarm. Since I now have living proof that hearing the queens communicate is actually possible and this should be a good way to see wether or not the swarm will issue, I’m going to use this way from now on to help me with swarm control in the future.  I was thinking of using the statescope for this, alongside opening up the hives for a while, to actually check for queencells.

I can’t wait till I get back, for it’s usual for some of my stronger colonies to swarm around this time.

To determine what size your colony is, it is best to count the number of frames that have brood within them. In my case I calculate how much brood there is by putting the size of the brood into a standard size brood frame. So say I have three small tennis balls of brood, in each frame, this then would be roughly counted as one frame of brood.

These are the quantities of brood that are in my hives at the moment:

• Queenless hives, laying workers/                                                            1
• 1 frame of brood/                                                                                   3
• 2 frame of brood/                                                                                   1
• 3 frame of brood/                                                                                   2
• 4 frame of brood/                                                                                   3
• 5 frame of brood/                                                                                   4
• 6 frame of brood/                                                                                   1
• one brood chamber + supper jam packed full of brood/                         1

So that was what I found after looking through my hives.

The queenless one I will take to another Apiary right next to the one with the 2 frames. Three days later I will move it two meters away and end up with all the workers not laying going into the one with the two frames. This only works when there is a flow.

I will keep an eye on the ones with only 1 frame of brood. If in a few weeks the brood grows, then I will give them more bees from other hives.

All the rest will be alright to build up for the harvest flow. Some of these are ones with a double brood chamber already and therefore do not need an extra brood chamber put on. On these I usually put a supper. The ones with only one brood chamber will be given shortly, a brood chamber each. I like to give the stronger ones this chamber, for they build it out in a more unified shape. Often if you give just one frame at a time the bees work these frames heavily and the top gets drawn out to much. This will make the artificial swarming tasks easier later on. All double broods will get suppers.

All the bees have plenty of stores and pollen. It was also nice to see the queen in one of the hives.

We still have to be a little bit more patient; the rule of thumb is, if you can go out with only a t-shirt on then you can pull out your first frames. As I last indicated it is ok to feed your bees, if they need it, this is done without disturbing the frames. To decide whether the bees need feeding,  can be seen by looking at the top of the frames, most combs should be capped, if they are open then go ahead and feed right away.

You will have to feed heavily if you discover the above condition, you can also lift the hive up if you are good at judging waits.  If the Queen is laying, chances are she is at this stage, then the nest is getting bigger and bigger and honey stores are going faster and faster. So feeding is a must.

It is also a good idea to get all your gear in order if you haven’t already as the madness is about to start soon again. Have your brood chambers and floors ready for the spring clean. It is good to have several suppers at hand, in case there is an early flow.

Even though there is some nectar being brought in by your bees, the first reel one will be, when the dandelion is blooming with real vigour.

If your hive starts looking like the picture below, then it is probable that the season has begun and you need to put on suppers, fast.