Blossombank in July

Contributing author: Viv  Hill

After days of looking at a distinctly unoptimistic weather forecast you will not need to use your imagination to know how happy we were when the day dawned bright and sunny and, more to the point ,stayed that way.  Graham and Viv Hill were pleased to welcome the 40 or more members that turned up and, having worried about the parking facilities, drew a huge sigh of relief that there was no problem at all.

The hives were opened by Andrew Tassell and Tony Harris who was ably assisted by Stephen Palmer. Tony was able to demonstrate the practice of ‘Artificial Swarming’ using a nucleus hive and Andrew went into a further two hives where, in the first, he found Queen cells but no apparent Queen and so one open Queen cell was left. In the other he both found and marked the Queen. As Andrew was working with many of our newer members who have yet to have a hive of their own, and some who have, this proved to be very instructional and those with Andrew were pleased that they had the opportunity to see some very interesting hive work. Those with Tony had his expert instruction on swarm management and that too was felt to be most useful.

Graham moved between the two groups assisting as and when and Viv was the ‘Tea Lady’, and quite frankly couldn’t have been more pleased as the temperature was soaring and shade was undoubtedly the best place to be!! Two of the younger members had to be ‘rescued’ as they were far too hot in their bee suits.

The raffle was a success with many and differing prizes. I must add another word of thanks to William Hill, Graham’s son at whose home the apiary is situated. A good time was had by all and ‘the tea lady’ served out tea for well over an hour.

Needless to say all of the biscuits and cakes disappeared.

Queen marking colours

Contributing author:  Viv Hill

Everyone is going to love this!!!

Well I do.

V. x.

This mnemonic helps remember that ‘drat’ order that one can never remember!!!.

Be Warned You Require Gloves
Blue White Yellow Red Green
0 1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9

The numbers are matched with the year end number.

 

A topped up swarm

So we got a message at the weekend that a swarm had arrived and taken up residence in someone’s loft near Elgin.  Bees had been there before and this swarm had discovered the old combs left behind by the previous owners.  All perfectly accessible we were assured.  I should have known at that point that it was not going to be a simple retrieval.  But the chance of some free bees is a hard one to pass up.

Monday morning found me lying flat out on my front in full beesuit and veil in the dark (lit only by a torch) blinded by sweat, surrounded by bees and trying in vain to remove them from their combs into my lovely new polystryrene nuc box – the combs had been built into the darkest tightest corner of the eaves of the roof .   To describe what it was like there as a scene from hell wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration!   I brushed and scooped as many bees into the box as possible hoping that the queen would be among them and that all the rest would be keen to join her.   I departed drenched in sweat and beesuit filthy to allow them to settle and remove them on Tuesday.

On Tuesday I returned to find the box containing only a couple of frames worth of bees and no queen.   The rest of them were tucked out of reach on the remaining combs in the furthest reaches of the eaves.  I had failed miserably!

I moved them back to the association apiary and to give them a chance of survival I gave them one of our queens from our queen rearing project.   I went back again today but this time armed with three frames of brood and bees from my own colonies and gave them to the nuc.

All being well I’ve got the beginnings of another colony which I can build up for the winter and hopefully next summer get me some honey!

But next time someone mentions lofts and bees I think I’ll pass on the opportunity.

A bevvy of beemasters

Feeling the heat!

Contributing author:  Viv Hill

Saturday July 2 proved to be a wonderfully sunny and calm day – just right for our Beekeeping exam.  We were thrilled to have Ian Craig, a most senior Scottish beekeeper, to come and be our examiner and the first examinee started at 9 a.m.

As our out-apiary is now well equipped with hives and bees it proved to be an excellent place to hold the exam with more than enough hives to provide Ian and the candidates with a satisfactory opportunity to ‘display’ their abilities.

Under scrutiny

As is becoming the custom in the Moray Beekeepers Association the day was marked with good humour and lots of laughter all of which helped those being examined to ‘keep calm and carry on’.

Tony and Viv spent a good deal of the day there both assisting in the progress of the examination and innumerable cups of tea, chocolate buns and shortbread.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!

It is wonderful to be able to say that not only did all the seven candidates satisfy the examiner but all passed with a Distinction which is a mark of more than 75%. It is quite unnecessary to say that we were all thrilled and much congratulating was to be seen and heard!!

It goes without saying that the Committee is thrilled and most gratified to know that the hard work that has been put in by all during the last winter and spring period has paid off ‘in buckets’.

Our other wonderful news is that the Portacabin, which was sourced by John Baillie, has arrived and is already proving to be a huge asset.

The successful candidates (except Gerry and plus Ian and Tony!)

The day finished at 4.15 p.m. and many tired but happy folk set off to their respective homes with broad smiles on their faces.

The Committee of Moray Beekeepers would like to offer their sincere appreciation and thanks to Ian Craig for travelling almost the entire length of Scotland to conduct the examinations so very professionally.

Candidates:  Gerry Thompson, Wendy Jamieson, Donna Clark, Andrew Watson, John Baillie, Pamela Nairn, Graham Hill.

Pluscarden Abbey

Meeting up

Contributing author:  Viv Hill

Saturday 18th June dawned bright and sunny and so we thought ‘hooray!’ just the day for our outing to Pluscarden Abbey. My joy was short-lived as by ten o’clock the dark clouds appeared and the weather slowly but surely deteriorated.

Rob's demo

Off we set to arrive in good time only to find that the drizzle was even more determined to rain on our parade. Undeterred by the weather almost 40 beekeepers and prospective beekeepers appeared and it was the beginning of what turned out to be an excellent afternoon.

Beekeeping in the rain

The meeting was greeted by Tony Harris, our secretary, and then followed a demonstration by Rob Mackenzie. It had become clear that we had a lot of new folks in our midst and so the plan was that they should be split into three groups with a view to their, at least, being able to see into a hive or two.

Fr Benedict

The groups were headed by Dr. Stephen Palmer, Tony Harris and Rob Mackenzie with two groups going to the new apiary at Pluscarden Abbey, St. Scholastica’s, to where some the hives have been moved and the other group going into the hives at the original site.

The prizewinners!

Those bees, at the old site, proved to be quite difficult and so the hives were closed quite quickly thus proving that it isn’t always a good idea to go into hives when the weather is inclement.

After the beekeeping business was finished with we all retired to the tea-room at the Abbey and a fine repast was had by all. The raffle, which was most ably organized by Angie Mackenzie was drawn and in all there were eleven prizes. We were joined by Father Benedict during the afternoon and also the Abbey cat – a jolly black and white person with a very short tail.

 

The Chairman's Crew!

It was excellent that we had so many new beekeepers with us and Tony did a fine trade in selling various new or second hand beekeeping ‘goodies’.

Moray Beekeepers Association is in fine fettle and thrilled that all the work that our Association has put into promoting beekeeping and awareness in our area is growing so well. So you see, every cloud does have a silver lining, especially yesterday at our favourite site at Pluscarden Abbey where the wonderful peace and tranquillity (except for a few rather grumpy bees!) was there for the taking.

Queen Rearing – the Cook method part 4

A lineup of mininucs (plus Tony)!

Last Wednesday we carried out the last stage of the process – dividing the sealed queen cells up amongst mating nucs. We didn’t get as many pictures this time as everything got a bit hectic whilst we were filling the nucs and all hands were needed.

First we got all the mininucs ready for filling with bees.

What's the score?

Then it was into the hive to see how many of our larvae had finally been accepted and turned into sealed queen cells.

Aww - only six!

At this point we got a bit of a disappointment as it turned out that although the bees seemed initially to have accepted most of the grafted larvae they had only taken six to the sealed queen cell stage.  It was probably my dodgy first attempt at grafting but hopefully better results next time.

But there was a bonus in store for us when we went through the hive.  The bees had decided to build a few queen cells of their own. So, not to let their efforts go to waste, we harvested the extra cells and gave one each to its own mininuc.

Bonus queen cells!

And that was that.  We spent a chaotic hour piling bees into mininucs and left them closed up in the shed.  Tony went back to release them on Friday and all seemed well.  But by today (Sunday) two of the Kielers were empty of bees and their queens were dead in cell.

Fingers crossed we don’t get any more casualties!

Queen rearing – the Cook method part 3

Today and yesterday saw the critical parts of our queen rearing procedure taking place.  Or to my mind the scariest parts.   For the morning session we had myself, Tony, John, Dianna and Ian in attendance.

The plan was to rearrange the colony to make the bottom brood box (full of young bees after last week’s manoevres) queenless and place the queen and the bees with her in the top box over a split board.  For those who don’t know a split board is basically another floor which separates the top storey of a double brood box hive and gives the upsatirs bees their own exit.

So before we swapped the position of the brood boxes over and introduced the split board we had to check the upper brood box for queen cells and destroy any found.  The bees in this box had moved up to accompany the brood but had been separated from the queen by queen excluder since last week.

The gap

As you can see we found some and I, in my wisdom and seeing how keen the bees were to build queen cells, was heard to utter the immortal phrase, “I think we’re on to a good thing with these bees”!  Needless to say Tony was to quote this back at me on a number of occasions as the day proceeded!

John hard at work

A gap was left in the bottom queenless box for the frame of grafted larvae to be put into in the afternoon.

Queen cell bars and grafting tool

After making sure the queen was in the top box we went our separate ways to return in about 3 hours for the grafting, by which time the bees in the bottom box would realise they were hopelessly queenless and eagerly accept our grafts (well that was the theory anyway!).

The chosen frame

Some of us were a bit more active than the others in the interval.  Above you can see John spending his time fixing our leaky roof and getting stung on the cheek for good measure!

In the afternoon we all returned and were joined by Arlene from our last introduction to beekeeping course.  Now it was time for the part of the process I was most worried about – the grafting.  I had made some wax queen cups and waxed them on to a modified frame with two bars to hold them.  And now it was time to take the plunge.  I had been really keen to try grafting but now I wasn’t so sure.

Grafts carried home in a nuc

Given the weather was typically Scottish and it had in fact been hail-stoning about an hour before we had to resort to grafting in the front seat of Tony’s car – far from ideal!

Vince Cook advises that it’s much easier to graft from larvae in relatively freshly drawn comb but the best candidate from the combs of unsealed brood we had was a fair bit darker than I’d have liked.

My plan was to cut down the row of cells below the larvae I wanted to graft to allow easier access.  But the old comb was harder to cut and didn’t break or fold cleanly.

Making the best of it I ploughed on.  I’d like to say that grafting was easy and the larvae all lifted cleanly and slid off gently into their new cells.  Well the ones I successfully lifted were very gently treated but I’m sorry to say there were a good few that I rolled or otherwise damaged and had to be discarded.  After what felt like an age I had all the cells filled with the smallest larvae I could find and off the comb went back to the cell raising colony protected from the wind by a nuc.

I must say I wasn’t at all hopeful of the success of the grafts and worried about them for the following 24 hours.  I was certain we’d have to go through the whole process again or that we’d only get 3 or 4 larvae accepted by the bees.

Well back we came again today to see what the score was and……..

Success

We didn’t brush the bees off to check the acceptance rate in detail but pretty much the whole of the top bar of grafts had been accepted and it was much the same on the bottom bar.  To say we were pleased is a big understatement!

We’ll be back again in just over a week to make up nucs/mininucs and give each a sealed queen cell.  Then all we have to worry about is them mating properly – but the finish line is in sight!

 

 

Queen rearing – the Cook method part 2

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that we were about to embark at long last on a foray into rearing our own queens.  Unfortunately the superb weather of April has been replaced by a somewhat more familiar icy blast and we had to delay our plans.  However this week it was decided that if we didn’t start now we never would and so today, armed with “Queen Rearing Simplified” we started on the great adventure.

Spot the Queen!

In attendance were John and Dianna Baillie, El Supremo himself  Tony Harris and yours truly.  We have Dianna to thank for the photographic record of events.

Charged queen cell

Today was stage one of the process and the first part of that was to find the queen from our chosen cell starter colony and confine her in a bottom brood box away from most of her brood.  The theory being that the brood hatches and all of those young bees are in prime condition, when we make them queenless, to feed our grafted larvae when we carry out stage two of the process in eight days time.  Well found her we did and into the queen clip she went.  Then we set about rearranging the colony.   A couple of charged queen cells were found and the decision was made to make up a couple of nucs using the queen cells and the excess brood from the top box of this double brood box colony.  John had very generously made and donated  some very beautifully crafted nuc boxes and a couple of these were pressed into service.

Brood for a nuc

Nucs made up, entrances blocked


 

Queenless queen clip!

This is where the fun started.  Unknown to us Tony’s queen clip was bust and on lifting the manipulation cloth under which the clip had been placed her majesty was nowhere to be seen!  By which time the normally even tempered bees were quite understandably getting a bit concerned at the tearing apart and rearrangement of their home.

John in a cloud of bees!

There was nothing for it though and back through the box we had to go. Luckily we found her in reasonably short order and put her into the brood box where she’ll be staying for the next couple of weeks.

Releasing the queen

A gallon of feed to keep them happy!

Well that was pretty much it.  We reassembled the hive and off into the sunset we went.  Until next week when I make my first attempt at grafting larvae.  Stay tuned!

 

Mayfayre 2011

On Saturday last Allison Laws and Viv Hill went to the ‘Mayfayre’ to represent Moray Beekeepers at the Steiner School.  It was an extremely blustery day with several of the tents blowing over – many tent pegs used thereafter!  The Steiner school is privately owned and their MayFayre represented the school’s enjoyment of the Spring and early Summer.  Our display was well received  and I can clearly say that all who visited it were both interested in and very aware of the pastime of beekeeping and the problems which beekeepers are dealing with at the moment.

The children very much enjoyed our bees and pollen game and the adults were pleased to be given all the information about our association.  Our youngest beekeeper Casper who attends the Steiner school and his father Michael were very much involved, especially Casper who may-pole danced, organised the raffle and was generally VERY busy.

Whilst Alison and I were kept very busy with questions answers and the huge interest shown about the contents of a nucleus hive, especially the weight of a fully filled and capped frame of honey compared with one which only had foundation in it, we were also greatly entertained by may-pole dancing, folk on stilts, lots of singing and dancing and general jollity by all.  It was a good day.

An Elgin Swarm – again!

The Weather in Elgin, this morning, is +16C and blowing a hooley from the north-west with intermittent blustery showers too.

Graham went to our apiary to walk the dogs with a view to my meeting him there at 10.30 to remove the nucleus bees (from yesterday) into a brood box.  Arriving on time there was no Graham to be seen so I donned my ‘outfit’ and walked towards the hives to note that G. was in the middle of a swarm and busily trying to make some sense out of it. The wind was not helping and many of the bees had taken cover on the south and east side of fence posts in front of their hive.

A nucleus box was ready and already had some of the bees in it but the rest were playing hide and seek around the said post.

When we had eventually put the majority of bees in the box and there was not too many left I happened to see ‘her majesty’ running around the post and I swear she had her thumb to her nose – looking straight at me!!  We caught her and, somewhat unceremoniously stuffed her into the nucleus box after which we had the pleasure of watching bees doing a Noah’s Ark impression.  Thank goodness.  You will note that I haven’t used the word ‘cavalier’ today – getting to be a bit ‘old hat’!

For those who read the blog and can count we now have nine colonies. AND………..no more equipment. Help!