Queenie-i, queenie-i...

This year’s beekeeping has been fraught with potential disasters and has led to me wondering if I will ever get the hang of it. For some time I have been finding queen cells on the frames of my supers and all the books (and everyone I spoke to) say that on the day, or the day after, a queen cell is capped, the bees swarm. Certain members of Manchester Bee Keepers have been very smug in their prediction that ‘they’ll have gone’. However, I’ve been extremely lucky in that, once or twice, I have arrived to inspect the bees and there have been capped queen cells but the queen is still there and all has been ok. After knocking them down for a couple of weeks I finally decided to split the hive and try to increase my stocks.

Three weeks after splitting the original colony it was time to inspect the new and, while there were quite a lot of bees, there seemed to be no sign of either a queen or eggs. In fact, the brood box was completely empty, all cells clean and waiting, but nothing laying in them and most of the bees clustered in the super of stores. I assumed the new queen was still out on her mating flight and another week was needed but my hand was pushed when I checked the original hive.
Going through the super were odd bits if brood, some larvae and what looked like eggs. This couldn’t be right. I had moved a frame from the brood box to the super to encourage the bees up into the hive but that was long enough ago that they should have hatched and gone by now. Going through the super frames more carefully I spotted the reason for the brood – a second queen. This was clearly not right and it was with some trepidation that I checked the brood box to find the original queen busy about her business, seemingly unconcerned. I now had to think about what to do and I decided to remove the new queen and put her in the, queenless, other hive. Of course, going through the frames again I couldn’t find her so closed up the hive and thought I would come back the next day.

A gap in work meant I could get back to the hive around dinner time. On the first look through I spotted the queen and managed to grab her but she wriggled free and, as I tried to grab her again, flew up and over my hand, between the frames and into the box. Three further trawls through the frames didn’t uncover her again and, with a lot of now narky bees, I closed the hive and went back to work. The third time I went, after work on the same day, things started off as badly, as a couple of searches revealed nothing. On the third run through, however, I spotted the queen on a frame and, quick as a flash, I jabbed the Butler cage over her and then managed to get a bit of newspaper over the end. The sigh of relief was heard throughout the allotments. I closed up the original hive and, hanging the queen cage between two of the super frames of brood, placed her carefully in the new hive and closed everything up.

A week later when I checked there was no sign of the queen in the new hive but I did see eggs. So it seems, at this point, the split was eventually successful. It remains to be seen if she carries on laying and the brood hatches healthily and the wait between each hive visit is hard to bear. If it all works out then I am very pleased but, if not, then towards the end of summer the two colonies will be united and I will try again next year. It hasn’t gone as smoothly as the books lead you to believe, but having to decide what to do on my own has boosted my confidence that I do know what to do without having to take advice from others. My hope now is that the bees settle down and get on with making us some honey.

I recently borrowed a bee suit in order to show a nine-year-old how a hive works and, as I still had it, asked Agnieszka if she wanted to use it to get closer with her camera. She jumped at the chance and, while a little bit nervous, got some great shots. At last I can put some close-up shots on the blog that aren’t blurred. Thank you to Pippa for the loan of the bee suit and to Agnieszka for the photos.

Looking for a queen on a hot summer's day...

For this week's hive inspection I took along my mentor, Pippa, from Manchester Beekeepers. She has kindly agreed to look after me in the first few months of my beekeeping and is a very nice, very laid back person and great around the hive. Not like some of them on a Monday night at Heaton Park, banging things around and squashing bees through ham-fisted carelessness. I mean, I know eventually I will get stung but the longer it goes when it doesn't happen, the better and I certainly don't want to get the fallout from someone else's clumsy handling.

Anyway, this week was very hot and even with shorts and a t-shirt under the bee suit it was very warm. Sweat trickling down your face doesn't help and because of the veil in the way, you're not able to wipe it away so must suffer. We were met at the gate by one of the allotment holders, who asked if the bees had made any honey. She went on to ask me twice more, and Pippa once, if they'd made any honey and proudly said there were more bees (wasps, it turned out) in one of the compost bins.

The hive looks quite at home now, in the midst of the allotments and the windbreak fence is helping to lift the bees up to a safe height so they don't bother other allotment holders. The posts are sagging slightly so I will have to keep an eye on that as time goes on. The choice of colour was a good one, and unless you know it's there, you can hardly spot it.

There was plenty of activity, lots of brood, stores, eggs and larvae and a lot of bees coming in and going out of the hive. In another week it will be time for a super and hopefully we will have a bit of honey at the end of September. More importantly, the colony should be big enough to over-winter safely and start next spring in good condition. The queen, marked in this picture, is doing well and laying a nice brood pattern and there are plenty of young bees.

They do seem to be using a fair amount of syrup though, and it's starting to become expensive, purchasing sugar to feed them, but it has to be done. Without it they couldn't produce wax to make comb and therefore nowhere for the queen to lay. Aside from worrying about them when I am not there, and resisting the urge to open the hive every five minutes, they are getting on with business without me interfering. It is very pleasant to sit and watch them gliding in and taking off, bringing bags full of pollen and crops full of nectar and generally just enjoying watching them flying about. The next job now will be to name them all...

After we left and I had dropped Pippa off at her house, she gave me some redcurrants which I used even more sugar to turn into redcurrant jelly. Such sweet pastimes!