BUZZY DAY

I went to Hardy’s birthplace at Bockhampton this morning by arrangement with Caps, my apprentice there, to take a nucleus from the apiary and take it to Hardy’s deathplace, Max Gate, to establish an apiary there also. Harriet, the gatekeeper, is getting interested in bees so I supplied her with a spare suit so she could spectate again. As it was early on a quiet day with no customers queueing she shut up shop briefly in the interest of her education, enabling her to be more informative to members of the public when they ask about the bees.

First we looked at the artificial swarm in a WBC hive on the original site. The bees have busily drawn out lots of comb and there was brood but none ready for sealing yet so we have postponed our planned Varroa reduction measure of removing the first brood to be sealed. Caps spotted the queen (she’s good at that) and we showed her to Harriet and also the honeycomb. She asked what the brown stuff was on top of one of the frames. Propolis! I chipped a chunk off for her and told her of its antibiotic, anti-fungal, anti-viral and anaesthetic properties.

We closed that hive and moved onto the next, a National containing all the brood from last week’s artificial swarm. There was a scattering of queen cells on 3 of the frames so we took frame no 2 with a couple of large, open, cells together with combs of stores (including pollen) and emerging brood, putting them into a 5 frame nucleus box that had been sealed up with Harriet’s sellotape (what a useful girl!).

Lastly we peeped into yesterday’s swarm, which is doing fine and had produced an amazing amount of comb in the 20 hours since hiving.

Then Caps and I went to Max Gate where we set up the nucleus in the paddock at the back of the house and then, over coffee, worked on a shopping list to enable Caps decently to house her growing charges.

Back to Bockhampton where Harriet told us that she had eaten and enjoyed the propolis, comparing the flavour with cinnamon. I don’t remember telling her how addictive it is. Hmmm.. I think I may have another apprentice soon. There is room for another beekeeper in her village and it is only 2 valleys from me.

Back home I labelled a couple of jars of honey for a customer in Weymouth, an elderly lady I hadn’t met before as, normally, a mutual friend does the honey shopping. When I got there, she told me that she had tried the most expensive honey that Marks & Spencer sells and found it tasted like water compared to mine!

Just as I arrived, my portable telephone rang. It was Caps. A lady down the lane with a bee-tree in her garden had found them to be swarming and Caps wanted to know what to do.  I advised her. A few minutes later, when I was with the customer, there was another call, this time from Lower Waterston Manor to say they had a swarm. I drove there. I’d never been inside the gate before although I have driven past it many times. It is as big as a palace and, I guess, late Tudor.

I was greeted by a young lady who introduced herself as Caroline (I think). There was a chap in attendance whom I assumed to be the gardener. The swarm was about 15 feet up in the top of an elder tree next to a wall. The chap fetched a step ladder. It wasn’t long enough so he got another to lean against it. I equipped Caroline with a spare bee suit and, by raising her right hand and clapping it to mine, swore her in as ‘Ladder holder, second class’. “Why second class?” she protested, so I pointed out that she hadn’t the experience yet.

As I was about to climb, the phone rang. It was Caps needing instruction on taking and hiving the swarm. I multi-tasked, ascended the ladder with the skep and, jerking the branch, got most of the bees into it, then descended to place it in a large Ikea bag. I hadn’t got all the bees as soon there were clusters appearing on a couple of high twigs. Up the ladder again, I cut off the twigs with secateurs and, having demonstrated with the first one, handed the second to Caroline to deal with, which she did very competently with bare hands.

By coincidence, she had, only that morning, been contemplating taking up beekeeping. She asked if I knew James Fitzharris who (she asserts) can nowadays talk only about bees! I started him off! I used to keep bees in a paddock close to his house at Sydling.  I feel that there may be yet another apprenticeship about to happen.

I drove the swarm to Sandhills,close to Cattistock, where another apprentice, Dave Cliff has a site but which was currently devoid of bees. He suited up and we hived the swarm.

I drove the couple of miles home and found a message on my answerphone concerning a swarm in the cavity wall of a house in Dorchester, but that’s a story for another day.

 

 

GOAL!!!!!

I was called yesterday morning to a swarm at Max Gate, Thomas Hardy’s old home. There wasn’t a swarm, but lots of bees were investigating every crook and nanny about the place. Due to inferior architecture and building, there are lots of crevices and potential entry points. I got a free tour of the place while we (my apprentice Caps, who gardens there had called me) ascended to the heights of the servants’ quarters (Hardy treated his servants badly: his parlourmaid used to pop across the road to my grandparents’ farm for a square meal!  His under-gardener told me Hardy used to take an alternative route rather than talk with one of the hoi-polloi at work).

Right at the top was a garret with a tiny arched window about a span wide by a foot high. We could see from the outside that the bees were taking an interest there and 5 had somehow managed to find a way through the glass. I gave the window a squirt of smelly fluid to make it less attractive to them.

Lots of the bees were around the porch, especially investigating a letter box. Clearly the bees found the house attractive but hadn’t decided which bit was best.  I put a skep atop the porch, just overhanging the roof to provide an entrance. I placed an old comb in the skep to act as a lure and left them to it.

I called in at William Barnes’ (a fellow poet of Hardy, better than him) rectory half a mile away, where another gardener friend, Marion Dove, keeps bees, to warn her in case her bees were the ones looking to swarm.

In the afternoon the phone rang again. The swarm had arrived and, before an audience, hived itself in my skep!  I drove in to collect them – the skep fits nicely into one of those massive Ikea bags – and drove them to Hardy’s birthplace at Bockhampton where I help Caps with the apiary. One of the people who had seen the swarm arrive indicated the direction they had come from: not Barnes’ but possibly the local Farm Institute where bees are kept.

There was a shortage of equipment so we had to improvise. Caps had made a new National brood box but had only shallow combs in it. I found an old door in a shed and that was placed on a tree stump as a floor with the brood box offset slightly to provide a slim entrance at the bottom. A crown board was created from a cardboard box with the aid of my Swiss Army knife.

The gate-keeper, Harriet, was interested and so I lent her a spare tunic so she could spectate with her camera. I posed with skep poised a span above the brood box; then dropped it to dislodge the swarm. Lovely sight! There was a mass of bees about 2″ thick on the top bars between which they soon found their way. Those drifting over the edge were scooped back with the cardboard which was then very gently placed on top. A sheet of black polythene provided a temporary roof and light screen to persuade the bees to use the lower entrance.

I’m returning as soon as I’ve finished this blog as we intend to take a nucleus from the other hive there that we swarmed artificially last week. If they’ve read the books, there should be several combs with queen cells. We will doubtless take a peek at the swarm whilst we are there.

TOP BAR HIVE

I checked my TBH at Ourganics, Litton Cheney, a couple of days ago and was astonished to find it nearly full with brood end to end.  It’s never been as prosperous as this before and yet the season has been so awful (apart from March) so far. Other peoples’ hives on the same shared site are doing very poorly in comparison.

I took my harvest from this hive in March, of stores they didn’t consume during the winter. Real honey, not recycled Tate & Lyle’s as I don’t feed my bees.  I made the mistake of putting the bars from which I had cut the comb back, sitting next to each other instead of interspersing them between drawn comb. The result was that they drew comb at right angles to the rest under 4 or 5 bars.

I made some preparations and went again yesterday, removing 4 adjacent combs en bloc, placing them in a nuc, putting new bars not in their place but interspersed as I should have done in March. I checked that the removed comb has brood in all stages and plenty of bees (it might even have the queen!) and took it to my other TBH a few miles away.

I placed the bars at the front of the prepared hive, the bar immediately behind it having a good drawn comb on my preferred alignment. If and when they establish a colony there, I shall, in the fulness of time, get rid of the awkward comb.  I passed by that way this afternoon and bees were flying to and from the entrance so I presume all is well, but I would have been happier had I seen pollen going in.

ELDER!

I’m seeing elderflowers everywhere. They’re a month early! Why?  I haven’t bottled last year’s elderflower wine (5 gallons!) yet.

REMARKABLE QUEEN

I went to Bockhampton this morning to help my apprentice, Caps, to make an artificial swarm on the hive she looks after at Thomas Hardy the third’s birthplace. The weather wasn’t ideal, being only about 54 degrees with intermittent light rain. We had an audience of tourists, only a few feet away, looking over the fence and taking photos.  I suggested that they get out of the flight line and not to flap if a bee bumped into them. Nobody was stung.

Caps had supered the hive since last we had examined it, in order to delay swarming. The bees were generally calm and non aggressive, however I noticed that they were continually batting into Caps’ veil but not mine.  She had been rowing with and upset by a chap from the RAC who couldn’t/wouldn’t fix her car when I arrived and was visibly upset but calmed down under the influence of the bees. I wondered at first whether her emotion had generated pheromones that upset the bees. She told me she wasn’t wearing perfume.

The brood box was very full of bees and it wasn’t until we were patiently going through it for the third time that we found the queen. Her mark has just about worn off and needs replacing.I placed her on the frame upon which we found her in a nucleus box I had brought along for the purpose. Then we moved all the brood frames to the new hive, including one with a small queen cell that wasn’t far developed. I transferred the queen to a new, empty, comb and put it in the original brood box next to a comb with food but no brood. The supers went back on.

We’ll take a look next week to see if it would be possible/sensible to take a nucleus from the new hive. If we do, it will go to Hardy’s last home, a couple of miles away at Mack’s Gate. Mr Mack was the gatekeeper at the turnpike and died in 1852.

When we had finished playing with the bees, we finally fathomed out why the bees kept trying to get at Caps: she had washed her hair before coming out and so it was probably something in the shampoo.

Back in the cottage, over coffee, note making and planning, Caps asked my advice about a super of set honey she was having trouble in scraping off the foundation.  I suggested warming it. How hot?  That set me writing her a list of notable temperatures in beekeeping. Here it is. All temperatures are in Fahrenheit.

Cold – chipping and grinding propolis.

57 – bees will give priority to clustering on the brood to keeping it warm although there may also be some fliers.

94 – brood temperature.

97 – wax softens and comb weakens.

105 – a good temperature for straining honey.

120 – this temperature kills honey, turning it effectively into golden syrup.

160 – melting point of wax.

BADGERED!

I have a hive on an organic farm near Toller Porcorum.  Last time I looked it was doing fine. I visited today and found it overturned with all the brood frames emptied and scattered. I found one some yards away along a badger track and one is still missing. The hive is wiped out.  I have had bees there for several years and it is the first time this has happened. I have always known of the badger sett about 50 yards away; it’s big enough in which to lose half a class of school kids! The apiary is surrounded by stout wire sheep netting but I see that it has been lifted along one edge to allow the creatures to squeeze under.

I think that somewhere on the internet there’s a petition about badger culling. Maybe I should sign it!

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS!

What follows is an article I have just sent off to the Editor of Waymark, the magazine of the Institute of Rights of Way and Access Management Ltd, of which I’m a member.

BEES NEAR RIGHTS OF WAY

The first time I encountered a bee hive it was near a path across a common that we used to get to the village football pitch.  We village lads used to lob pebbles at it and scarper as soon as some bees appeared to investigate.  This was some years ago as I was aged about 7 at the time. I can’t now find that path on the DM. Maybe I should put a claim in, but I left that village well over half a century ago and have lost touch with my playmates.  This illustrates that one of the potential problems can be labelled ‘small boy syndrome’.

The next problem can be labelled ‘Perception is more important than reality.’  We had a complaint from a Parish ROWLO that a farmer (against whom she had a host of other complaints so there may have been a falling-out) had bees next to a footpath and they had to go!  As the Area Officer knew nothing about bees I was called in to help. I had to peer through a forest of weeds in a disused pig pen to see the hives. As I walked the path the bees were no trouble at all, but then, I’m not scared of bees. 

The farmer told me to whom they belonged, a chap I knew, who lived many miles away and I knew him to be on the sick list. I got in touch and he agreed that they could be moved to another site he had, nearer home, but he wasn’t fit enough to do it.  So I lent him a hand.  When we opened the brood boxes it was obvious that they hadn’t been examined for years. The chap had placed them there a long time ago when he was younger and fitter.  The new site was within an ancient walled deer park, well away from the public.  He died within a year or so. I wonder what became of his bees.

The third problem might be labelled ‘Murphy’s Law’. Out for an amble along a farm track/bridleway that ran through a field of oilseed rape in glorious technicolour, I counted 42 hives placed along the track on either side.  The rape had been in flower for some weeks and was just going over.  The hives were branded with initials I recognised.  I wandered among them out of interest and although there were many thousands of bees hard at work, I was far more interested in them than they were in me. There had been no complaint from the bridleway users but I deemed it wise to get in touch with the beekeeper suggesting that his insurance company might not be entirely happy if they knew his bees were so close to a bridleway. He told me that they had been there for 6 weeks and would be moved away next week when the rape was done. He really had no alternative to placing the hives next to the track as they are heavy things and are shifted by truck.

The next problem might be labelled either ‘Chemistry’ or ‘Hair today and gone tomorrow.’ Whereas you and I get 80% of our information through our eyes and communicate through speech or print, bees get most of their information through the scent sensors on their antennae and communicate through scents called pheromones.  Once, when walking up to the allotment, a passing bee stung me on the head although I was 100 yards from my hives there and they hadn’t been disturbed. It occurred to me that I had washed my hair not long before (those who know me will realise that this was some years ago) so when I got home I checked the shampoo bottle and saw that it was a ‘New Improved Formula’ so I dumped it and the problem didn’t recur.

Much more recently, the CC, in the interest of elfinsafety, decreed that outdoor workers had, in summer, to take precautions against sunburn, and so I was issued with a little pot of ‘Scalp Protector’. I used it one warm day for a walk along a disused railway line (that isn’t on the DM&S – yet). I spotted a line of hives parked on the other side of the hedge and, being nosy, went round for a look. I got several stings to the head where it had been anointed. The provocation can only have been that the scent of the scalp protector, possibly combined with my own, was shouting at the bees: ‘Sting here NOW!’

Lastly, ‘thinking in boxes’ might be relevant. Last year I walked along a very popular bridleway, seeking and failing to find the tree upon which I had carved my initials in 1959. What I did find was bees flying from a knot hole in one of the trees a little above head height. Some were carrying in pollen so I knew that they had been in occupation for some time and had babies to feed.  Nobody but a beekeeper would have noticed them. I carved my initials on the tree!  Bees don’t all live in boxes: I know of more colonies in Churches, trees and houses within a few miles of this keyboard than in boxes (a conventional beehive is a stack of boxes).

When a Rights of Way Officer notices or receives a complaint about bees (s)he should, of course investigate and decide whether it is a real problem, an imaginary one, a temporary one or, even, not a problem but an opportunity to take up beekeeping!  If it is a real problem then something should be done, but what? First identify the beekeeper. How? Ask the landowner, or else ask the local Beekeepers’ Association if just a few hives, the Bee Farmers’ Association if many.  If they don’t know, they will know somebody who does. They might be reluctant for data protection reasons to tell you who it is, but they could pass a message down the line.

Bees tend to fly along ‘highways in the sky’.  They may vary with direction of the main forage crop at the time, or with wind strength and direction, but generally there will be a visible flight path and (apart from small boy syndrome) problems will occur only when the flight path crosses the footpath below head height, so there may be accidental collisions causing the person to panic and flap arms about, which will cause the bee to panic, think she is being attacked, and sting in self defence.

Don’t expect a hive of bees in a garden to be moved away. Bees should be moved less than 2 feet or more than 2 miles. This is because they have a strong memory of where home is and if, for example, a hive is moved to the other side of the garden so as to be away from the path, there will soon be thousands of anxious, upset and homeless bees milling about in the vicinity of the old site and the path. It’s asking for trouble.

A simple and effective thing the beekeeper in collaboration with the Rights of Way Officer can do greatly to reduce the chances of accidental collision is to erect some garden netting strategically so that the bees will get into the habit of flying up and over head height. You often see this done at agricultural shows when hives are opened and beekeeping demonstrated.  It’s cheap, easy, and it works. 

Chris Slade