East Devon Beekeepers

East Devon Beekeepers January meeting 2025

Preparations for a Better Season – a talk by Dan Basterfield NDB

Held at Kilmington Village Hall. Attendance 35, Including friends from West Dorset branch.

Dan Basterfield and farther Ken run the Blackbury Honey Farm in East Devon, currently with between 90-100 hives. They are both BBKA and NDB examiners and teach, lecture and write at all levels across the UK and Ireland. They founded Advanced Beekeeping Courses in 2020 to provide training for experienced beekeepers.

How will your colonies start the season?

A good start to the season would be that your bees have survived the winter with a youngish, laying queen, they are healthy and they have, or will have, space for expansion.

A bad start would be a dead colony! Examine the remains and try to work out the cause(s). Was it a drone laying queen, or problems such as chalk brood, Nosema or mouldy combs. Look for granulated stores which prevent colony expansion in the spring (queen blocking).

Dan displayed four key events that will help you have a better season.

To achieve the Good Start referred to above, preparations need to be initiated in the autumn, so let’s look at a universal beekeeping plan to achieve this aim.

Spring is the time of swarms and swarm control (or prevention), often by making increase with simple splits.
Summer will see the honey crop harvested, but it is also a time when queen raising can be attempted. Queens raised now will be suitable for replacing old queens in the autumn and can be overwintered to replace any losses you may suffer.
Autumn is the time to take stock of the situation. Small colonies or colonies with poor queens can be united. These stronger stocks are more likely to survive the winter. Old queens can be replaced with your newly raised queens, and all the usual winter preparations can be started (varroa treatment, feeding, mouse guards, close entrances down, wasp traps, woodpecker proofing if you have a problem with them, hefting (see later), make sure hives are weather-proof and wasp-proof, tie hives down, etc, etc.

In Winter, despite all your preparations, there will be losses. Remove the affected hives and clean them up ready for next season. Check the hive parts and carry out repairs and renovations if necessary.

The message is:

Successful overwintering is preceded by a good end to the previous season.
Of course, with our British climate, we are always dependent on the weather.

Dan explained that the role of the beekeeper in winter is that of a caretaker. The preparation for winter has already been done. The beekeeper therefore needs to ensure the hives are dry and remain upright during winter storms. Also, occasional checks for remaining stores will ensure the colony does not starve. This is quickly and easily done by ‘hefting’ the hives, preferably from the back. The timeline of events is as follows: in November and January, if the hive feels heavy, that’s good. Plenty of stores for the rest of the winter. From February to April, ‘heavy’ could be a sign that all is not well. This is the time of year when brood is increasing rapidly and stores are being used to feed that brood, so you might expect the hives to be lighter. Heavy hives at this time of year may need to be investigated.

Any inspection during the winter months needs a good reason to disturb the colony, therefore, if you feel it is necessary to check your bees, make it a quick inspection. Wait for a still, sunny day with the temperature at or above 12°C before opening the hive, and don’t open the brood chamber unless you feel it is really necessary.

Emergency feeding

Hefting may indicate feeding is advisable. Fondant is the best emergency feed for the winter months. It keeps well and does not go mouldy. Bees need moisture to take it down but usually there is enough moisture at the top of the hive for them to dissolve the sugar crystals. Only bakers fondant or specially purchased fondant feeds from beekeeping supply companies should be used.
Dan uses clear plastic take-away tubs filled with the fondant (above), putting one or two tubs over the holes in the crown board. The amount used can be seen by lifting the roof with minimal disturbance to the colony, and topping up feed is also quick and easy. If the bees need the feed, it will be used quickly. If not, it won’t go mouldy.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Benjamin Franklin

Ideally, you should be looking to prepare for the whole season. No. 1 priority is ‘All equipment cleaned and repaired’. Do you have enough spares? Do you have extra equipment for, say, queen rearing or cut comb / sections?
If you are only looking at the next 3 months, then you will need brood boxes with drawn comb or foundation fitted, with contingency stock for swarming and possibly making increase.

Drawn comb has been called ‘the most valuable piece of equipment that you can’t buy’. Comb that has not had brood in can be used after cleaning up the burr comb. Brood comb that has some dark patches can be used after acetic acid treatment, but dark comb is always recycled.
Spring-drawn comb can be created by putting a deep box as a first super. This will be drawn out where oil seed rape honey is available, but be sure to extract these frames promptly!

Plan for beekeeping eventualities – have a plan to deal with swarming, robbing, starvation, disease, varroa, queen failure, uniting…
Develop core skills – making splits and uniting are essential skills. Using nucleus hives is a good way to learn these management techniques.
Mark your queens – ideally, mark queens at early spring inspections. If all your queens went into winter marked, this will tell you if there has been a late supercedure. Queens are easier to find in spring as colonies are small and there are no drones to confuse you.

Helpful guide to Options throughout the beekeeping year

Decide what you want/need to do. Make honey, make bees or make queens? You can’t do all three.

Summary of colony checks and what to practice this coming season

Further reading

Using Apideas -How to set up and manage Apideas for mating honey bee queens.
Dan Basterfield.

BBKA Healthy Hive Guide – Dan Basterfield, Roger Cullum-Kenyon, Ivor Davis.

EDBK Winter Social 5th December 2024

Cooking with Honey

At the start of the meeting Hilary Kirkcaldie, our President, gave a tribute to David Wiscombe, a founder member of the group who passed away recently. This was followed by a minute of respectful silence. The full text of the tribute can be found HERE.

The Tasting

Attended by nearly 50 members

Over the last year a beekeeper from Bradford BKA called Diane Shepstone has published a series of recipes in BBKA News featuring honey as an ingredient. The illustrations looked enticing so we asked our members if they would be prepared to try some of these recipes and share the results with everyone at a winter meeting.

The response was immediate, with eight intrepid volunteers taking away a recipe of their choice to practice and prepare for the tasting event. Although this was not seen as a cookery competition, we also devised a simple scoring system, just to find out how popular the dishes were.

Who selected which dishes?

We had two savoury dishes, Nick with Honey Glazed Sesame Tofu and Roger with Honey Glazed Brussel Sprouts (not a BBKA recipe).

Honey glazed sesame tofu

Honey Glazed Sprouts

Honey pumpkin scones

Earl Grey tea bread

Coconut crumbles

Honeyed Tarte Tatin

Clementine Cranachan with Honey Shortbread

Toasted Pecan, Olive oil and Honey Granola

Val tried Honey Pumpkin Scones made with pumpkin or butternut squash. Milly made the Honey and Earl Grey Tea Bread. Jessica tackled the Coconut Crumbles while Anita M produced the Honeyed Tarte Tatin (actually, a recipe by Nigella). Finally, Annie made a splendid Clementine Cranachan with Honey Shortbread, while Anita R completed the offerings with Toasted Pecan, Olive oil and Honey Granola. The sources of the recipes are listed at the end of this report, should you wish to try them.

Some comments gleaned from the cooks and tasters are worth noting. A common problem with honey recipes is compensating for the water content of the honey. It can easily make recipes, such as shortbread or scones, too hard or too crumbly. Our cooks did well to judge water content about right.

Another problem area is judging cooking time versus cooking temperature. A short cook at high temperature is liable to burn the honey, whereas too low a temperature will fail to develop the full flavour of the ingredients.

After introducing the dishes and the cooks to the assembled army of tasters we were invited to 'get tasting'. When each taster had sampled as many dishes as they wished they were asked to put a slip of paper with the name of their favourite dish into a central collection box. At the end of the evening, these slips were counted to give a rough indication of the popularity of each recipe.

And the favourites were.....

3rd Honeyed Tarte Tatin
2nd Honey Glazed Sesame Tofu
1st Toasted Pecan, Olive Oil and Honey Granola
When asked why the preference, people cited versatility, healthy eating and quick and easy to make.

If anyone needed more food or drink there were mince pies plus tea and coffee on offer.

As usual, our winter Social would not be complete without the Grand Raffle. Organised by Kim and Alasdair, the prizes were artfully displayed, encouraging members to buy lots of tickets.

Val warmly congratulated our volunteer cooks, refreshment organisers and everyone who had helped to make the evening go smoothly. The sources of the recipes are given below:

EDBK Annual General Meeting

Held at Kilmington Village Hall on Thursday 7th November 2024

The AGM was efficiently run as all the reports had been circulated beforehand.

Election of President, Officers and Committee for 2024/25

A big thank you to the 54 members who attended the AGM and voted in your new Committee.

In her Secretaries report, Val drew attention to the fact that Richard Simpson retires from the committee, and his post of Education Officer, this year. Val warmly thanked Richard for his many years of service organising Winter and Summer programmes, running the annual Beginners Course as well as helping exam candidates with the Basic and Modules. He will be replaced by Nick Silver.

Successful candidates in the 2024 Basic examination were announced; Andrew Bartlett and Rachel De Thample, with Andrew being the winner of the Craythorne Cup, for achieving highest marks in the group. Nick Silver was presented with his Module 6 and Intermediate Theory Certificates.

The Branch Teaching Apiary

Keith Bone outlined the future plan for the running of the branch Apiary. Both he and David Shale will be retiring from the post of Apiary Managers and the Apiary will be run by a team of volunteers.

For the second year running we had a very poor winter. Like many, not only in Devon but up and down the country, the branch apiary suffered considerable losses. The result was only eight Queen right colonies emerging in the Spring out of fourteen. Two or three hives were totally empty of bees, suggesting that they swarmed late and those left behind took refuge in hives close by. Plenty of capped stores were found in all the colonies, even in those which were Queenright. So much so that in the spring we took off and extracted 24kgs of overwintered stores. It was hoped to use this as autumn feed but some fermentation put paid to that idea.

The weather continued to be wet and cold and consequently the bees took time to build up. When one sunny summer day finally appeared, it served as the starting gun for swarm pandemonium. Queen cells appeared rapidly and artificial swarm control challenged the apiary team on and off for the next few weeks. By mid-summer we were up to eighteen colonies.

Surprisingly, 190lbs of honey was extracted in August – unusual for us – and still leaving plenty for winter stores. 

An increase in varroa presence was noted this year, requiring treatment. Feeding was with Invertbee syrup and the Team will be treating with oxalic acid mid winter.

East Devon Beekeepers attendance at Local Shows

Alasdair referred to our presence at many smaller shows this year. Honey sales, Asian Hornet awareness and general interest were up and, with our continued main event of the excellent Honiton Show, attending smaller village shows is clearly the way forward. 

East Devon were represented at Goren Farm Festival, Colyton Goose Fayre, Stockland Fayre and Dalwood Country Fayre. These smaller local shows seem to be popular with the public and allow East Devon Beekeepers to fulfil their remit of spreading the word about the importance of pollinators in the environment. They also act to recruit possible candidates for our annual Beginners Beekeeping Course.

Avoiding Fermentation – Honey’s Enemy No.1

After the formal business, Nick Silver gave a short presentation on avoiding fermentation of your honey crop.

Honey (England) Regulations 2015 state that:

• No Additives
• No Contamination, Foreign Particles, Chemical Residues
• No Foreign Taste or Odour
• No Artificial Acidity
• No Excessive Heating/Enzyme Destruction/HMF Production
• Fructose & Glucose > 60g/100g (Blossom Honey)
• Moisture <20% (Blossom Honey)
• No Fermentation

Avoiding fermentation is a challenge in the UK as we have wet springs and summers, and bees are slow to cap the honey. Removing the oil seed rape honey crop early for fear of the honey going hard can lead to unripe honey, and the tendency to remove the crop early in order to complete varroa treatment can also lead to problems.

Fermentation is often associated with crystallisation as this raises the moisture level in the remaining liquid honey, but it can be due to other causes such as poorly stored containers or excessive contamination by yeast cells.

The Triangle of Fermentation

Here we see the action of yeast on honey in the centre of the diagram, with the conditions at the points.

What do we have control of? Starting with Yeasts, these are collected with the nectar and although the quantity is variable, they are always present. So, little control here.

Temperature can play an important role, as low temperature will prevent or retard fermentation whereas higher temperatures make fermentation and crystallisation more likely. However, most beekeepers do not have specialist storage facilities.

That leaves Water Content as the best option for the beekeeper to take control of conditions.

So how do we know the water content of our honey? Help is at hand with the Honey Refractometer. These can be purchased for modest prices, well below the value of a bucket full of honey, which is what you would lose if it fermented. Two points to be aware of. The reading is temperature dependent, so ensure the sample and refractometer are at room temperature (20°C). Also, the device may need calibration at some point.

An affordable honey refractometer

View of the refractometer scale.

Water% scale

Click to enlarge

These images show a facsimile of the screen display. It looks complicated, but beekeepers only need to use the Water % scale. The maximum moisture content of legal honey is shown by the red line.

Keeping Honey Dry and Storing Honey

This list is not exhaustive, but will go a long way towards controlling fermentation in your honey.

• Supers cleared in warm dry weather
• Supers covered, kept warm, extracted immediately
• Only extract capped honey
• Extraction room as hot as possible
• Extraction room as dry as possible (dehumidifier)
• All liquid honey kept covered at all times
  • Less is lost if there is a problem
  • Easier to liquify later
  • Opportunity to blend
• Buckets full to the brim
• Stir the buckets thoroughly
• Measure water content of each bucket
• Store at 14°C until crystallised, then below 10°C

There were lots of questions and after the talk members were invited to test their own refractometers on a range of different honey samples provided by Nick. Judging by the crowd round the testing table this was a popular talk. Many thanks to Nick.

EDBK winter meeting 2024

A talk by Derek Mitchell, Hives and Insulation: Fact or Fiction?

Held at Kilmington Village Hall, 3rd October

Derek is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Thermofluids, School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds. He first became interested in bees after attending a talk at Buckfast where he learned that bees are ‘engineers’, in that they refine sugars and adjust the environment of their homes by controlling heating, cooling and ventilation. This set him on a course to find out more through research, aided by his wife Elaine, who is a beekeeper.

Why?

Because what he was told about bees and their hives didn’t add up. From an engineering perspective, bees collect honey (energy) and maintain temperature in the hive, an energy expensive process. So where was the insulation? This prompted his research on the Thermofluid Engineering of the Honey bee nest.

At the heart of this work are computer models of heat and airflow. This requires Computer Aided Design (CAD) drawings of the whole hive, allocating physical parameters to each part. These models can then be used to visualize the hive and its environment. The components can be further split into small ‘cells’ to improve accuracy of predictions, including splitting air spaces into cells to visualize air flow. At this point, it is just a question of solving five basic equations for each of the 6 million cells created! The equations may be run for 18,000 iterations with different scenarios, rather like weather prediction algorithms. A super computer is required for this.

The next stage of the research is verification by experiment, obviously difficult to do with live bees! So, model ‘hives’ made from materials with similar properties to the real thing are substituted. Derek has even made model trees to simulate colonies in natural nests.

TRUE or FALSE?

Trawling through the available literature on overwintering bees, Derek has found “six statements”, some dating back as far as 1915, that he has challenged.

• “We can ignore radiation”
  – Experiments show this accounts for 50% of total energy use!
  
• “We only need to insulate the top as heat rises, sides not important”
  – air flow experiments show heated air goes up AND around AND between hive parts.
  
• “Open mesh floors only loose heat from drafts”
  – actually, there is a lot of heat loss from drafts and Derek demonstrated radiation loss by showing an infrared video of bees on the open mesh floor. This may account for up to 25% of total radiation loss.
  
• “Top bee space (under crown board) is not a problem”
  – hot air moves across the top and can disappear through any holes in the crown board. Better off with no top bee space.

• “Bees heat the cluster, not the hive”
  – The reasoning for this is that the measured temperature difference between the outside and inside of the hive wall is small (see diagrams below).
  
  In the 1970s, Charles Owens published his Thermology of Bees, which showed diagrams of concentric temperature gradients within the cluster. Essentially, the outer mantle surface was 10 to 12°C and the inner core boundary was around 20°C. As the ambient temperature dropped, the cluster shrank until it could shrink no further. At this point the colony need to produce enough energy to maintain the outer mantle surface bees at 8 to 10°C, otherwise they fall off and die. There is a continual exchange of cold bees coming back into warmer areas and warm bees moving into the mantle. Owens’ work stopped at this point.
  
  Derek has revisited Owens’ scenarios using his computer models and shown that poly hives are much better insulators than wooden hives, and PIR hives (polyisocyanurate building insulation) are even better. The conclusion is that, for better hive insulation, go big.
• “The cluster mantle is insulation”
  – Actually, the insulation effect of clustering bees will fall by a factor of 11 as the cluster shrinks! This is to do with the speed of heat loss as the density of the cluster changes. As an analogy, solid plastic will have poorer insulation than the same thickness of foamed plastic. The small bubbles of air cannot move by convection, so reduce the speed of heat loss. In the cluster, convection stops when the bees are ½ a bee-width apart, but the closer together the bees are, the higher will be heat loss by conduction. Thus, insulation falls as the cluster forms and tightens. The conclusion is, clustering does NOT form good insulation, but it seems that decreased insulation during clustering fortuitously allows higher heat transfer to keep the bees in the mantle alive.
  
  Clustering is an emergency survival device to enable the mantle bees to survive by transferring heat from the centre to the perimeter. In an insulated cavity, clustering is looser or does not happen.

None of these statements stand up to scrutiny. However, there are some beekeeper’s quick fixes that will improve the situation.

• Putting hives in the shade avoids the stress of overheating.
• Use aluminium foil coated hives (reduces radiation losses and evaporative cooling losses).
• Use an aluminium hat which sheds rain away from the hive wall. Reduces evaporative cooling of hive surface. Could use white painted roof/sides in the summer.
• Insulate the walls at the front and back of a National hive. This can be done with polystyrene sheet and aluminium-backed sticky tape (as used in building insulation). See image of heat loss below. The side with most heat loss is cold way to the frames.
• Easy to mask mesh floors with Correx sheet. Do not stick down as moisture still needs to escape.
• Top bee space air flow can be reduced with a flush crown board or thin frame sheet. Bees will propolise this but a flexible sheet is easy to remove. Open vents or matchsticks under the crown board should be avoided.

Owens hive temperatures

Cluster temperatures

Heat loss from National hive

Convection in brood box

The downside of clustering

• Increases stress
• Reduces resistance to disease
• Has a high energy cost to the colony.

The Beekeepers fix

• The beekeeper can provide additional insulation which, in turn, will reduce stress, improve resistance to disease and lower the bees’ use of winter stores.
• Radiation heat loss from a normal wooden hive is significant, so improving insulation as described will make a big difference.
• GO BIG WITH INSULATION

The National vs the ideal hive

Professor Seeley showed that wild bees have, on average, an internal cavity diameter of 200mm, an external diameter of 500mm, a cavity of 40 litres, a bottom entrance, preferably 5m off the ground.
We have provided internal 372mm, external 460 mm, cavity 37 litres, bottom entrance, 0.5m off the ground

The ideal hive would look something like this, although it is questionable if it would be viable.

Conclusion: all bees do thermal engineering so we need to listen to the ‘client’ when designing hives. Building Regs are a better guide than books.

References

Thomas D. Seeley – The Lives of Bees. The untold story of the honey bee in the wild.

Statutory guidance.
Conservation of fuel and power: Approved Document L
Building regulation in England setting standards for the energy performance of new and existing buildings.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conservation-of-fuel-and-power-approved-document-l

For an alternative view and further background information see the BBKA News October 2024 article by David Wilkinson, a BBKA member with 50+ years experience. To view the article online you will need to enter your BBKA membership number and your postcode.

A talk by Nigel Boulton and John Badley 07/09/2024

Held at the Bee Shed.

We start with a reminder of why we prepare the hives for winter. Everything revolves around keeping the bees alive and healthy through the cold period and ready for the start of the new season.

There are three causes of colony loss:

• Queenlessness
• Varroa damage
• Starvation

Queenlessness

This can happen to anyone, and for a variety of reasons, e.g., poorly mated queen during bad weather. Now is the time to ensure your colonies are headed by a strong queen. Any colonies that are underperforming should be united with queenright colonies. Using the newspaper method is the simplest. Ideally, remove the queen you don’t want before uniting. Always ensure the colony above the paper has sufficient ventilation by poking holes through the paper with your hive tool.

Varroa

First and foremost, beekeepers should monitor their hives for natural mite drop at this time of year. Once you know what state your colonies are in, then you can plan appropriate action dependent on the level of threat. A rough guide to varroa mite drop numbers is given on page 146 of your course book, the Haynes Manual.

Normally, there are two times of year when Varroa treatments are considered. First, in August after the honey crop has been removed, to ensure the winter bees being produced now are healthy and will last through the winter. Second, around Christmas when there is minimal or no brood so that treatments such as oxalic acid solution can be used. Oxalic acid does not kill mites inside brood so is more effective in midwinter.

During the autumn, some people use FormicPro (formic acid), but only on large colonies. Smaller colonies are treated with thymol based varroacides as there is less likelihood of killing the queen. Remember that there are a limited number of legally available varroacides (see Veterinary Medicines Directorate website) (use the Search button for ‘Bees’). Any treatments given to your bees should be recorded and the record kept for 5 years.

Starvation

Once you have taken the honey crop off it is time to think about feeding the colony. Rapid feeders can be recommended in autumn, holding up to ½ gal at a time, and monitor to see how it is being taken down. If leaving a super on the hive then it is advisable to remove the queen excluder so the whole colony can move upwards during the winter to access stores. Best to feed in the evening to avoid robbing. Don’t forget that there will inevitably be wasps around so all entrances should be reduced to a minimum. Be tidy. Sugar syrup spillages will attract both wasps and robber bees!

How much syrup and what sort of syrup should you feed? There are two considerations.

• If you are feeding to bulk up the winter stores, than you will want to use thick syrup. This will be put straight into stores. Use 2kg white sugar dissolved in 1¼ litres water.
• If you wish to encourage a young queen to keep laying more winter bees, then use thin syrup, 1kg white sugar dissolved in 1¼ litres water. This can be fed to the queen and larvae without dilution.

Feeding should be completed by October as the temperature will be lower and the bees will have difficulty converting the syrup to stores. Looking ahead, if your bees run short of stores in Jan, Feb and March then use fondant as this will not ferment. If feeding is required in late March, early April, then use a contact feeder that can be placed directly over the hole in the crown board. Use a super as an eke.

Thankyou to the apiary team for setting up two hives for the new beekeepers to try ‘hefting’. This is the quickest way to judge the weight of stores in your hives, a really useful skill to acquire.

General considerations

We now turned to a discussion of ventilation of hives over winter and other aspects of good husbandry. Essentially, hives should be off the ground and protected from cold winds. It is generally agreed that open mesh floors are preferable but whether you use a tray insert during the winter or not is your choice. Now that we have open mesh floors it should not be necessary to insert matchsticks under the crown board, as advised by some older books.

Make sure you have some form of protection against mice entering the hives as they can cause a lot of damage and may even lead to the colony dying out.

There were many questions asked during the talk, clarifying issues as they arose. At the end of the talk there was a lengthy discussion and exchange of views on using brood and a half over winter. Some people use 14×12 brood chambers which provide ample space for over wintering, without the need for any other boxes. However, a National brood box can be a bit too small for a strong colony to store enough for overwintering. A lot of beekeepers play safe and leave a super with stores above the National brood box, having first removed the queen excluder as explained. Another school of thought is to put the extra super UNDER the brood chamber.

Problems may arise in the spring when the colony has moved up and is laying brood in the super. In this case, it was suggested that you may as well leave the super in place and run the colony on brood and half, as they obviously need the space. Giving plenty of brood space this way will probably reduce the urge to swarm early next year.

Another issue that was discussed was partially filled frames. One solution is to leave these frames in a super above the hole in the crown board. Hopefully, the bees will take these residues down and store them in the brood box below. The empty frames can then be removed before winter.

The apiary team have a ‘Waspinator’ which has been trialled with some success. See photo and Waspinator website.

Our thanks to Nigel and John for a constructive talk and answering all our questions.

Nucs: making, managing, using. A talk and hands-on demo to improve your beekeeping skills.

John Badley and Nick Silver take you through the selection of nucleus hives you are likely to see in this part of the world, followed by an appreciation of the basic considerations when making up a nuc colony.

This will be followed by a description of the nuc making process plus some variations on this theme.

Finally the participants will put nucs together under the watchful eye of the tutors. There will be time for questions, as well as tea and cakes!

These eight types of nuc represent both old and new designs. The Taylor nuc is mentioned as Frank Taylor lived in the area and there may still be some of these to be found second hand. They are small, light and handy for catching swarms but not recommended for overwintering colonies as the plywood is thin.

The western red cedar National nuc is the standard 5 frame hive sold by most bee equipment suppliers. The home-made soft wood version would be a fraction of the cost and is easy to make.

The old-style poly nuc had a feeder trough on one side and was prone to drowning bees.

The newer poly nucs have a combined crown board and feeder which is more versatile. They can also be supplied with additional brood boxes. Nick explained the various scenarios for overwintering nucs in these hives.

5 frame nucs used as an observation hive offer a good way to demonstrate bees to the public. It is essential to consider health and safety measures for the public and survival issues for the bees.

The 3 frame mini nuc has been included to emphasise the small number of bees in this type of hive. Less experienced beekeepers are recommended to use the larger 5 and 6 frame nucs which have far fewer problems with starving, absconding and over crowding.

The five uses for nucs listed above are all queen-related. Comments are: breeder queens will survive longer in a nucleus colony as opposed to a full hive; queen mating requires a hopelessly queenless colony into which the new queen cells are placed; re-queening large stocks – see later; quarentine hives/apiaries should be considered for all swarms and hives that are moved from one area to another.

Other uses for nucs are listed on the slide and are largely self explanatory.

When making up nucs, the importance of a balanced colony cannot be over stressed. Allowing flying bees to migrate back to the donor hive leaves the nuc with no foragers, causing a dearth of fresh pollen and nectar when most needed. The imbalance will be corrected eventually but the delay slows down the development of the nucleus colony.

Don’t start colony manipulations too early in the year. There need to be plenty of drones around for successful mating.

This method can be used for proactive swarm prevention but there are many variations to suit your needs. You require a well stocked parent colony, a nuc box and spare frames of foundation. This is what you will be doing in the apiary.

Instead of swarm prevention you may need to use a nuc for swarm control, in which case put frames with queen cells into the nuc and remove queen cells from the donor colony.

Queen mating requires the nuc to be unable to produce new queen cells so make sure brood is sealed. Then you can add the new queen cells from your cell raising colony. The day 9 recommendation means they are less likely to be damaged during transfer.

It is often difficult to re-queen large or aggressive stocks. This method surrounds the new queen with her own kind who will protect her from aggression until her pheromones are spread around the colony.

Making increase is like swarm prevention or swarm control but you can make up as many nucs as you like.

Discussion

When using nucs for swarm prevention, do you put the old queen back into the original hive or into the nuc? Some people say that putting the old queen into the nuc and moving it away 3+ miles is the nearest you will get to emulating a natural swarm. You choose.

To summarise, nucs are an essential part of a beekeeper’s kit. They can be used for numerous purposes in a variety of ways to make your beekeeping easier and more productive.

Queen Cells in my Hive! What do I do?

A talk by Nick Silver 27/4/24

Finding queen cells in your hive is the beginning of a natural process which ends with swarming and the establishment of a new colony in a new location. Hopefully, the old colony will rear a new queen who will mate and continue the existence of the nest.

If your intention is to have a honey crop then you may be out of luck if the bees swarm. These notes should help you understand what the colony is doing and how you can manipulate the swarming urge to your advantage.

When you see empty queen cups, what are the bees thinking? This is usually nothing to worry about. Often, these empty cups are called ‘play cups’.

Queen cups with an egg or larva plus royal jelly (below) shows a definite intent to swarm. Now is the time for the beekeeper to take action to prevent swarming.

Queen cells with one or more sealed means you are probably too late. Swarms tend to depart when the first queen cell is sealed.

If you see a ‘bronze’ tip to a queen cell (below, left), the new queen is about to emerge.

An empty queen cell, possibly with a hinged lid, means the virgin queen has emerged.

Squishing – symptom of a beekeeper with no plan

Destroying queen cells by squishing may be used to buy the beekeeper a bit of time, but the workers will just build more queen cells.

At this point it is as well to remember the life cycle of the developing queen cell.
Egg 3 days – larva 5 days – capped on day 8

A queen cell can be created from a 1, 2 or possibly a 3 day old larva, so by squishing you are just trapping the colony in the 4-7 day zone of queen development. In this state they can go very quickly and you also risk missing a cell. This is very easy to do as they will build emergency cells around the fringe of worker brood which are very hard to spot – even if you shake off all the bees. Repeated squishing will demoralise the bees and can easily lead to a hopelessly queenless situation if the swarm decides to depart anyway.

The Basics of Swarm Control

The colony may be thought of as three parts:

• The queen
• The brood (and queen cells)
• The flying bees

Separating one of these parts from the other two should dispel the swarming urge, making the bees think they have already swarmed.

Some swarm control methods

• Pagden – flying bees with the Queen
• Two nuc method – flying bees with Queen Cells
• Basterfield split – flying bees with Queen Cell

What is your method?
Be ready to use it at any time.
Always have the equipment you need with you.

Pagden (the bench mark method)

This method is good for:

• Simplicity
• Learning and Observing
• Easy inspections

But there are issues:

• It is expensive for equipment and requires space
• Opportunities are missed:
  Could get more increase
  Could get more honey

Two nucs (Stewart Spinks – Norfolk Honey Company)

This method is good for:

• An easy way to get more increase (to sell or use)
• Nuc boxes are much cheaper than hives
• Easy inspections
• Simple swarm control

The issues:

• Watch for equal split of flying bees
• Honey crop sacrificed for increase

Vertical Split (Ken & Dan Basterfield)

This method keeps the colony together, so good for:

• Honey production
• Minimal equipment needed
• Single site and single manipulation

Issues are:

• Slightly more complex
• Inspection of lower brood box could be problematic

This is the starting configuration. Entrance to the south, queen excluder on original brood box plus two supers.
Remove roof, crown board, supers and queen excluder.

The brood chamber and floor are now turned 180° so they face in the opposite direction. Note that for National hives, the frames should be warm way to present a flat surface for the flying bees to walk up to the new entrance in the split board.

Half the brood frames plus adhering bees are moved to a new brood box, leaving the queen in the original box. Destroy any queen cells in the original box. Proportions in each brood box should be: stores – more in the original box; young to sealed brood – roughly equal. Top up both brood boxes with spare comb. Place the split board on top of the original brood box with only the top entrance open as shown.

Only one good, open queen cell should be left in the new brood box.
Replace queen excluder on top of the new brood box, followed by supers, crown board and roof.

There are variations on this manipulation depending on the starting situation and the desired outcome.

They can be found in the original article describing this method HERE (PDF file)