Newsletter : November 2009
Newsletter : November 2009
1. Editor's Notes
This Newsletter is somewhat earlier than usual. I will be away next week, when I would normally be putting it together and, mindful of the possibility of mail strikes, it seems better to send it out now than leave it till later. It may be arriving at the same time as the Treasurer's reminder about subscriptions for the coming year. Please respond to these as quickly as you can, so that the cash flow can be managed, the orders for magazines submitted and the Bee Diseases Insurance put in place in good time for a smooth continuation of services.
Yet again the weather seems to be confounding us. As I write, it is unseasonably warm, the bees are flying as though it were summertime and the buzz coming from the ivy is like the sound of nectar gathering from May blossom. Doug Jones, SBI for the Northern Region who spoke to us in September, has been advising his local associations' members to check their bees for stores. A recent report from a member of Blackburn BKA, who has already done so, appears below (item 5).
Whatever else, autumn is always a good time to look back over the season and consider what went well and what might be improved in future. In March 2008 we had a talk by Celia Davis on managing swarm control by creating a nuc with the old queen as soon as occupied queen cells are discovered in the parent colony. It is a useful technique to have in one's armoury and works well in the right circumstances. However, the temptation to use it as a technique for splitting a colony that is not preparing to swarm, in order to create increase, can produce problems. Last year one such attempt by a member of the Scottish BKA ended in failure, with the new colony (i.e. the one raising the new queen) dying out during the winter. One of his colleagues has analysed what he thinks went wrong and produced some thoughts on colony management for us all to ponder. See item .
The other major article this month is about pheromones. We all know how important they are to the functioning of a colony but this clear and concise account goes beyond the obvious effects and helps us understand how to work with the bees rather than fight them.
2. In Memoriam
Sadly, in recent weeks, we have heard of the deaths of two of our members: John Clorley from Montford Bridge and Bill Buchanan from Market Drayton. Our sincere condolences go to their families.
3. Report of October Meeting
The October meeting was our AGM. A good turnout heard reports from the Secretary, Chairman, Treasurer and Apiary Manager and the Committee for the coming year was elected. (Further details next month).
After the formal business, there was a 'Brains Trust' when four of our most experienced member answered questions about such varied topics as the performance of queens, repeated supercedure, setting bait hives for swarms, collecting feral colonies and using pure thymol crystals as a varroa treatment. To conclude, Roger Evans suggested a method of getting rid of waxmoth which involves firing a 12 bore shotgun near the hive!! If you want to know more, ask Roger not me!
4. November Meeting
We meet next on Wednesday November 11th at 7.30p.m. at the Sundorne Centre. This is where we met in September and a map and directions can be accessed here. The address and postcode for SATNAV purposes is: Corndon Crescent, SY1 4LL. Our President, Brian Goodwin, will be leading a session on making beeswax candles for Christmas.
5. Checking Winter Stores. Michael Birt Blackburn & East Lancs BKA (Courtesy BEES)
Normally I check weigh hives in late September or early October and determine which need feeding and how much. This year in view of the mild weather and the fact that the bees continue to fly I have check weighed all my hives again today. The results are both good and worrying.
With one exception all hives have lost weight despite feeding. Before I started feeding at the beginning of this month the average weight of stores per hive was 19 lbs. I work on a hive requiring 25 lbs of stores to last a normal winter and fed accordingly. Check weighing today indicates that on average the consumption of stores over the last 3 weeks has been 10 lbs. The hives now have an average weight of stores per hive was 17 lbs. This is despite the hives receiving an average feed per hive of 8 lbs. I know part of the loss is due to reduction of the water content of the strong syrup but that does not account for it all.
Obviously the mild weather is creating more brood and hence the need for more food. They can find pollen but not much nectar. A good thing but anyone not aware of the situation may find their hives very short of stores if the mild weather continues. It might also be a case of some pollen supplement if the weather stays mild.
6. What Went Wrong? John Gleed: Scottish Beekeeper Oct. 09 (Courtesy BEES)
[In June] ….D. set out to create an artificial swarm and he split a queen right colony and set the two parts side by side. The part that remained on the old stance had a brood box with two frames mostly of sealed brood with a frame mostly with eggs in between them and of course all the flying bees. The rest of the space was filled with frames with drawn comb. There was NO queen. There was also a super with honey, honey that had been gathered before the hive was split. The bees managed to build queen cells and a queen eventually was born and mated and started to lay.
The split was made in June so for the purpose of our exercise let us say it was June 1st. Under the best of conditions:
During these 69 days the original number of flying bees, possibly twenty thousand or more, would have been greatly depleted with relatively few coming from the two frames with brood to replace them. By the 8th of August nights are drawing in and it is getting cooler and the queen would be tailing off laying. (Think how much worse it would have been if D. had made the split in the middle of June.) This stock of bees got off to a bad start; one minute a normal hive working away and in a moment all these twenty thousand flying bees in a panic wondering where their queen is. Where’s our fix of pheromone? It says something for them that they managed to raise a queen as they did.
Well anyway, here they are into August and they have settled down and have their winter store of honey above them when suddenly the honey is ripped off and wafted away and they get 8.5kg of sugar in the form of thick feed dumped on them and processing that would be a task they could well have done without…..Next thing is they are opened up and treated for varroa …then disturbed again when the treatment is taken out. In January the bees are dead!
D. thinks they probably died about the middle of December but not from starvation. I agree with him and I too don’t think they died of starvation. I’ll tell you what I believe they almost certainly did die of. Colony morale had collapsed, and I am not jesting when I say this. Morale had sunk and sunk and they reached the stage where they could take no more and they just gave up and died. Colony morale is seldom mentioned these days but it is a very real thing. I believe lack of empathy by many beekeepers has much to do with it.
There is one thing that might possibly have saved the day and built up the morale and that is a good infusion of young bees right at the very beginning. This would not have been hard to do and here’s how you do it.
Go to a hive that can spare bees and select a frame with plenty of sealed and unsealed brood and as you take it out shake the bees back down so that you are not taking the queen by mistake. Get an empty brood box and put it above the honey, put the frame of brood in and in no time at all young bees will come up to tend the brood. Next day you shake the bees off that frame down into the hive you want to assist and then restore it to the hive it came from. If a hive is really strong you could take two frames and indeed you could take frames from different hives. You can safely mix them and because these are young bees they will not fight and the great beauty is since they have never flown from their own hives there is no danger of them bunking off and going back home. For the same reason it’s a good way for making up nucs for queen rearing.
Sometimes beekeepers make the mistake of trying to reinforce a weak stock by putting in a frame of brood but this is a mistake. If the bees are already struggling it just lays another burden on them striving to tend the brood. No! Young bees are the answer.
I trust I have made it clear what might have happened and what D. did wrong….. but we live and learn don’t we? This is indeed a fine illustration of the truth of the saying that experience is a good teacher - but the tuition fees are high.
7. Pheromones
This is the first part of a talk by Janet Dowling FRES, to Harrogate & Ripon BKA, given in January 2005: courtesy BEES)
Imagine living in a bee colony - it must be rather like being in a very dark supermarket, with the shelves very close together, with all the spaces packed with people and with a lot of coordinated work to be completed. Communication by sight or speech is impossible. Even bee dances are impossible to see, but may be sensed by vibration. This is a world in which communication by chemical messaging- the most important application of pheromones- rules.
Pheromones operate over a range of time scales; some are long lasting-for example the queen pheromones used to keep the colony together, while others, such as the alarm pheromone, have an almost immediate but short acting effect. The chemicals are detected by the bees either by taste or by smell, or by a combination of both. The bees lick or touch each other to transmit some pheromones, and the bee antennae are vital for the detection of smells. The transmission of pheromones around inside the hive is surprisingly quick; a time period of half an hour is typically the time for full transmission around a colony- for example if the queen is removed.
Pheromones also differ in their persistence. Nasanov pheromones, used to announce the location of a colony, or the alarm pheromone are typical short-lived chemicals that rapidly disappear once immediate production is stopped. Other pheromones, notably queen substance and brood pheromones are more long lived, since these are required for on-going activities in the colony.
Turning to specific pheromones, the trail marking or footprint pheromone is important to a colony. This is used to mark where bees have been- for example on water sources and syrup feeders. These are generally colony specific, but if they are picked up by robbers then they can be used against the colony by giving the robber an easy entry into a colony. Trail marking pheromones are probably the reason why non-active clearer boards such as the Canadian or New Zealand clearers can become ineffective if left on too long. The bees leave a trail of footprint back up into the supers for other bees to follow.
The Nasanov pheromone appears to be a general, not colony specific scent, made up of seven or eight different substances, of which Citrol, Nerol and Geraniol are the more important, and these are used as the basis of ‘swarm lure’. The reason for the success of this is that the Nasanov scent is used to generate ‘come and join us’ or ‘here is the queen’ messages. Scout bees rub their abdomens on the alighting board of a prospective new home for a swarm to create a homing beacon for the swarm to detect when it comes close to the new home. Old skep keepers used to rub lemon balm on the insides of their skeps to encourage swarms to move in. It is now realised that lemon balm contains Citrol and so acts as an artificial swarm lure. The old skep beekeepers did not know this, but they knew what worked!
The main alarm pheromone is based on isopentyl acetate, and icosol and 2-heptanone are also used as alarm signals. On a muggy day, beekeepers with a keen nose can detect the smell of isopentyl acetate (a banana-like smell) and use it as a cue to desist. Isopentyl acetate is produced in the worker bee sting chamber, and alerted guard bees can sometimes be seen with their stings partly protruding with a drop of alarm pheromone evaporating from the end. If no smoke is used the smell can drift into the colony. This rouses more bees to come on guard duty, and it also inhibits foraging bees from leaving the colony, thereby maintaining a larger fighting force for defence if required. This is a good reason for using smoke at the entrance as it makes the bees afraid, and the fear overcomes their aggressiveness, thereby demonstrating the advantages of getting your retaliation in first.
2- heptanone is produced if there is a prolonged disturbance in the colony, and it is believed that this may be a factor in encouraging bees that ‘follow’ after a colony has been opened. It is also believed to be used on drones when they are due to be ejected from the colony- making them literally marked men. It may also be applied to larvae that have just been fed, inhibiting further feeding for a period while the chemical evaporates.
Some alarm pheromone can also be produced by the queen bee if she is frightened, for example by strange workers. Not much is known about the chemicals involved but their effects are well recorded. Their effects can arouse the queen to fight an intruder- another queen for example. It will also provoke workers to attack a queen that is a stranger in the colony. Virgin queens do not appear to generate this alarm, which may be why the direct introduction of 1 day old virgin queens into a queenless colony is possible. The presence of this queen alarm pheromone is one reason why direct introduction of mated queens is more difficult. If she is introduced in a cage alone then her hunger can overcome her fear, leading to more successful introduction. The queen also produces a chemical that can inhibit worker aggression, but the production of this declines as the queen ages. The existence of this substance may explain why aggressive colonies sometimes become calm immediately they have a new queen, without having to wait for the aggressive workers to die off.
[This article will be concluded next month - Ed.]
8. Have you got a bee bob?
I used to have what is known as a 'bee bob' in the apiary. Two posts about two feet apart and six feet high with a crossbar at the top. The bob was made out of old black material of some sort rolled up into a ball about the size of a football and suspended on a short length of twine. This was there to attract the queen when the swarm came out in the hope she would settle on it. [It] very often was successful in catching the swarm. I wonder if anyone uses it now?
John Gleed The Scottish Beekeeper October 3009 (Courtesy BEES)
9. Swarm Catching, 1838 Style ( Report from the Morpeth Herald)
In 1838, there was an odd event in Morpeth Market. On July 18: ‘A swarm of bees lighted on a man and boy standing near the Pack Horse Inn in Morpeth during market day and their faces were completely covered. A hive and the Queen Bee placed nearby, her subjects were gradually attracted from their curious nesting place and the parties escaped unhurt, much to the satisfaction of the crowds, who were anxiously waiting the result.’
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