The gentle art of beekeeping

High summer.

The swarm season had been and gone.

The 'June gap' - the period of dearth between the oil seed rape going over and the smorgasbord of mixed summer forage becoming available - had barely registered.

Week after glorious week of sunshine, interspersed with enough rain (often overnight) to delay the annual threat of hosepipe bans and - more importantly - to ensure no interruption to the summer nectar.

It was shaping up to be a great season.

But, as I set off for the apiary that morning, it was clear that the good weather was temporarily coming to an end. Storms were moving in from the South-West, with 'thunder and localised heavy rain' predicted for later in the afternoon.

Already the atmosphere was feeling heavier, denser, a bit more humid.

But there was still more than enough time before the weather changed to check on the success or otherwise of my queen mating.

'Or otherwise' because, although it seemed unlikely considering the benign weather we'd been having, it cannot be relied upon. You have to check.

Queen mating

Finding a queen laying well that you've reared from a day-old larva is one of those magic moments in beekeeping that I'll never tire of so, notwithstanding the predicted thunderstorms, it was going to be a good day.

I'd primed a number of 5 frame nucs with ripe queen cells produced from selected grafted larvae, the queen had emerged over three weeks ago and been left to get on with things {{1}}. Mathematically I reckon the earliest you find a laying queen after emergence is about 7 days, and that needs perfect weather and a mini-nuc. In my experience, they often take a bit longer from larger hives.

However, the weather had been as near perfect as it gets, so I was more than hopeful, even with the larger format hives. In fact, I was 'quietly confident' {{2}}. There had been ample opportunities for the queen to go on a few short orientation flights, followed by several matings flights - often over sequential days - and then settle down and start laying.

In fact, sufficient time had elapsed that I fully expected to find sealed brood, so I might even get an idea if the new queens were laying nice slabs of brood.

New queens often lay a bit haphazardly for the first day or two. They miss cells, wander around a bit, and often lay two or three eggs in individual cells for a short while. Not so many that they look like laying workers, but enough to concern a beginner. It's perhaps better to not look ... just wait a few more days and she, and the colony, will have settled down to business, and you'll get a much better idea of her performance.

In between checking the nucs I was also inspecting my production colonies {{3}} just in case any were thinking of swarming or otherwise misbehaving, but my main focus was the nucs.

Nucs for beginners

A couple of the nucs were destined for beginners, others would be united with the production colonies to requeen them. It was a bit early in the season to be thinking of overwintered nucs, but it is possible to make them up early and keep them strong, but not too strong, by periodically taking out a frame of emerging brood (used to supplement other colonies) and replacing it with foundation.

The nucs would go to the beginners the following week. Mid-season is a good time to get a nuc to start beekeeping. The weather – notwithstanding the predicted afternoon thunderstorm – is more dependable, and much warmer. The inevitably protracted inspections by a tyro don’t risk chilling the brood, and nucs are almost always better tempered - and so less daunting - than full colonies.

A beginner starting with a nuc in mid-season has the pleasure of watching it develop into a full colony and preparing it for winter - a valuable learning experience. It's probably too late to get a honey crop (though there may be exceptional seasons) but that's also a useful lesson for a new beekeeper. An understanding that beekeeping requires patience may be a tough lesson to learn {{4}}, but it's better than purchasing an overcrowded nuc in April, that swarms in May, gets stroppy in June and needs a new (again purchased?) queen in July {{5}}.

Missing in action (or eaten?)

So, I'd spent a long morning in the apiary, up to my elbows in boxes of bees, checking the nucs and the colonies they were destined for.

Many of the queens were laying well already, with ample sealed brood, indicating they'd been laying for at least a fortnight. A couple only contained open brood and there was one 'missing in action'. The queen had emerged (I knew that already, I'd checked within 24 hours of emergence) but she'd disappeared and there was no sign she'd ever been there {{6}}.

Her absence meant that there was a much-depleted worker population. Queenless nucs often haemorrhage workers to nearby queenright colonies (or nucs) in the apiary, leaving a pathetic remainder that may develop laying workers.

There’s little point in trying to save a colony like that. Actually, it’s not even a colony … it’s a box with several hundred abandoned and ageing workers. Adding resources to it – a new queen or a frame of eggs and young larvae – is a waste of bees and time. They’d better serve the colonies they were already in. The remaining workers in the queenless nuc were probably over a month old and were reaching the stage when they were just moping about hopelessly, rather than energetically foraging.

If you keep livestock, you’ll have dead stock.

These weren’t dead stock, but they were on their last legs, er, wings. I shook the workers out in front of a row of strong hives and removed the nuc box {{7}} so there was no 'focus' for them to return to. The workers wouldn’t boost the other colonies much, but it was a better fate than simply allowing them to dwindle.

Surplus to requirements

But, after setting aside the nucs for beginners and those to be used for requeening, I still had one queen 'spare'.

Except, as anyone who regularly rears queens will attest, there's always a demand for 'spare' queens.

They are never surplus to requirements ... and this was no exception.

A friend had asked me earlier in the week for a 'leftover' queen from the requeening of my production colonies. She had just one colony and, despite the good weather, it was bad-tempered.

'Ratty' was the term she had used, though in retrospect she may have prefixed it with 'very' or 'unbelievably' or 'horribly'.

I can't now remember, but it wasn't long before I was going to find out.

Rather than giving her an older queen she could have the 'spare' queen, the leftover from the current batch.

A queen has a remarkable influence over the behaviour and performance of the colony. Good quality queens head calm, strong colonies that are a pleasure to work with. But it’s not all good genes. You can sometimes detect the influence of a good new queen in a poor colony well before any of the brood she has laid emerges. I've always assumed this is due to pheromones (and with bees, if it’s not genetics or pheromones I’m not sure what else could explain it – ley lines, phase of the moon, 5G masts nearby?). Being recently mated, and now laying well, this 'spare' queen would be producing good levels of pheromones so should speed up the expected (hoped for, and apparently needed) improvement in colony temperament.

Any colour as long as it's white (or blue)

I quickly found the 'spare' queen in the last nuc, popped her into a marking cage and left her in a shady corner of the apiary while I rearranged the now queenless nuc to unite it with a strong queenright colony.

A few minutes later and I'd clipped and marked the queen with a white Posca pen. I try and alternate, blue one year, white the next (or sometimes yellow if neither of those work or can be found), and use my hive records to remind me of her age. Being colour-blind I cannot see – or at least distinguish – reds and greens, either from each other or from lots of other colours in the hive.

This approach also saves me spending too much on the pens; these are rarely finished before they dry out or gum up irretrievably, or disappear somewhere-or-other forever {{8}}.

I transferred the marked queen into a JzBz queen cage and capped the exit tube. Of all the huge variety of queen introduction cages that are available these are my absolute favourite.

This has nothing to do with any comparative research on the best design for a queen introduction cage, and everything to do with having been given a bucket of them a few years ago.

I'm easily influenced, and who doesn't love a freebie? 😄.

Go west

I was hot and tired. I'd done a lot of lifting, carrying, bending, squinting, prising, turning and rearranging. The supers were already reassuringly heavy. With the hives all strapped up safely, I put the caged queen in the breast pocket of my beesuit, extinguished the smoker and tidied up the apiary.

It was time for a cup of tea.

It was warm, dark and humid in the pocket – for an hour or so she would be fine.

Actually, it was getting more humid and the heaviness in the air was, if anything, getting more oppressive.

The tea would have to wait 😔.

Off to the West there were towering cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon, and I thought I'd heard the faintest of rumbles of thunder. The sky was still bright, but there were increasing amounts of high cirrus drifting towards me.

Time to get a move on.

With the car packed I lock the apiary gate and set off.

West.

Leaving the flat agricultural valley I climbed gently into low rolling hills. The land became more wooded, restricting my view of the thunderheads building, now more strongly, in the direction I was heading. The sun was now intermittently blocked by the wispy clouds ahead of the storm front.

However, the bad weather was still some way off. I should have ample time to hand over the caged queen, slurp down a cuppa and get home before the worst of the rain arrived.

If my friend was sensible she’d just leave the new queen hanging in the cage in a super. The workers would feed her until the weather was a little more conducive to opening a 'hot' hive to find and remove the old queen.

Could you do me a favour?

I turned into the drive and my friend came out to meet me. We exchanged beekeeping chat about the weather, forage, the now-passed swarm season, the possibility of getting a nuc for next season {{9}}, and a variety of other bee-related topics. And then she asked:

"Could you perhaps requeen the colony for me? I’m really bad at finding the queen, and they’ve been a bit bolshie recently. I’ll put the kettle on while you’re doing it.”

Bolshie ... {{10}}.

I did a quick mental calculation; on the one hand were the positives - kettle on, more bee chat - on the other the negatives - 'bolshie' and the distant, but still periodically audible, thunder - and was surprised to find that my yearning for a cuppa tipped the balance enough for me to agree to do it.

I returned to the car for my smoker and some queen candy which I used to plug the neck of the JzBz cage. At the same time I also found a small twist of wire to hang the cage between the frames from.

“They’re in the back garden, on the bench by the gate to the orchard.”

I look through the kitchen window across the unkempt lawn (was the mower broken?). Sure enough, there was a double brooded National hive topped with two supers perched, slightly askew, on a garden bench about 30 metres away.

“I’ll stay here if you don’t mind … they gave me a bit of a fright when I last checked them.”

"Sure", I think, "no problem".

After all, I’ve done this a hundred times.

White, no sugar and, yes, I’d love a slice of cake as well ... back in a few minutes.

As Baden Powell said "be prepared"

It was an idyllic spot.

A large garden, edged with mature mixed native hedging. The wooden gate led to an orchard of indeterminate size, but large enough to contain a few sheep grazing under the trees.

Yes, the lawn was overgrown, but if I lived there I'd have wanted to spend my time enjoying the surroundings, rather than cutting the lawn.

I stepped into the back garden and fired up the smoker. It was still vaguely warm from being used for my own bees and the mix of cardboard, wood shavings and dried grass began smouldering nicely. It would just need the occasional squeeze or two of the bellows to remain lit for another hour or so ... not that I had any intention of taking that long.

A couple of bees had come to investigate me as I walked across the patio, they just did a couple of laps of my head and disappeared.

But, as I walked across the unmown lawn, they returned.

And they brought reinforcements.

By the time I was halfway to the hive I’d been 'pinged' a couple of times.

Not stung, but the sort of glancing blow that shows intent.

A 'shot across the bows', if you like.

I didn’t like 🙁.

Having donned my veil and zipped it up quickly, I rummaged through my pockets to find some gloves. I'd been wearing a mismatched pair all morning, a Marigold on my left hand and a thin, long-cuffed nitrile on my right.

The Marigold provides ample protection and the nitrile leaves me the dexterity to handle queens easily. However, both gloves were still damp, so would take an age to put on.

I found a clean pair of nitriles in my breast pocket and pulled them on ... less protection (and it looked like I might need it), but better apiary hygiene.

Opening hostilities

While getting 'gloved up' another couple of bees dive bomb my veil, one clinging on and making that high-pitched whining sound that shows they’re determined to get through.

'For what we're about to receive' was looking like a lousy deal for a cup of tea and slice of cake.

I approached the hive. It was clearly a strong colony. Very strong.

It was canted slightly backwards on the bench and didn’t look entirely stable.

Structurally or psychologically.

I gave them a couple of puffs of smoke at the entrance, waited a minute or so ('Do you really want to do this?') then placed the upturned roof on the ground a few paces away. The supers were heavily propolised and difficult to remove ... it was clear the colony hadn't been opened for some time. Having prised the supers up and off as gently as possible, I left them standing on the roof with the crownboard still in situ.

I removed the queen excluder, checked the underside for the queen ("If you're gonna dream, dream big") and put it out of the way, leaning against the supers.

I was faintly aware of the smell of bananas and the - still distant - sound of thunder. It probably wasn’t getting any closer, but it hadn't stopped.

The thunder that is.

The smell of bananas was new … it’s the alarm pheromone.

Actually, it’s one of the alarm pheromones.

Importantly, it’s the one released from the Koschevnikov gland at the base of the sting. This meant that one or more bees had already pressed home a full attack and stung me.

Felt nowt.

Presumably they’d hit a fold in the beesuit or the cuff of a nitrile ... or my adrenaline levels were already sufficiently elevated to suppress my pain response.

I was increasingly aware of the number of really unpleasant bees in the hive.

And, more to the point, the increasing numbers coming out of the hive.

And I was acutely aware that I was only wearing a single thickness beesuit in the presence of 50,000 sociopaths with bad weather approaching.

Under the suit I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts.

It might start raining in half an hour, and I still had up to 20 frames to search through to find the queen ... this could get ugly.

It was late July, it was a hot day, my bees are calm.

I wasn’t dressed appropriately for these psychos.

I felt like I needed chain mail … and possibly an umbrella.

Time for a rethink

Knowing when you're outgunned - even temporarily - is half the battle.

I gave the hive a few more puffs from the smoker and retreated back to the car, ducking under and through – twice – some overhanging shrubbery to deter and deflect the bees that were encouraging me to withdraw.

Ideally I’d have put a fleece on under the beesuit. That makes you more or less impervious to stings.

Did I mention it was a warm day in July?

No fleece 🙁.

However, I did have a beekeeping jacket in the car. This is what I wear for most of my beekeeping (unless I’m wearing shorts). I removed the veil from the jacket and donned it over the beesuit, remembering to transfer the caged queen to the outer jacket pocket.

“The queen’s not marked”, my friend called to me from the kitchen as I walked back across the garden, “Sorry!”

I returned to the hive. To reduce the immediate concentration of bees, I moved the two brood boxes off the floor, placing each several metres apart on two wooden garden chairs. I then returned the supers to the original floor so allowing returning foragers and the increasing maelstrom of flying bees to have somewhere to accumulate if needed.

And then I started to look for the unmarked queen.

And found her.

It was as simple as that.

Amazingly, she was wandering around in full view, on the second or third frame of the second brood box.

I'd dealt with each box in the same way. I gently split the propolis sealing the frames together – first down one side of the box, then the other. I removed the outer frame, inspected it carefully and placed it on the ground leaning against the chair leg. With space to work I then methodically went through every frame, quickly but calmly.

No rushing, no bashing, no jarring ... displacing as few bees as possible from each frame, and returning the frames gently, pushing them together without squashing bees between the lugs.

I didn’t expect to find her so easily. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find her at all.

It helped that she was huge and pale.

It also helped that she was calmly ambling around on the frame.

She was clearly confident in knowing that there were 50,000 acolytes willing to lay down their lives to protect her.

Her confidence was misplaced 🙁.

Veiled threat

And then a bee appeared inside the veil.

This happens now and then. I suspect they sneak through the gap where the zips meet at the front or the back. There are little Velcro patches to hold everything together, but it was an old suit and the Velcro was a bit worn.

There are few things more disconcerting that 50,000 psychos encouraging a Ninja worker that’s managed to break through your defences and is just in your peripheral vision.

Or worse, in your hair (though this is less and less a problem for me).

With a calm colony you can retreat and deal with the interloper. You have to take the veil off. Sometimes you have to take the suit off.

Removing the veil would have been unwise. Actually, it would have been idiotic.

I retreated a few yards and dealt with the bee, it was never going to end well for one of us 🙁.

Reassemble in the reverse order

Returning to the bench, I removed the supers that were now festooned with bees, temporarily returning them to the upturned roof. I found a pencil-thick twig and used it under one corner of the floor to stop everything wobbling. Both brood boxes were placed back on the floor, trying to avoid crushing too many bees at the interface. The combination of a well aimed puff or two of smoke, brushing the bees away gently (with a hand, not a bee brush) and placing the box down at an angle before rotating it into position reduced the carnage.

I hung the new queen in her cage {{11}} between the top bars of the central frames in the upper box, returned the queen excluder and the supers and closed the hive up.

It took a full 15 minutes to escape the followers before I could remove the beesuit safely. I’d been stung several times but, other than a couple to my hands, none had really penetrated anything more than the surface layer.

I finally got my cup of tea.

Confidence

This all happened a decade ago. I took a few risks towards the end with the queen introduction but got away with it. The colony released the queen, accepted her and a month or two later were much better behaved.

I was fortunate to find the queen so quickly in such a strong colony, and didn't need to resort to some of the tricks sometimes needed to find elusive queens.

Ideally I’d have left the queen cage sealed to see if they were aggressive to her, only removing the plastic cap once I was certain they’d accept her. This can take a day or two, but means that you need to check them.

It would have taken more than a cup of tea to persuade me to go back into the hive and my friend definitely wasn’t going to.

The promised thunderstorm never arrived … like many summer storms it was 'all mouth and no trousers', eventually dissipating as the afternoon cooled.

This was the worst colony I’ve ever handled as a beekeeper. At least for out and out, close quarter, bare knuckle aggression. By any criteria they were unusable for beekeeping.

I’ve had colonies with followers chase me a hundred metres up a meadow, though the hive itself wasn’t too hot. This colony was an order of magnitude worse, though the followers were less persistent.

I suspect that aggression (or, more correctly, defensiveness) and following have different genetic determinants in honey bees.

Lessons

• Knowing when to retreat is important. Smoking them before I returned to the car for my jacket helped mask the alarm pheromone and gave me time to think and renewed confidence that I was now better protected.
• Confidence is very important when dealing with an unpleasant hive. It allows you to be unhurried and gentle, ignoring the little voice in your head that's screaming ‘get a move on, they’re going postal’.
• Confidence comes with experience and with belief in the protective clothing you use. It doesn’t need to be stingproof, but it does need to protect the soft bits (my forearms, ankles and face react badly when stung).
• Indeed, it might be better if it’s not completely stingproof. It’s important to be aware of the reactions of the colony, which is why I prefer nitriles to Marigolds, and why I have never used gauntlets.
• Many colonies are defensive in poor weather or with approaching thunderstorms. If I’d known just how defensive this colony was I’d have planned the day differently {{12}}.

Bad bees

It turned out the colony had been purchased, sight unseen, as a nuc the previous year. By the end of the season it had become really unpleasant. The supers had been on since the previous summer {{13}} and the colony had not been treated for mites.

They appeared healthy, but their behaviour was negatively influencing their management (and the upkeep of the garden).

Beekeeping isn’t fun if you’re frightened of the bees.

You find excuses to not open the hive, or not mow the lawn, or not leave the kitchen.

The story ended happily. The new queen settled well and the bees became a pleasure to work with. My friend regained her confidence and is happy to requeen her own colonies now.

She has even started using proper hive stands rather than the garden bench … which you can now relax on with a mug of tea and a slice of cake.

While watching the bees 🙂 .

Notes

An earlier version of this post appeared in The Apiarist about five years ago. However, subscriber numbers have expanded significantly since then. Since relatively few readers go back through previous articles it seemed like a good post to revise for the end of one beekeeping season, with the promise of a new one just around the corner.

May your colonies be calm, your supers heavy, your queens fecund and your season successful.

Happy New Year

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Thank you

{{1}}: I'd checked emergence, looking for an open queen cell, but nothing more. There's no point in searching through the box for a skittish virgin queen. She'll be there.

{{2}}: Perhaps tempting fate?

{{3}}: 'Honey' production, that is.

{{4}}: Particularly in your first season.

{{5}}: Or worse, develops laying workers and is doomed unless the beginner has additional colonies.

{{6}}: Lost during an orientation flight, eaten by a swift when returning from a mating flight, we'll never know.

{{7}}: Leaving a space on the hive stand.

{{8}}: And, if I knew where, I'd look for them ... I suspect the hole in my beesuit pocket has something to do with it.

{{9}}: Now she asks! However, there's still another round of queen rearing to go before the season ends, so ample time to prepare nucs for overwintering.

{{10}}: "A person of violent disagreeable habits" is the best - though not the first - reference for this, attributed to George Orwell in 1940.

{{11}}: Uncapped but plugged with candy.

{{12}}: "Sorry, I've no spare queens ... perhaps next year"

{{13}}: It was lucky - or was it? - that the queen hadn't become isolated under the queen excluder during the winter.