Neils

I think I've finally managed to get my basic assessment sorted out on the second attempt. The first attempt had to be abandoned when it turned out the colony we were inspecting had EFB! I'm glad I spotted a problem but had to be honest after the event and admit that if it were my own hive I probably wouldn't have called the bee inspector at that point. Fortunately my assessor is also an SBI so the problem was spotted immediately. It has made me re-think how I approach inspections and what I'm looking for, with a single colony and the amount of time I lavish on each frame I'd always been confident that problems wouldn't escape my notice, but the abstract of looking at frames in leaflets or demos which are normally very bad examples of infection differs significantly when you come up against it face to face. Being told that it's not uncommon for far more experienced beekeepers than me to simply ignore (the signs of) EFB at a level that we saw doesn't actually make me feel that much better to tell the truth.

Since then I've been back to play with my bees, I've not quite encased all my kit in concrete and buried it 4 miles underground, but I was tempted. Instead I followed the guidelines to the letter and scorched my hive tools just to make myself feel better rather than add any additional layer of protection I suspect. Naturally this year doesn't look like it's going to be simple either. The Queen right portion of my artificial swarm is now making queen cells again despite being moved to 14x12 frames, I suspect they just aren't drawing the frames fast enough although the sight of a 14x12 frame laid corner to corner with brood is pretty impressive. I'd initially thought that I'd Artificially swarm them again but I'm starting to reconsider, there's a pretty decent flow on from the allotment atthe moment and I'm not sure that putting the queen back onto more foundation isn't just going to repeat the problem again in a week or two. There's also the small matter of the Brood portion of the AS. I took a look in there too to see if there were any signs of laying, there weren't and they were not happy to see me. Not as bad as some colonies I've seen but there were a few followers by the end of the inspection and worse, a couple of people who'd turned up 3-4 plots down from mine ended up being stung. While they were understanding that's not going to last if it happens again. So the thought of having possibly two large, queenless, colonies on the allotment is not appealing to me at the moment so I've come up with an alternative plan:

I'm going back up tomorrow to inspect the Nuc I made up when I did the AS, if there's no sign of eggs this time then I'm afraid it's had it, if there are eggs I'm going to transfer it into a friend's hive to replace the bees he lost over winter with a top up of young bees from the 14x12. I'm then intending to take the queen out of the 14x12 and make up a new Nuc with her, she's a late summer 2009 queen and I'd hate to lose her at this point. the queen cells in the 14x12 will be from sunday at the earliest so I'm simply going to shut up shop again and next weekend (the Mrs won't entertain the notion that we cancel the bank holiday weekend at the request of the bees) I'm going to move the 14x12 to my new apiary and hope for the best that there are some drones around for the new queen to mate with, they can be grumpy as they like on the new site, they aren't going to bother anyone and if my maths is right, the move should be 24-48 hours before any queens start to emerge. The Nuc, as a standard National, also means that I'll have some test frames, if necessary, to nick for the existing "Queenless" hive, although it's a little early for me to be too worried that the queen I introduced wont come into lay. If that comes into lay in the meantime, no problem, my friend can have the Nuc.

I had intended to go to three colonies this year but it's clear that I just don't have enough kit to make that a comfortable proposition, I thought 8 supers would be enough but it's clear that it's not, going to 3 also strips me of just about every bit of spare kit that I have and I'd much rather be able to comfortably look after 2 colonies than struggle to manage 3, plus my friend gets a Nuc of bees out of it and I save him £150+ having to buy one in.

Yesterday saw me helping out one of the Association "gurus" sort out some colonies while I finished off the assessment. It's an opportunity that if offered I recommend any beekeeper who only has a hive or two takes up. The chance to go around 15 or so colonies on different apiary sites and go through them I found incredibly helpful. That he used be to an SBI and I had the existing SBI with us too certainly didn't hurt either. At the first apiary, myself and the SBI took a colony each, both on single National Brood boxes, by time I was on the third frame, she'd finished and was closing up. Until yesterday my inspection routine was that unless I could see the frame was foundation, out it came for me to admire. After the first colony that changed that unless the frame actually had bees on it why bother to take it out? If we knew there was an unmarked Queen the priority became to first, spot eggs, second find the queen, clip and mark her and third look for problems whether signs of disease or simply queen cells. That I think is perhaps the biggest pointer I've learned over the past couple of weeks. Unless it's a lazy sunday and you've got the time to admire all your frames, stop looking for things that look right and look for things that look wrong instead. It's a subtle distinction and perhaps I'm not explaining it very well, but I could (still can in fact) spend 10-15 minutes looking at a brood frame, admiring all the larvae and those lovely biscuit cappings when in actual fact that isn't what you're actually looking for. I think that's why I missed the EFB a couple of weeks ago, when 99% of the brood actually looks fine and that is what you're focusing on, it is very easy to miss that 1% displaying the warning signs. Capped brood is a little different as problems tend to stand out a little more, but looking for "Bright, white and curled up tight" Larvae on a frame means that is pretty much what you'll see. Looking for curled, miscoloured larvae instead, looking for chalkbrood, looking for signs of wax moth etc and I find that "normal" larvae then tend to drift more out of focus because I'm not looking or worried about it.

I feel over the past couple of weeks like I've had a real crash course in beekeeping. It's perhaps easier to find a positive discovering EFB when the colony isn't yours, but I've seen it now, understand why I missed it, and am much, much clearer about where my beekeeping can improve.

I guess a quick summary of things I've learned over the last couple of weeks are:

1) Don't assume that because you've done an AS that your bees wont try and swarm again, especially if you're using foundation.

2) When inspecting, if a frame hasn't got bees on it, you can ignore it unless you've got a need to see in more detail what's going on.

3) If you're still working through frames of stores, if there's no pollen on the frame you're looking at, the next one will probably be stores too, if it has got pollen on it, the next frame will almost certainly be brood.

4) Don't look for things that are right when inspecting brood, look for what is wrong instead.

5) Pushing frames back into place one at a time at the end of an inspection? Use your hive tool (J-tools not included). Place blade of curved end against the brood box so the curve faces the frames close to the side bars and lever all your frames (minus the last one and/or the dummy board) back into place in one go. Not always easy when things are heavily propolised, but saves huge amounts of time.

6) It's entirely possible on a colony covering 3 frames of brood, when you can see eggs, to still not be able to find the queen.

7) Don't over extend yourself. 3 big colonies sounds great, but have you got enough kit? I thought 8 working supers/frames would be more than enough at the start of this season, my two existing colonies are already using those and need more. Fortunately I have one or two that I still need to make up but I'm no longer in any rush to try and create another split from an AS when there are alternative methods requiring less kit to be bought into play. Next year should be different, I'll have more kit, more comb, more of a clue what I'm doing and be in a better situation to cope.