Mine will
still at least they are predicable
I blame the oil seed rape :)
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Mine will
still at least they are predicable
I blame the oil seed rape :)
No OSR round here this year, right now I'll be happy if it stops raining for a couple of days running.
Swarm ... in May ... ?
Attachment 2666
Time will tell
I'm going to hide behind my Snelgrove boards till it's all over :)
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Mine are about 7 frames of brood short of exploiting the OSR.
And it's cold and wet again.
Still only 9 degrees here for the rest of week and we are stil having hail showers which want to be snow, I have made one of those snelgrove boards and looking forward to using it, or possibly loosing the bees ????
14C and warmest day of the year. One of my jumbo langs is on 7 frames of brood.. Horsley board - newly made- likely to be used in real life..
Last year things were exactly the same cold and miserable
I was pretty convinced we would be off to a slow start
I dawdled before having a look and put my boards on a couple of weeks behind schedule
Made a lot of extra work for myself
This year I'm determined to be a bit more careful and not make the assumption weather will hold them back
If there is OSR close by the population just explodes
Madasafish let's know how you get on with the Horsley board if you decide to use it
Thanks Feckless for the heads up on Saint Jude :)
Ditto.
I built one and used it a couple of years ago. Not very successfully. I hope you do better.
In contrast I've done very well with simple split boards and am going to try a Snelgrove this year.
Aside ... much like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon ... there's got to be an equivalent that defines the number of posts a thread accumulates before a Snelgrove Board is mentioned ;) On SBAi it's about 3.
Apologies It's usually my fault
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There is no doubt that a high proportion of hives will need attention in May to stop swarming...even early May or even before the end of April.
I was out doing other things, but my team went feeding in Poly Langs near Edinburgh on Tuesday.......and came back with a report of only 8 dead from 250, and 60% strong enough to need an extra box as soon as the OSR opens, and about half of that 60% are completely wall to wall. I was on wooden hives that day and not ONE was at that power. Some not for away but as soon as the OSR gets going they will go like a rocket. End of May is almost 7 weeks away............only the poor ones will not have needed serious attention by then. In OUR situation that is.
Three years ago, when it was a fairly early spring, we had the first incoming swarms at our yard (we keep no bees there so not ours) in the last week of April.
Hi C4u
Glad it's going well
I had a quick look in a handful of polynucs today
3 frames of brood and one with 4
Last year I convinced myself the cold weather would slow them up and it didn't
Your polyhives will be the best bet for the rape then ?
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We are in the midst of moving them. However the poly aere way ahead of the average in wood up to now, but they had the power all through the winter. The reasons for the difference are more complex than wood v poly. The wooden hives I was at earlier in the thread were a ropey lot....but had been since last summer. They almost starved to death on the heather and their area did poorest, so they had less chance all round.
8 dead from 250 is a most atypical outcome though..............its an almost freakishly good wintering and not in any way to be seen as normal.
Its a very low loss year all round and we only have a small number of groups that are poor....but were all poor from last year.
However, OSR is a by product for us. If we get it all and well, but right from day 1 we are looking at the first half of July, to have the maximum number of good colonies for the heather as we start moving to the bell about 5th July. (state of flowering dictates).
Hi C4U - that surprised me. I thought moving colonies to OSR sites would have been part of the cycle, for the crop and to support expansion. In terms of honey yield what % would you say is your output of OSR v heather? As was mentioned elsewhere, I agree that we really do not promote heather honey enough cf that manuka stuff. The stores down south and in Europe should all be waiting (desperately) for the first of the season.
But - I'm interested in your swarm control with those colony numbers. What is the strategy? Is it a vertical AS when Q-cells appear and raise the new Q for the heather?
I've thought for swarm control this year I would try out moving the old Q into a weak but looked after nucleus colony (in poly or above a Snelgrove/split board) and keeping most of the bees to raise the new Q and hopefully get an early crop. On my sites - the timing of splits always seems to compromise the early honey yield.
Last attempt at a reply before I give up....twp earlier plump replies were sent but vanished....maybe Gavin has banned me? lol....would be an act of kindness now we are very busy.
We move all our bees to the OSR. It is a crucially important build up crop for us, and we do a lot of replacement of losses and equalising of colonies on that crop. We do produce SOME honey from it but as I said before, its a by product in a way. Nice to have and put a bit in the kitty but it is of little overall importance against maximising the heather crop, so not worth hampering the colonies in their development in order to get a harvest.
The question about proportions of crop, well every year we hit, by tonnage, somewhere between 70 and 85% of our crop being heather. Add in the value of the crops relative to eachother and 85% of our honey derived cash return comes from heather.
As you may already know we bottle none of this. All goes in drums to a stockholder and turns up as certain iconic brands and also keeps other domestic producers going when they don't have enough. Also do a few thousand pieces of cut comb heather each season for a few clients which also turns up in surprising places with surprising labels on it.
The stores in England are only partly waiting for our honey. What is not generally known, given the high profile status of Scottish in relation to heather honey is that we are not the dominant producing nation. As much is produced in England and some of the quality from there is superb, then there is Norway Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland, France, Spain and even New Zealand, all producing significant amounts of Calluna honey. Because of that it would be very difficult to get a special status for Scottish. Btw, I was told last week by my trader friend that he is currently having to pay £26000 per tonne for Manuka..........as against about £7500 for heather (both figures are for bulk in drums, semi filtered).
If you get to a situation where heather honey is an out of stock item you have made real trouble for yourself. You need to control stocks to ensure you keep your shelf space, or someone else will get in, and you might not get back. This applies equally well to the individual beekeeper in his favourite shop as it does to a honey type in a supermarket. Our stockholder rations it in times of shortage to avoid out of stocks with key customers, and in gluts will sell off bulk to Europe. He is content to sit on up to three years production if needed to be sure of seeing through times of dearth.
Swarm control? well that's a real topic that I could write more than one chapter of a book on. There is no one system that fits all situations. Berar in mind we have this notional 5th July date in mind and try to both maximise the number of colonies in fighting trim for the bell at that time and minimise the interventions needed after that date as we cannot afford to be inspecting bees while migrating to the heather every day. What the orders of the day are is heavily influenced by several factors but most important of these is the calendar. How long do we have before going to the heather. Although not hard and fast we try to have the splitting ended by between the 15th and 25th of June....and after 15th its for remedial purposes only. We then let the queens off the lead by giving them a free run. Does it end swarming ? No, but it reduces it to level that is not economic to try to control.
However the basic early season splitting is similar to that you describe. First we do splits to refill empty hives. Same idea as most. Old queen and a little brood down in a new hive on the site of the old, excluder and supers added back on top of that. Then old hive with most of the nest and nearly all the nest bees is moved away to a new spot across the site. Process for getting a queen into that unit varies depending on the availability of mated queens from Jolantas unit, virgin queens from same, hatching cells from same, or finally cells from good colonies on the days round. we tend to collect cells at site 1 for using at site 2....and so on...moving the cells on to the next group for use. The colonies own cells are perfectly acceptable too, if the strain is good.
Once the empty hives are used up we go on to vertical splitting as you described. The split need not go on top of its own mother colony. We mark any with problems with TRQ on the front (there can be many reasons) and these will have a split from another hive put on top. This also minimises the number of skyscrapers.....as you get about three weeks from splitting in a flow situation before you need to do it again....in dearths they can be very dour to rebuild after splitting and little judicious use of the syrup tank can be needed to get them going again.
This is all turned on its head if the queen is already fined down at all in preparation for swarming. Old queen down splits will tend to have a poor result from that system once swarm preps are advanced, and then you need to have an alternative strategy involving depriving the queen of all her FLYING bees so she them comes back into lay. Several options there. The big issue in this case is the old hive location. Lots of flying bees come back there in the mood for swarming action and can be quite a task to control and they will draw lots of fresh cells on any young brood you leave them with. Leave them no brood and they drift off into other colonies spreading swarm fever. Selecting a cell to leave in that situation can be awkward as they are not at all picky about selection of larva age and even sometimes gender. Some of the biggest juiciest looking cells are actually drones, and we work on the basis that if it looks too good to be true it probably is. It can be best in that situation to kill ALL cells and come back in 7 to 9 days and select a god ONE to leave or knock them all down and ad a hatching stage cell from chosen stock.
Similar applies to the old nest taken away in conventional splitting, with the old queen in the new box on old site. If the queen cells you choose to leave in the split is going to take more than 2 or so days to hatch you can find that even in such a short time they will have started emergency cells and there will already be sufficient new flying bees before the first of the new cells hatches for the split to throw a caste or castes. Its not a disaster but its a pain, both to the neighbours and the loss of the selected queen, meaning you end up with an unselected emergency cell derived queen in the hive. These splits can all be boosted once established by superfluous brood from the mother half which will ease off her renewing swarming inclinations.
Then we get to the second half of June, and all bets are off. Any colony with 6 bars of brood or more gets double deeped and the excluder taken away. By heather time we still have quite a mix of hive sizes depending on last splitting date. Aim is to have 80% double deep or better for the shifting day. The splits and mothers are marked before loading to make sure the correct ones find eachother at destination. Some time during the heather period we go round with a case of air freshener, lift the top half off, spray the freshener on the the top bars of the bottom hive and the bottom bars of the top hive, and simply place them back together and let nature sort out which is the best queen. There is no fighting as they have unity before the smell has gone. Within minutes the bees arriving where the top entrance once was find the lower entrance and start streaming down and in. Initially at least its important NOT to leave them a top entrance as this can encourage them to remain as essentially a two queen unit with separate nests which is a real mess to sort out in September. If the split (or on odd occasions the part that had the old queen) are queenless, or drone layer, or just failed to lay, that part is just shaken out and its box used to add to another colony. Virgins at the heather only get mated on a lowish percentage of occasions, so not worth persisting with. That's in an ideal world...we often don't have time to do some of this and virgins can be left until the seasons end and dealt with then, so those that WILL mate at the heather often get the chance.
Realise this is WAY too long............
1. Forgot to add in Ireland and Wales. They are also heather producers albeit at smaller tonnages.
2. Our low percentage of blossom honey is actually in part a reflection of our management.
However, OSR is being bred for ever earlier flowering dates, and ever shorter flowering periods. even without many modern varieties being poor nectar yielders, we have lost what were the key producing weeks, the later ones, that gave the harvest once the colonies had built up a bit. Its now almost finished in some years (especially the nice looking early fields) just at the time the bees want to get going in the supers. Some of my southern friends have a two to three week window now on oSR, and it can be finished by the start of May. we used to get 6 weeks but even up here now its a good bit less than that.
Not long at all, really interesting and informative, thanks for your time and efforts
Yes thanks C4u
It's easy when it's cold to underestimate what stage they are at
I looked in one poly nuc two days ago 4 frames of brood and 1 plus half food
So that's likely to be early swarming and run out of food
Certainly will need watching closely
If you were sitting at home thinking "it's too cold there's plenty time" then that could be a mistake
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Good warning many would be wise to heed.
Moved a load of nucs onto OSR near Edinburgh yesterday and a few were dangerously light. Checked a further group today and ditto.....even to the point of one having no food left at all and being all slow. Tomorrow all nucs will have to be fed.
Many were to be prepared for customers this week, and should probably now be delayed until the situation is stabilised.
With the next week remaining cool, and the last week of the month seemingly going to be really cold with northerlies, relying on early flows to feed the bees is not going to be safe.
PITA for most....this cold start will likely cost me about 20K of feed bill.........bummer.
At least the spectre of any really early swarms is off the list of worries.
seeing the same thing with mine. About 4-5 litres of syrup will do them the world of good at this stage.
Not at all C4U - its all interesting, and informative (corrects some of my misconceptions - I still have many more to deal with though). What comes across is a combination of planning and flexibility guided by knowledge and experience. Also helps us smaller scale keepers appreciate the organisation, scale and decision making involved at your level with the complications that bees and the weather throw our way. By way of analogy - you have a D-day landing every year for the heather - for me it feels like the charge of the light brigade every weekend.
lol.....feels more like the Keystone Cops here a lot of the time! If you think you are in control then for sure you are missing something.
Sometimes decisions come down to daft things like.....What have we got left on the truck?
Run out of splitting boards? You can find a hive top feeder pressed into service as a temporary crown board in the wooden hives, and crown boards as floors. Just keep enough notes to remember to bring enough of the right stuff next time.
There are daily events that 'bring forth intemperate language'.................any aura of calm and control is entirely accidental.
A couple of weeks ago - when we had that good spell I opened up a couple of colonies on a sheltered site, peeked under the crown board of some others and hefted. All colonies have wintered really well with lots of bees; there were even two that looked ready for a super or a second brood box which I have never seen so early. But, they were all light on stores with fondant gone from some. I thought I was being overly conservative putting on more fondant, and some crystallised super frames under the brood nest but I simply thought this would be helpful to reduce stress on the colonies. These bees were very well feed last autumn, some boosted by the heather, and ivy that went on and on. The good autumn and mild winter has no doubt helped keep numbers up but this has used up stores more than I have seen before. The weather will slow them down a bit but I am confident mine will be making preparations to swarm in May.
[QUOTE=Calluna4u;35514]lol.....feels more like the Keystone Cops here a lot of the time!
[QUOTE]
Oh, that makes me feel a bit better.
Thought I'd better sneak a look tonight after previous discussions, not sure how they managed it but 4 are full off bees and seem to have brood on 7 out of 11 frames 3 others that I had thought looked a little quieter had bees on all frames and more like 4 out 11 with sealed brood,might be a little previous but 5 of them got a QE and a super, snelgrove boards might be on before May.
If the weather stays for tomorrow the 5 hives and 2 nucs in the back garden will be checked tomorrow, reasons to be cheerful
4 off similar to above with 1 just 5 frames of bees an 2 of brood which had thought must be a goner
Re housed a nuc with a frame feeder and found the other empty, had foolishly left it between 2 full hives probably deserted for a better option next door
My originally prediction that my colonies might not be swarming in May is still looking accurate after finding three DLQ's in the last couple of days.
http://youtu.be/RXKJolS9Atg
DLQ's apart it, it does appear from C4's results that those with viable queens are going quite well. Although it's been pretty miserable we haven't seen the extremes of previous years
Swarming in May? Oh, yes. Without a shadow of a doubt. Yesterday I suddenly realised I was too hot in sandals and a jumper. The air was loud with bees and I'd seen the first signs of drone cappings on the varroa boards the day before. I had time to go through 6 out of 7 brood boxes. No DLQs, a big range of nest sizes, several with drone brood. Just two on 5 or more frames of brood, and one of those had drones flying. A 2013 queen and she's always been a swarmy little cat. I've had less swarmy daughters & grand-daughters from her, though, & her bees draw lovely comb, so I've kept her. This time her colony overwintered with a full box of stores, & they're very frugal, so they've got resources to play with, & they're using them to play their usual game. I've put an empty super over their heads, but they'll be drawing queen cells within a month, for almost certain. Game on!
Time to prepare my bait hives I think ;)
If your bees were going to swarm at the end of May then they will have started queen cells even as early as the first week of May
When its cold and miserable I'm inclined to underestimate their progress
So if the nuc with 4 frames of brood wasn't spotted they would possibly starve as mentioned
But equally once that brood hatches and the queen has laid in the cells they will be overcrowded and once they think "swarm" they would be off
We all know this its not news
But I for one sometimes don't act on it
That's not unfixable but it does make a lot of extra work
Yes- I should've said, although one of mine is rich & already got emerged drones, one or two others would be starving if I hadn't given them fondant. It seems there's a real range as to whether they're living within their means or not. One has been chucking so many eggs onto the varroa board I was thinking she must have become a drone layer, but instead I found 2 nice frames of worker brood & plenty of stores with space being cleared for a series of brood arcs. Very methodical, very conservative: I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do next.
[QUOTE=Emma;35537]Swarming in May? This time her colony overwintered with a full box of stores, & they're very frugal I've put an empty super over their heads, but they'll be drawing queen cells within a month, for almost certain./QUOTE]
As with you Emma - one of my colonies, compared with my others, seems frugal - and two days ago I found (surprisingly) four sealed queen cells (just over a week after my first inspection of the year). Queeny is a local dark 2014 girl from the west with 4 frames brood. Game on indeed.
Alan.
Surprising indeed, Alan. Combined with Kate's tales of a virgin queen emerging already, on another thread, this could be shaping up to be a very weird spring. I have been wondering whether she's gradually turning drone layer - in that case all the dropped eggs could be unfertilised ones rejected by the bees. They are quite fussy... last summer I tried balsawood strips in my foundationless frames. It worked fine in other colonies, but the bees in that one set on the balsawood like a colony of wasps (making a sound like hundreds of wasps scratching for nest material all at once), and reduced the strips to neat little rows of fibre. Expressive little darlings (...that possibly isn't what I said at the time!)
Weather forecast is saying "don't even think about going in" at the moment, so it'll have to remain a mystery for now. Thanks for the heads up on what yours are up to.
Sorry - I removed my post as I posted to the wrong thread.
Kitta
The curse of fine weather
One of my most backward polynucs was one frame of brood on a Paynes double box
I say was because they had loads of frames of sealed stores and not enough bees for that hive volume
I haven't been troubled by robbers in April before but that's what happened yesterday
If it had stayed cold (its going back to that anyway) or they had less space and less food, they would have been safe
A few weeks on. If my one colony is thinking about swarming at the end of the month I'll be amazed. The OSR is now out, but dramatically reduced in quantity over previous years. The dandelions still aren't out in the tropical highlands of the mendips and I'm having to feed them at the moment.
I don't know whether it's just weather, an effect of personal change in geography as well as for the bees, but it feels like a bloody struggle at the moment.
Its a strange weather pattern Neils worse even than last year
You will easily stay on top of one hive so you are safe
Even in the cold they can be building up nicely as long as the stores don't run out
When you get your new bees this year you will have to learn their patterns
The good thing is that is fun and they might be a really great strain with luck