It is near the end of the 2008 season.

We have put in the first dose of Apiguard into all our hives.

We had the BBC Newsnight crew over today to film us talking about A World without Bees and they wanted us to open the hive to get some shots of urban beekeepers. I thought we would just go through the motions and open the super and see some honey and the brood that I put up there last week. When we opened the hive we saw brood in all stages in the super. This means that there is a laying queen upstairs - again. I don’t understand why and how she is getting through the queen excluder. Or maybe the hive has two queens. We took away the queen excluder and I will check on things on Friday.

It is all a bit strange.

Newsnight will be aired on the 18th maybe.

After yesterday’s inspection from the lovely man from the Central Science Laboratory it was discovered we had a drone laying queen in the WBC hive therefore the colony was on it way to certain death. Gladly though I had a nuc with a small colony of bees that I had recovered from a secondary swarm a few weeks earlier and was therefore able to use to give new life to the failing WBC hive.

To combine the two hives I took all the contents of the nuc including the queen and placed them into a super on top of the brood box of the WBC separated by a sheet of newspaper. (I had previously taken out the drone laying queen). Overnight the queens pheremone will spread throughout the combined colonies and hopefully the inhabitants will then happily live side by side. The bees will tear away the paper until the workers are free to move between the two sets of frames.

This morning I had a look at the entrance and everything seemed to be normal. No fighting or dead bees.

Tomorrow I will find the queen and put her in the downstairs brood box and give them a feed. Hopefully there is enough time for the colony to expand in numbers before the autumn. Cutting it fine.

It all makes sense now.

The seasonal bee inspector paid us a visit today and shed some light on my little problem with the WBC hive. Turns out I have a drone laying queen which means she did not get to mate so lays unfertilised eggs. The workers tear open the cells when they realise that the grubs are males and not females. This will  lead to a failed colony.

Fortunately for me I have a nuc with a healthy laying queen at the ready so I now need to unite the two colonies. Not sure how I am going to do that since I don’t have enough lifts to put onto the WBC to accommodate a WBC brood box. Will figure it out a bit later.

The drone laying queen was the queen I found in the supers after our holiday and I then placed downstairs. It seems to be that I must have had 2 queens in the colony at the same time and the virgin killed her mum and was then trapped upstairs. All a bit strange but a worthwhile experience.

Spent the moring jarring the 5 frames of honey from the Battersea hive and jarring the honey we took off the Wallington hives at the beginning of July. Now have plenty of jars of golden honey. We really must do a farmers market one day soon to free up some cupboard space.

Battersea - I was expecting a super full of honey but instead I got a queen in the super. At least she is a laying queen proven by the brood over a couple of frames.

There didn’t seem to be many bees though so I reckon they swarmed when we were away on holiday.

I replaced a couple of the empty brood frames with the two of the super frames that had the brood on them and placed the queen back downstairs. Leaving the hive with just one super.

Had a quick look in the WBC hive. The top super is beginning to be worked so I assume the bottom super is ready for harvesting. Will have a look later.

I had a look in the brood box and found eggs and learvae so the queen is doing her job well. Baffled as to why I would have seen her on the outside of the hive.

Dropped into the Wallignton site to give the hives more room for honey.
I had made up three brood boxes with foundation which I gave to the two Nationals and one of the WBCs. The other WBC has two supers and the top one was still empty so left it as it was.

This means that
National #1 has a brood, QE, Super, Brood, Super
National #2 has a brood, QE, Super, Brood
WBC #1 Brood, Super, QE, Super, Super
WBC #2 Brood, QE, Super, Brood

Took away one WBC super full of honey. Harvested the lot this afternoon - a healthy 12 kilos of 11 frames. (See my honey production tables).

I enjoy watching the comings and goings of our bees and occasionally have the time to spend a few moments at the side of the hive examining the bees for the type of pollen they are carrying and generally enjoying their activities but yesterday I was surprised to see the queen walking around the outside of the hive.
Surprised is understating my reaction it was more of a shock but I managed to stay calm enough to gather her up and place her on the landing board. The reaction from the other bees was favourable and after having a chat with two or three of them she wandered into the darkness of the hive seemingly quite happy.
So what was going on there I asked myself. I can think of only two explanations; 1. She was returning from a mating flight – but she had no drone parts attached to her body, 2. She was about to leave on a mating flight.
What I want to do now is have a look through the brood box and see if I have a laying queen. If not then maybe this could explain why the queen was outside.
Comments most welcome.

Dropped into Queen’s Park today and stole 4 frames of honey and replaced them with four frames of foundation.

This leaves the hive with a brood and two supers. The supers have 11 frames in each with 5 foundations in each. Hopefully when we get back from our hols they will all be full.

Spun the honey off this evening and got 3.75 kilos off the 4 frames.

Opened the Battersea hive last night and took off two frames. Freshly capped and looking pristine. Crushed the lot through a sieve and let it drip overnight. This morning the bucket has 1.7 kilos of honey; a light, amber lightly flavoured honey.

All our bees are busy doing what comes naturally to them.
The supers are full of nectar and nearly all capped. We didn’t lose any colonies this year though we have added to the feral bee population since two swarms got away before we had time to collect them.
We haven’t tasted this year’s honey yet but we do have some frames ready for extraction.
www.urbanbees.co.uk

It was a lovely day today so we took the opportunity to do some spring cleaning on the Battersea hive.
We had wintered this hive with a brood and a half and I wanted to give this hive a new set of brood frames to give the bees the cleanest start to this year) so the bees would have some energy food to start drawing out the foundation ready for the laying queen to get on with her laying.
Opened the hive and found that everything was looking great. Lovely calm bees and that distinctive smell of a fresh honey bee hive.
I wanted to find the queen and temporarily separate her from the colony so that I could work on the colony without risk of harming the important queen. Found her quickly, caged her and dropped her into my pocket to keep her dark and warm.
Split the super from the brood and had a quick look through to see that all was in order. It was pleasing to see everything in ship shape. Lovely spread of brood, pollen and honey stores
I left the old brood at the bottom and on top of that put the new brood box with some frames of new foundation. These boxes were separated by a queen excluder. I then shook of the bees from the super into this new brood box and replaced the queen into the mix. On top of all that I put another queen excluder and a super box with some frames of their honey.
I wonder what she must be thinking since before I arrived today she had loads of places to lay and suddenly I come along and place her in a new home with no wax cells available.
Can she stop herself laying at such short notice?
Any answers welcome. info@urbanbees.co.uk
Once the hive was all closed up I cleaned up the garden and sliced off some of the chunk honey from the frames I had stolen from the super. As usual it was totally lovely.
The first of the Battersea honey for 2008. Not enough to jar just yet but I think this year will be a good crop.
Didn’t have the chance to take photos today. Shame.
www.urbanbees.co.uk

The temperature was steadily climbing all week and by the time Saturday came around it was peaking at 17 degrees so I decided to take the opportunity to do some Varroa control on the Queen’s Park hive.

I prepared a new floor, brood box, new brood foundation, a new cover board and some feed (sugar water). Once I had moved the hive away from its spot I put the new hive in its place and let the returning bees find their way into the new home.

Looking through the older hive I found the queen and caged her while I shook off all the bees from the old frames into the new hive. When that was done I closed up the new hive, marked the queen and let her find her way into her new home via the hole in the cover board.

Of course this drastic action kills off the brood that was in the old hive but what we gain in losses to the colony can be outweighed by the advantages of Varroa control, new clean comb and possible reduction of the swarming instinct.

I’ll see how this method compares with the other methods I plan to try out on the other hives.

comments to info@urbanbees.co.uk

check our pics and video

Friday, Feb 22, 2008
Californian Trip
Alison and I took a trip out to Bakersfield, California to get first hand experience of large scale beekeeping and pollination.
1.2 million hives are needed to pollinate 600,000 acres of almond trees in California. We wanted to see what this looked liked and talk to the beekeepers involved.
We saw the massive operation first hand and we talked to the beekeepers who were struggling with the effects of colony collapse disorder.
It was sad and fascinating.
Will write more shortly.
check our pics and video

After a rainy summer and the fun of the hives swarming we were surprised to find a full super of honey in our no 1. Battersea hive.
This year we had invested in the extractor and large food safe containers.
Using the capping fork rather than knife we harvested the super in less than an hour.
We got 9.2 kilos or 20lbs of the glorious honey.

The honey is light, runny and we are convinced it is made from elderflowers.

If anyone in Battersea wants some local honey for their hay fever let us know.

Mike McInnes explains the principles behind The Hibernation Diet which uses the body’s own recovery system to burn fat - with a little help from Honey! www.hibernationdiet.com

This is a not-so-great video of one of the virgin queens (see text below) piping. This is the sound she makes when she is calling to other virgins. It must be a fighting call since that’s what they would do if they met.