Author Archives: Brian

Varroa alert

Our bees in the urban landscape of London have it pretty good. They have good forage due to the variety of flora in the gardens of the human residents, plenty of wild areas along the railway tracks and canals and no blanket spraying of pesticides as effects our rural counterparts. But our urban bees, along side all the western honey bees, is still plagued by the varroa mite, a slow and silent killer. Mochilas Big A parasite that has taken a stranglehold of our colonies in Europe.

This year, 2014, saw a great spring and a pretty decent summer. Mochilas Mini It was a very swarmy year, possibly the species making up for the losses seen in the past couple of years when the season’s weather was more inclement, and it was a good year for honey.

Unfortunately lots of strong colonies producing lots of brood (eggs and larvae) is a haven for the varroa mite. So it is no surprise to find that after I treated my bees with thymol, (a varroa killer) there was a huge number of dead mites on my varroa tray. The thymol did its job and killed varroa in the hundreds, if not thousands. internationalist soldes I must admit I was surprised the colonies had that many varroa since they didn’t show many signs of being infested. Glad I did the treatment otherwise I would certainly have lost the colonies over the winter or spring next year.

New beekeepers often wait until the summer has ended before turning their attention to varroa, but I try and treat against the mite as early in August as possible – as soon as the honey is extracted at the beginning of the month. For the thymol to be effective the temperature needs to be above 15 degrees during the 4 weeks of the treatment. This year I got the thymol on in the 2nd week of August, so it has nearly finished the course.

If you have started yet, don’t delay.

Starvation Risk for our bees

Message from National Bee Unit

April 2012 – Starvation Risk

With the on-going poor weather, there is a real risk of bee colonies starving. Please check for stores in the colony and if in any doubt feed your bees. You should feed with either a fondant or a thin syrup.

Further information on feeding bees can be found in Best Practice Guideline No. Kanken 7,

Bees working the early pollen of the hazel trees.

London 23rd Feb 2012

I knew that the bees were going to be out today since the temperature reached 18 degrees today in London (Feb 23rd) and indeed all the hives were busy with bees flying and bring back pollen.

I had a look around to see what they might be working and no surprise to see the bees on the hazel catkins. They were loving it. huarache It is such an important plant for early pollen.

So I took some snaps which can be seen on the gallery pages of our website.

Out comes the hammer and nails

The crocus are just coming out, flyknit the winter honeysuckle has bees on it and the hazel catkins are nearly ready with their pollen so it time to clear some space and make up some brood frames in preparation of the brood comb change and the spring clean.
And that is what I have been doing for the past hour.
I’m getting itchy now to get on with my beekeeping.
No more cold weather now,

Wolff Olins bees

Another Wednesday brought the group together to have a look at the bees on the roof of Wolff Olins .

After a rainy day the weather cleared enough for us to have a look at the 2 hives.

Hive 1 is developing well. sb Expanded onto more frames and were well behaved.

Hive 2 wasn’t so well behaved and were a bit touchy.

Capital Bee’s Wednesday’s 23rd session.

Before going out to look at the bees we had a chat about swarming and supercedure. Nice article on supercedure and queen cells here
I swapped a couple of the groups so that they would have a chance to see the difference between a new nuc colony and an established colony.
Hive 1 is coming along well.
Hive 2 had more queen cells. Since the queen was seen as well as eggs and young larvae we decided to tear down all the queen cells. We can then have a look next week to see what’s going on then. internationalist Next weke may take the queen away and put her in a nuc box and let the colony develop a new queen.
Hive 3 strong and busy.

Capital Bee announce 2nd round for competition

http://www.capitalgrowth.org/bee_competition/

The second round of the Capital Bee community beekeeping competition is now live and community groups can apply any time up to the closing date of 21st March. http://www.capitalgrowth.org/bee_competition/

Capital Bee is delighted to announce the second round of our

competition for 10 more communities in London to win the equipment,