Hi All,

Hope all your bees are doing well in this topsie turvey summer, it certainly has made Barry and I think of the highs and low of bee keeping.

The first problem and one of the biggest we had to over come was queens. The seasons started off great, the 3 weeks of sun early in the year gave the bees a great boost start, tons of honey and the bees started to look to swarm. Some did which we managed to collect but when we checked we noticed there were no capped queen cells. This was very strange, but more was to come. We were called out to collect swarms, which we did then the next morning they had disappeared. (Not in all cases but some). Two of the swarms we collected did not have a queen; she must have been out on a maiden flight when the colony decided to go looking for her! We were lucky in that we had spare queens which they happily accepted. At this stage we were 2 up but 3 down that we failed to find. Then the rain came. This is when things were not going by the book!!! As I informed you, we were branching out into queen rearing, Ha, not a hope. No matter which system we tried, grafting, artificial, John Harding and the Hopkins method all to no avail all ended in failure. Lots of brood was produced but the bees would not produce a capped queen cell. They ate the comb cleared out brood that was due to hatch left whole frames of capped brood but not one queen. Queens that had hatched could not get out to mate so stayed in the hive for well over the 30 day period, then once they had mated refused to lay, two for over 10, days, 3 for 7 to 8 days. We could not understand what was happening and why. Towards the end we were convinced that 3 of the hives had no queen, and then 5 days ago they all started to lay, we now have frames and frames of brood. Methinks the bees have not read these books people have taken time out to write about them!

During this period I contacted breeders in Scotland, Yorkshire and Hampshire and all are having the same problems. Queens are being very difficult!

Has any-one else had the same problems?

I informed you all to feed your bees some time ago to get them over this difficult time, we nearly found this out the hard way in that we checked our hives and the very first hive had a huge number of dead bees, when we checked we noticed bums sticking out which is a tell tail sign. We quickly mixed feed and all were given a dose. 3 Days latter we received an email from BeeBase advising feeding, nearly too late we said!

Since then we have fed once more and this has given them a good boost. However it is going to be a long winter so start buying your sugar in!

Because of these problems it made us think about the future and so we have bought in 3 different types of queens to study which will be the best for our area. The first was a British Black (very difficult to come buy) she is laying well and have great hopes that we will be able to get future queens from her. The next is a Mellifera, may be a bit week for the NE and the final one is a Ligustica. Again we have high hopes that she will lay well and produce good queens. For those of you that have not heard of the Ligustica bee, they are used by the large breeders as they are quiet, good layers, lay well into August but eat a lot of honey. They are Brown with Yellow bands. Will keep you informed on their progress.

I appreciate it is a bit late in the season but we have two NUCs for sale at £160 if any-one is interested? Both have laying queens with capped and uncapped brood.

As I informed you all in my last email, there has been a change within the NCC regarding the stance on bees. I will be attending a meeting at the Civic Centre this next week with Derek Hilton Brown who has taken over the bee project. He has already informed me that the council has placed the future emphasis on Bumble bees and Butterflies with Honey bees coming third on the list. We will just have to wait and see what he has to say, but I don’t think there will be any grants in the near future.

Any-one with any points they would like me to raise, please email or ring me by return.

I have also copied a photo showing a Varroa mite on one of our bees which has deformed wing, which just go’s to show the damage this mite will do.

Let us hope the sun shines for the rest of what is left of summer, but I think it is too late for any honey harvest again this year!!!!!!!!

Tony