Greetings, bee-botherers and those interested in the care of honey bees with the goal of producing honey and bees for sale. I have been AWOL, I deserted my post, by which I mean that I haven’t written anything on here for many moons. There are reasons – call them excuses if you will – but perhaps this wee article on timing and fortune will begin my path to redemption. Timing is important in beekeeping, and particularly with queen rearing, so it’s good to have a refresher on that. As for fortune, whether good or bad, we are at the mercy of Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos (the Fates). Despite this, we must always try to be ready to act when good or bad fortune arrives – throwing up our hands and abdicating responsibility is not the route to improvement.
Excuses, excuses
First, I shall get in my excuses. It boils down to family, health, and work (is that not always so?). My young grandchildren – twin girls, one-year-old – are an absolute delight, and my life is enriched by spending time with them. That being said, they always seem to be ill, and by sneezing into my face as they bounce upon my Grandpa knees, they spread their pestilence. I had a spell of being continually ill, with different forms of lurgy, for six weeks. My last hideous encounter with a virus from hell was probably not the fault of the twins because only I got it, but it was deeply unpleasant. And now, as far as I can tell, I am nearly recovered.
Oh, and there was also the small matter of beekeeping, which largely amounted to trying to prevent swarms and catching the ones that happened anyway. Recently, the Mole and I have been extracting our spring honey crop if I can call it that. We did not do very well, with an average of one super of honey extracted per colony (half of what we got a year ago). The bees had been eating their way through supers as the rains fell, which means that they are alive and well. However, I can’t sell jars of happy bee stories to my customers – they want actual honey. We have enough to get us through a few months, but need a good summer. I am going to try moving a few colonies to some borage soon, which should help to swell our stocks of the sweet stuff.
Timing: The Plan
Anyway, timing and fortune.
Each year I have queens coming through the winter in my mini-plus mating boxes, stacked three or four boxes high, so there are plenty of bees and stores. I also have national nucleus colonies over-wintering in Paynes poly nuc boxes. These are doubles or triples (six frames over six frames, and occasionally another six frames over those). All being well, with a little care and attention – mostly in the form of feeding properly in the autumn and treating against varroa mites – most of these are thriving the following spring.
By April, these colonies are usually booming. The mini-plus stacks require space, or they will swarm, so I need to use up those queens quickly. The national nucs have five good frames removed, along with bees and the queen, and these are sold to local beekeepers. This means that what is left of the colonies in national nucs are in a single nuc, or every so often a double, and they want to make themselves a new queen. So, the action plan is:
1) Make a cell builder colony and add grafted larvae so that I have sealed queen cells (from a selected breeder queen) ready to use 10–11 days later. I graft newly hatched larvae – day 4 after the egg was laid – so that by the time the cells go to nucs they are at day 14–15 (one or two days before emergence). RESOURCE: Queen Rearing Timing Chart
2) Use the over-wintered queens in mini-plus hives to make up Langstroth nucs for me, or to re-queen hives as needed. This could be for small colonies with a rubbish queen, or an old one, or even one with defensive, horrible bees (quite rare). I have seen these swarm if I don’t grab the queens in time.
3) Split up the mini plus boxes into singles, sharing out brood/bees/stores, and add a queen cell to each. In a month, they should be mated and laying eggs, one hopes.
4) Use further queen cells in the national nucs that now have no queen. Again, in a month they should be laying, and can either be sold as summer nucs or managed (i.e. split when they get big) so that they can go through winter and be sold the following spring.
Fortune: Enter the Fates
This is where the Fates come in; will I have good fortune with the weather or bad? Well, this season it was not great. Over 50% of my early grafted queens failed, and I was left with laying workers (queen disappeared) (LW) or drone laying queens (failed mating)(DLQ). Clearly, Atropos had been busy with her scissors, cutting the life-thread of my queens. This is why some people buy early queens from Italy or Greece (I do a little of that too, but only a little – mostly out of curiosity). They buy them from a supplier who imports them from somewhere much warmer than here. The hideous weather and equally hideous flu virus, plus time spent harvesting the meagre spring honey crop, conspired to put back my next round of queen rearing until … well, it’s about to happen next week.
Rolling the Dice
The trouble is, if I don’t make early queens, it means my weakened queenless nucs will try it themselves. The queens are likely to be less good, not being made in a cell builder bursting with young bees. If the weather is bad, they will fail anyway, leading to the same buggered up comb situation caused by LW or DLQs. I roll the dice, and sometimes things work out really well. Sometimes.
Ultimately, it matters not. My national nucs will be shaken out and ugly combs thrown on the fire. We will start again after the summer honey is harvested (August) using bees shaken from production colonies and queens made by me over the summer – nice juicy mated queens, ready to burst into action next spring. Those nucs made late in the season need plenty of feeding, but they tend to do very well for us, and the lucky beekeepers we sell them to. Apparently people were paying £400 per nuc at The Cheshire BKA spring auction this year, so I’m increasing nucleus production to grab a piece of that.
Chicken Legs
As I write this, we are about to have a spell of hot weather. This should be great for the bees, now that clover and brambles are in flower, but less pleasant for twin toddlers trying to sleep in a loft room which resembles an oven. The new portable air conditioner will be put through its paces, methinks. As will the barbecue, of course. Time to get the shorts on and reveal my chicken legs to the world!