Hive growth and wasps

[Hywel]

We're new bee keepers and will probably be on here asking the expert's advice pretty frequently!

Yesterday we looked through the hive and saw a different bee/wasp. It was smaller, darker (more black) and with bigger mandibles like a wasp. Does anyone have an idea what this insect is and whether it will cause problems? We're in the UK (down in lovely old Wales).

My other question is how fast do hives grow? Now I know this question could massively vary but here are some factors that I think could affect it:

- We live in Wales. The summer has been beautiful with plenty of sun but we do get a lot of rain as well.
- The hives are new, from two nucs that we purchased in May so they're about 2 months old
- One hive swarmed once and the other has swarmed twice. We caught to of the swarms so actually have four hives now. Its possible that the swarming is due to the heat?
- Since having the swarms we've added more ventilation and space by adding a second brooder and yesterday we put on a section with extra exits
- Our friend is keeping two hives next to ours that are more aggressive
- We have plenty of flowers but the Himalayan balsam is coming out now. This is our main flower and we get tonnes of it!

So does anyone have any idea how fast our hive should grow? At the moment its increasing by about a frame a week but is this particularly slow?

If anyone can throw advice our way we'd be very grateful. Thanks!

 

[MartinL]

. . . Yesterday we looked through the hive and saw a different bee/wasp. It was smaller, darker (more black) and with bigger mandibles like a wasp. Does anyone have an idea what this insect is ?

If anyone can throw advice our way we'd be very grateful. Thanks!

A picture paints a thousand words?
Next time catch it.


Oh, and Welcome



Good luck too.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

We're new bee keepers and will probably be on here asking the expert's advice pretty frequently!

Yesterday we looked through the hive and saw a different bee/wasp. It was smaller, darker (more black) and with bigger mandibles like a wasp. Does anyone have an idea what this insect is and whether it will cause problems? We're in the UK (down in lovely old Wales).

My other question is how fast do hives grow? Now I know this question could massively vary but here are some factors that I think could affect it:

- We live in Wales. The summer has been beautiful with plenty of sun but we do get a lot of rain as well.
- The hives are new, from two nucs that we purchased in May so they're about 2 months old
- One hive swarmed once and the other has swarmed twice. We caught to of the swarms so actually have four hives now. Its possible that the swarming is due to the heat?
- Since having the swarms we've added more ventilation and space by adding a second brooder and yesterday we put on a section with extra exits
- Our friend is keeping two hives next to ours that are more aggressive
- We have plenty of flowers but the Himalayan balsam is coming out now. This is our main flower and we get tonnes of it!

So does anyone have any idea how fast our hive should grow? At the moment its increasing by about a frame a week but is this particularly slow?

If anyone can throw advice our way we'd be very grateful. Thanks!

Welcome to the forum.
Now to business - have you had any effective training or access to competent beekeepers? To say you've had a couple of swarms out of newly hived nucs suggests you're going to need help and support pretty quickly. I suggest you should contact (join) your nearest beekeeping association plus get yourself a good beekeeping book such as A guide to bees and honey by Ted Hooper (try your local library service) or the Haynes bee manual.
Swarm control has to be high on your list of priorities plus in a few weeks you need to think about varroa treatment unless you listen to the siren voices of the no treatment brigade.
The learning curve is steep but it's navigation is not impossible
Your life will never be the same again

 

[Anduril]

Welcome to the forum.
The smaller black insect, was it hairless and shiny?
Did you feed the 2 nucs and for how long?
Swarming due to the heat? No more likely ran out of laying space.
One hive swarmed twice, too many queen cells!
Are you a member of a BKA?
Do you have insurance?
Have you received training?
Were they overwintered nucs?
Local mongrel or Buckfast which are in your area
The book suggested by GJ above is not in any of RCT libraries.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Welcome to the forum.
The smaller black insect, was it hairless and shiny?
Did you feed the 2 nucs and for how long?
Swarming due to the heat? No more likely ran out of laying space.
One hive swarmed twice, too many queen cells!
Are you a member of a BKA?
Do you have insurance?
Have you received training?
Were they overwintered nucs?
Local mongrel or Buckfast which are in your area
The book suggested by GJ above is not in any of RCT libraries.

+1 to all of the above

how often have you been inspecting your colonies?
When did you add supers, and what made you think they needed them.
Bees don't need 'extra' ventilation (or any apart from OMF) they can sort that out themselves.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Welcome to the forum.
The smaller black insect, was it hairless and shiny?
Did you feed the 2 nucs and for how long?
Swarming due to the heat? No more likely ran out of laying space.
One hive swarmed twice, too many queen cells!
Are you a member of a BKA?
Do you have insurance?
Have you received training?
Were they overwintered nucs?
Local mongrel or Buckfast which are in your area
The book suggested by GJ above is not in any of RCT libraries.

East Riding Yorkshire library services have both.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Digressing slightly but wasp related. I've recently seen an imitation wasps nest hung up in an apiary. Theory apparently is the hunting wasps see it and stay away to respect territorial boundaries.
Didn't have any wasps around but it may be using the same principles as my elephant repelling sign by the gate. That's certainly been effective

 

[Anduril]

East Riding Yorkshire library services have both.

My BKA has a library.

Digressing slightly but wasp related. I've recently seen an imitation wasps nest hung up in an apiary. Theory apparently is the hunting wasps see it and stay away to respect territorial boundaries.
Didn't have any wasps around but it may be using the same principles as my elephant repelling sign by the gate. That's certainly been effective

I only see pink ones around these parts.

 

[Hywel]

Will do - I was frustrated yesterday as my mobile was dead!

 

[Hywel]

We went on a training course with the Bridgend Bee Keeping Association and they were really good. They actually sent out a warning of swarming in the area! I'd read up about the swarming and how it can be delayed (e.g. killing queen cells) but there always seems to be mixed opinion about such things.

 

[Hywel]

I can't say it was shiny and definitely not varroa - way too big for that. We've been checking our boards for varroa and there's only been a couple so far and the course said not to panic over numbers that are so small. We've actually had a couple of other tiny beetles in there but they're not black and shiny like varroa and are guessing they are usual scavengers.

We fed the nucs and are feeding the new hives created from the swarms. We gave them one bucket each (if I remember) but it might have been two (I'll have to check with my partner as she knows everything!). We've been leaving the feed off now as they seem to be active and getting busy with the flowers, we didn't want it to spoil the taste of the honey too much.

I thought about space but they hadn't completely filled the brood box. Would they fill it before running out of space or does it mean they're laying faster than they can expand it and hence run out of space? It shouldn't be a problem now we've added a second brooder I'm guessing? The hive that swarmed twice has its brooder almost full.

Yes it definitely had too many queen cells - a lot. We thought about destroying some but others advise against it so we went for that in the end. Now there are only the remains of a few burst queen cells and they seem to be taking them apart.

We did the course with the BKA but I'm not sure if we're members. I think we're going for it though. Also not sure if we have insurance - I'll check with my gf!

Not sure whether they were overwintered - I'll get onto that and will look up your suggestions. Thanks!

 

[Hywel]

At the moment we're inspecting them once a week but once we were happy with how things are going we were planning to drop it down to once a fortnight. The mean reason we were doing it once a week is because of the swarming and the extra queen cells, we figured it was a better idea to keep an eye and look out for any problems.

Sorry if I said extra supers, we added extra brooders to increase the space they had. On of the websites we looked at suggested congestion and overheating can lead to swarming (and we had a small amount of bearding).
'
Congestion, too many bees for the hive space, leading to no cells for the queen to lay in to.

Heat
An over heated hive will need to reduce the volume of bees, this can often be signaled by a bee beard hanging over the hive entrance, these are usually field bees pushed out by the house bees in an attempt to reduce the hive temperature. Lack of ventilation'

Taken from beeworks

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes it definitely had too many queen cells - a lot. We thought about destroying some but others advise against it so we went for that in the end.

That is the worst advice a beginner could get.
You need a decent mentor, give your association a ring and plead with them. Somebody will help.

 

[Hywel]

It is fascinating learning more and more about the behaviour of bees and wasps etc I studied enomology and arachnology at university and always found those interesting.

 

[Hywel]

I guess in the long term its been beneficial as we've had two new hives from it but we obviously don't want it happening all the time! You recommend destroying the queen cells then?

 

[Erichalfbee]

You need to understand how bees swarm.
The usual course of events is that the first swarm leaves taking the queen with them and leaving behind queen cells destined to replace her in the colony. If the colony is strong enough the first virgin out will NOT destroy the remaining queen cells but will leave the hive with another swarm. This can happen repeatedly till either the bees decide that they are at a size to continue the colony and all but one queen will be allowed to head it or they swarm out to an unviable size. This is the reason one of your hives swarmed twice then the rest of the queen cells were removed by the colony.
The beekeeper, on finding his queen gone and being faced with a barrage of queen cells can limit further swarming by reducing the cells to one.
Have a look here.
http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/There-Are-Queen-Cells-In-My-Hive-WBKA-WAG.pdf

 

[Gilberdyke John]

We went on a training course with the Bridgend Bee Keeping Association and they were really good. They actually sent out a warning of swarming in the area! I'd read up about the swarming and how it can be delayed (e.g. killing queen cells) but there always seems to be mixed opinion about such things.

Killing queen cells rarely works period
There are several sources of advice around and I'm thinking as you are in Wales you ought to look up the information on the Welsh Beekeepers Association. Website, in particular the offerings by Wally Shaw.
Begin with the leaflet entitled "there are queen cells in my hive, what shall I do"

 

[Gilberdyke John]

That is the worst advice a beginner could get.
You need a decent mentor, give your association a ring and plead with them. Somebody will help.

I agree

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

We went on a training course with the Bridgend Bee Keeping Association and they were really good.

Hmm, not that good by the sounds of things - they don't seem to have taught you the basics, and certainly nothing much on swarm control

We fed the nucs and are feeding the new hives created from the swarms.

There lays the root of your problems IMHO - feeding the bees when there is no need, brood box getting stores bound (as you don't seem to have put any supers on) and off they went.You should be putting a super on as soon as they have seven frames of brood (or even less if the rest of the frames are stuffed with stores)

Yes it definitely had too many queen cells - a lot. We thought about destroying some but others advise against it so we went for that in the end.

That is the worst advice a beginner could get.
You need a decent mentor, give your association a ring and plead with them. Somebody will help.

You followed really poor advice there.

Were the queen cells there before or after they swarmed?

On of the websites we looked at suggested congestion and overheating can lead to swarming
Heat
An over heated hive will need to reduce the volume of bees, this can often be signaled by a bee beard hanging over the hive entrance, these are usually field bees pushed out by the house bees in an attempt to reduce the hive temperature. Lack of ventilation'

Taken from beeworks

Rubbish advice if taken out of context - regardless, definitely 'lack of ventilation' has SFA to do with it

 

[Hywel]

Sorry that you misunderstood but yes, we obviously put supers on.