Inherited Bees

[drex]

Have read the instructions and file should be attached

 

[Outlander]

with the above

Welcome to the forum Mattk. Good luck with those bees. Now I can’t offer you any more advice than you have had already but I certainly think you should make contact with your local BKA and you will get all the help you need. 6 hives is a lot to take on if you have never been around bees before. Stick with it, it's a great hobby.

 

[beekim]

good luck let us kmow how you get on

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

Coming in late - and as a newbie - I don't think anyone has mentioned the Regional Bee Inspector.

It occurs to me that disease might be a real risk after all that time and he/she might like to know of this significant number of neglected hives.


Dusty

 

[itma]

Coming in late - and as a newbie - I don't think anyone has mentioned the Regional Bee Inspector.

It occurs to me that disease might be a real risk after all that time and he/she might like to know of this significant number of neglected hives.

Dusty, the SBIs will be knocking off very soon and the RBI has a vast area to cover. No point bothering him unless anything nasty (or suspicious) is discovered. After all, there are still quite a lot of feral colonies (of whatever vintage) out there.

I wonder if the apiary is registered on Beebase?

 

[MartinL]

Good luck,

Perhaps a few pics posted on here would be a good idea?

Try to ensure they are protected from the ravages of winter, otherwise I'd not want to poke them about too much.

 

[Poly Hive]

With the value of the property in the region of £2000 ownership before grabbing the nearest hive tool would be extremely wise to establish.

I have opened hives not touched for many years and they were fine but they did have proper frames and spacing.

If you keep them then a mid winter OA treatment and a good feed of fondant from now on would help greatly with wintering.

Good luck

PH

 

[george]

Mattk , you need to narrow down your location a little more . Bucks is the tallest of English counties so not much point me offering help if you are in MK and I am at the bottom end .
G

 

[m100]

If they have not been touched for such an extended period then they could quite easily be rammed full of stores, with a significant surplus in any supers, and with bees that have tolerated a high varroa load...but they could be on the verge of dying off due to lack of stores and a heavy varroa load.

After establishing ownership, I'd heft the hives, remove any excess supers, remove the queen excluder (assuming it is not zinc sheet glued to the top bars with propolis) and not remove any frames now becuase they could be rotten or propolised to hell.

No thymol treatment because the way the weather is going it is way too late to start. Oxalic dribble midwinter, bee inspector visit at first spring inspection, followed by shook swarm onto new frames in a new or scorched brood box, and feed to drawn new clean comb.

Six hives is too many for a beginner though, IMHO even one full size colony is way too many for a beginner without a mentor on hand at every inspection. Although the prospect of an instant honey crop is appealing to some, reality shows that many struggle if they acquire full size colonies or swarms. Disease recognition skills in many beginners and newly qualified beekeepers are essentially none existent and they may often abandon an inspection due to stings or seeing a frame covered in bees and thinking they are healthy when they can't even see the brood let alone detect any problems.

Building up a nuc over a summer, overwintering it, maybe artificially swarm it the following year, then obtain a honey crop and get it through another winter and a beginner may have acquired enough skills to manage a few more colonies. Two colonies always being better than one.

 

[BeeJayBee]

I have just taken on an allotment which has 6 bee hives on it which were left by the previous tenant. I know that the bees have not been looked at for at least 18 months, possibly as much as two and a half years. From flying activity it looks as though they all have active bees in them.

I have no experience of bee keeping but I'd like to try to take it up and look after them.

From what I've read, it seems that it's getting late to open and inspect the hives so I'm considering leaving them untouched for the winter and trying to find a local expert to inspect them in the spring and go from there. I'm hoping that as no honey has been taken, that they'll have enough food for the winter.

One exception to the leaving alone plan is that a leg of one of the hives has rotted and the hive is leaning over so I will need to add some support to stop it collapsing.

If it was me I'd be inclined to stick to your original plan. Shore up the wonky hive and leave them alone until Spring, they've gone through at least one winter without human intervention so another probably won't make much difference. If they do survive you could, perhaps, treat them with Apivar in the Spring.

When they do get inspected (pulled apart and given new frames etc) it will be a massive disruption to the colonies, which could take them a while to recover from. You could also lose or damage the queen, which wouldn't be a good idea just now. You will need another beekeeper with you, if only to speed things up.

If the hives are too heavy to lift the chances are they have plenty of stores.

In the meantime learn as much as possible (books, internet, youtube - you'll soon sort out the rubbish 'advice') and probably do a beekeeping course too. (If your local club doesn't do one, or it's fully booked, the B8KA offers distance learning). Check your local associations' membership year for the best time to join.

There's no harm in contacting your RBI. Registering on Beebase is free. Check Beebase too, for resources.

You will need new equipment for these hives (frames etc) so it's worth checking online suppliers now and up to New Year, for their best 'sale' deals. Full price is seriously more than 'seconds' price. Sales are a good time to get protective gear and all the other bits and pieces too.

 

[enrico]

You have been blessed with a quite a few pounds of equipment just in the hives themselves let alone with the bees, probably over £1000 worth....... Oh that we all had that help in the beginning. Good luck
E

 

[itma]

...

You will need new equipment for these hives (frames etc) so it's worth checking online suppliers now and up to New Year, for their best 'sale' deals. Full price is seriously more than 'seconds' price. Sales are a good time to get protective gear and all the other bits and pieces too.

BUT - there are lots of different hive types and sizes. Be careful not to stock up on anything not appropriate to what is there. And you should get help with recognition of precisely what is there, before splashing cash.
Apart from overdue maintenance replacements (likely many frames), you will need some spare kit - at absolute barest minimum a complete but basic spare hive for swarm control. Hence, I would say it was no bad thing if one or two seriously weak colonies failed over the winter - 6 is a lot to start with! However, you don't want to lose the lot!

There are indeed winter sales (even one in Hampshire this weekend), but it doesn't make sense to invest *until* ownership is established beyond doubt or counterclaim (or you intend taking up the hobby anyway, and a beesuit or whatever is going to be needed anyway!)

By the time ownership is established for certain, you could have (should have!)
- made contact with local beeks
- identified the hive type(s)
- had someone experienced 'heft' the hives (judge the pre-winter stores situation from the feeling of weight)
- put together a shopping list with help from your new friends
- stabilised and weatherproofed and mouseguarded (guards about £1 each) the hives
- and maybe even treated with £10-worth of VarroaGard (in at the entrances)
---- and then you are ready to hit the sales!

I really wouldn't open up at this point if it can be avoided. If there are Queen Excluders above single brood boxes, they should really be removed. Above a brood and a half (or bigger), I'd say just leave them.
But it depends on what you have - hives and stores. A judgement call to be made with more info than you have provided thus far! (And the same goes for any sort of valuation - a prime cedar hive is worth massively more than a poor diy plywood effort!)

 

[MattK]

Thanks for all the replies. I am in Buckingham, so north Bucks.

I agree that so many hives is a bit daunting and I want to do a course, although I'm struggling to find details of any local courses for the remainder of this year or 2013 online.

From what I can tell, the hives are National and I think they are weatherproof. I will look into mouse guards, although to be honest my instinct is that they've survived this long without any interference so maybe I should leave well alone until it's an appropriate time to get them opened up.

Just a note on ownership - the allotment owner (it's not council) has attempted several times to contact the previous tenant but has been unsuccesful and it's believed that he's emigrated. I'm not sure what else I can do about this. I don't intend removing or selling them anyway, simply learning about bees, looking after them and presumably, at some point, taking some honey.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Chris B]

There are two immediate potential dangers to the bees - starvation and varroa.

It's been such a poor year for honey there's a risk ALL those bees will be starved by spring if you do nothing. I can guarantee 90% of my own hives would have been dead by Christmas without feeding, even if I hadn't taken any honey. It's a simple check - just tilt each hive slightly to get a feel for the weight. You'll be looking for a total hive weight of about 60lbs, depending a bit on what the hives are actually made from. If they seem that sort of weight you can relax, otherwise they need a feed of some sort.

Varroa is different. You can't assess that without disruption and a bit of basic knowledge. And the chances are it won't kill everything. So you can play the percentage game on that one if you like. Deal with the survivors in the spring after you've learned a bit. But if you want to do something this year then do it quick.

 

[MattK]

Is there a way to feed without opening the hives? Sorry if that's a daft question.

 

[itma]

Feeding - if you had an Ashforth or Miller feeder it wouldn't be too hard. Lid off, inner cover off, feeder on (& fill), cover back on, roof back on.
Its still a job for a suit, smoker, hive tool, & washing up gloves.

Other types of feeder generally require a spare hive part (a shallow box, often called a super) to surround the feeder.
Entrance feeder? Maybe.

Better to get the hives 'hefted' by One Who Knows, just in case they are all dangerously light. And only then get agitated about feeding.

You could feed fondant (sugar paste - think of soft icing) in spring if needed, but it requires at least a similar "lid off" opening.

Feeding in the open, in front of the hives is not a good idea -- gets the bees terribly excited and spreads any disease.

A photo of the hives (any photo) would help.
Additionally a photo of the joints between boxes might show whether (or where) a Queen Excluder might be.

 

[Chris B]

Yes you can "open-feed" i.e. sugar syrup in a barrel/bucket with a floating straw raft. But it's not really the weather for it and it might be considered anti-social, especially on an allotment. You can also buy entrance feeders from some beekeeping suppliers (google beekeeping entrance feeder), but these tend to be small aand you'd need to keep refilling. Certainly an option though.

 

[itma]

Should have been clearer, a Miller or Ashforth type feeder is another box to add to the stack that is the hive. Its a complete 'module'. You just put it on the pile, and put the roof back on top.
Costs from about £20 plus VAT each, but more expensive options are available!
How is your carpentry? DIY is one means of controlling costs ...
How many do you want to feed at a time? Six is a lot of colonies for a beginner!

Oh and by the way, you are going to be putting £5 or so of sugar into each fill of one of those ...
Each hive needs 20kg stores for the winter - hopefully they have at least that in honey and don't need additional sugar.

 

[Teebeeaitch]

And ....... if after reading all of the above advice, your head is spinning and you are still unsure, perhaps this much quoted paragraph will nail it for you.

Trust the Bees.

“There are a few rules of thumb that are useful guides. One is that when you are confronted with some problem in the apiary and you do not know what to do, then do nothing. Matters are seldom made worse by doing nothing and are often made much worse by inept intervention.”

The HowTo Do It book of Bee-keeping, Richard Taylor

 

[Chris B]

Feeding in the open, in front of the hives is not a good idea -- gets the bees terribly excited and spreads any disease.

If any of those hives is diseased (I presume we're talking foulbrood) they probably all will be already. Robbing would be the only risk of spreading it further afield i.e. an outsider colony robbing one of yours that's failing. I don't think open-feeding increases that risk.