(this article is a re-post from my main blog www.EssexBees.co.uk and is aimed at simplifying beekeeping for those who have more than a passing interest ... so please don't shoot me if it's not technically perfect 
So, back to my article post...)
Early Spring is a busy time for beekeeping.
With Winter behind us and the death toll evaluated, the surviving bees are buy at work building up the colony strength.
As beekeepers, our job is to make sure that the bees have access to enough food to compensate for "bad weather" days as well as enough space to expand.
The first issue is easily solved. Inside each of our hives is a feeding frame which can hold 2 litres of sugar syrup. Our sugar syrup is made with 1 kilo of sugar with 1 litre of water.
Normally we leave it at that, but at this time of year, we add a vitamin boost to this syrup as well. This vitamin boost ensures that the food we are giving the bees is a close as possible to natural nectar.
Feeding the bees this syrup stimulates the Queen into laying eggs and the worker bees into looking after the larvae.
The second issue is that of space.
One of the principle reasons for swarming is lack of space - bees like to be busy and so if there is not enough to do, in terms of drawing out foundation into new honeycomb, then they will look to "move house".
To combat this, between 3 and 5 new frames of wax foundation are swapped with old honeycomb. This means that the bees will be kept busy and rather than "moving house", they'll be "building an extension".
When replacing frames an assessment is made of the number of bees in the hive. If there are a lot of bees, then replacing a few frames will not, on it's own, curb the swarming instinct.
However, what we can do is "split the hive" into 2 or more hives - this is not strictly an artificial swarm but it's not a million miles off, either.
For us, one of the major benefits of splitting a hive is that we get more bees (and boy are we desperate for more bees!!!).
Obviously, there is only one queen per hive and so when splitting a hive, we need another queen and this is where the bees are clever.
When we split the hive, we move 3 frames of bees into a mini hive, known as a Nuc(leus). These 3 frames must have a good ratio of honey, pollen, capped brood, larvae and most importantly eggs.
The bees that are on these 3 frames are by their very nature, "nurse bees". As such, their role is looking after the eggs and larvae.
And here's the clever bit...
...these Nurse bees know (by lack of her scent) that there is no queen in the Nuc and as such they create an "emergency queen". They do this by feeding a few of the eggs royal jelly during all it's larval stage. At the same time, they build a larger cell which looks like a Monkey Nut to accommodate the soon-to-be queen.
And this is what we had to do.
Out of our surviving hives, 2 of them are exceptionally strong, with one in particular running out of room. As such, we had no choice but to split the hive.
This is the first time that I've split a hive this early and although I have undertaken the split many times in France, I've never done it in the UK. Coupled with that, I was going through the process with one of our students...so no pressure to perform then!!!
The new Nuc was then taken to another location. Opinion is divided on this, but the logic is that by moving the bees to another location, then these bees will not return to the original hive and forget about making another queen.
Now the hive has been split, we need to wait 10 days to see if the nurse bees in the nuc have actually realised that their queen is missing.
So, back to my article post...)
Early Spring is a busy time for beekeeping.
With Winter behind us and the death toll evaluated, the surviving bees are buy at work building up the colony strength.
As beekeepers, our job is to make sure that the bees have access to enough food to compensate for "bad weather" days as well as enough space to expand.
The first issue is easily solved. Inside each of our hives is a feeding frame which can hold 2 litres of sugar syrup. Our sugar syrup is made with 1 kilo of sugar with 1 litre of water.
Normally we leave it at that, but at this time of year, we add a vitamin boost to this syrup as well. This vitamin boost ensures that the food we are giving the bees is a close as possible to natural nectar.
Feeding the bees this syrup stimulates the Queen into laying eggs and the worker bees into looking after the larvae.
The second issue is that of space.
One of the principle reasons for swarming is lack of space - bees like to be busy and so if there is not enough to do, in terms of drawing out foundation into new honeycomb, then they will look to "move house".
To combat this, between 3 and 5 new frames of wax foundation are swapped with old honeycomb. This means that the bees will be kept busy and rather than "moving house", they'll be "building an extension".
When replacing frames an assessment is made of the number of bees in the hive. If there are a lot of bees, then replacing a few frames will not, on it's own, curb the swarming instinct.
However, what we can do is "split the hive" into 2 or more hives - this is not strictly an artificial swarm but it's not a million miles off, either.
For us, one of the major benefits of splitting a hive is that we get more bees (and boy are we desperate for more bees!!!).
Obviously, there is only one queen per hive and so when splitting a hive, we need another queen and this is where the bees are clever.
When we split the hive, we move 3 frames of bees into a mini hive, known as a Nuc(leus). These 3 frames must have a good ratio of honey, pollen, capped brood, larvae and most importantly eggs.
The bees that are on these 3 frames are by their very nature, "nurse bees". As such, their role is looking after the eggs and larvae.
And here's the clever bit...
...these Nurse bees know (by lack of her scent) that there is no queen in the Nuc and as such they create an "emergency queen". They do this by feeding a few of the eggs royal jelly during all it's larval stage. At the same time, they build a larger cell which looks like a Monkey Nut to accommodate the soon-to-be queen.
And this is what we had to do.
Out of our surviving hives, 2 of them are exceptionally strong, with one in particular running out of room. As such, we had no choice but to split the hive.
This is the first time that I've split a hive this early and although I have undertaken the split many times in France, I've never done it in the UK. Coupled with that, I was going through the process with one of our students...so no pressure to perform then!!!
The new Nuc was then taken to another location. Opinion is divided on this, but the logic is that by moving the bees to another location, then these bees will not return to the original hive and forget about making another queen.
Now the hive has been split, we need to wait 10 days to see if the nurse bees in the nuc have actually realised that their queen is missing.
