Bees, Bees, Bees

It has been a mainly bee filled week. Two years ago when I started out with chickens and bees, I worried about them both. I worried about their accommodation, what they would eat, if they would get diseases, if they would get out and if anything would get in. I long since gave up worrying about the chickens, I let them out, make sure there is food and water and then shut them up at night, one of them lays a regular egg and that is it. I have lost three birds in those two years which has made me sad, but really I barely have to think about the chickens any more. The bees on the other hand seem to be a non stop source of anxiety. In winter I worry about whether they are surviving, in summer it is whether they are going to swarm or not followed by whether they are building up enough stores to last them through the winter. Almost all the year round I am worrying about whether to treat for varroa.
For beekeepers this spring who were congratulating themselves that their bees had at least made it through the winter alive (and I heard  last week of a Yorkshire beekeeper who lost 80 out of 100 colonies), a new worry was raised at the BBKA Spring Convention with the thought that as last summer was so wet, virgin queens had very little chance to get out of the hive to mate and if they don't mate within two to three weeks they will start laying unfertilized eggs which will become drones and thus mean the death of the colony. Fortunately my three virgin queens all seem to have mated.

I had several spring tasks I wanted to do with the bees, I wanted to repair or replace the floor of hive 1 which was coming apart and letting bees in through the back of the hive, I wanted to coax hive 2 out of their old brood box and into a new brood box and onto new foundation to try and stop them building brace comb between the frames and I wanted to change the brood box of hive 3, as I realised that it had not been built wrong as I had assumed but that I had put it together wrong.
I started with hive 3 last Tuesday. I had a bit of a shock. In March when we were forecast snow, the BBKA sent a warning round to feed the bees to prevent late starvation. Hives 1 and 2 still had candy left from the winter but hive 3 had taken it all so I put more on in an upturned plastic pot. By last week they had not only eaten it all but they had filled the pot with comb and the queen had been laying in it. I wish I had taken a picture of it to show you as the natural build of the comb was beautiful but I had a pot full of bees most likely including the precious queen and it was not as warm as it should be for inspecting bees so I had to act quickly. This is the pot and some of the comb after it was broken up.

 The bees would not simply shake out of the pot back into the hive but clung on to the comb. I started digging bits of the comb out and putting them on a spare hive floor. The bees did not like this but gradually by removing comb and shaking bees I got the pot emptied and the majority of the bees back in the hive. I put a queen excluder on the brood chamber and a super filled with foundation above that. Then I retreated to let everyone calm down, hoping to God that I had got the queen on the right side of the queen excluder and hoping even more fervently that I hadn't dropped or killed her in the melee.The queen excluder by the way is to stop the queen laying eggs in the super, thus if all goes well, you can extract honey from the super without the risk of finding eggs or larvae in it.
Examining the exposed larvae revealed the presence of varroa but I couldn't tell if they were at levels high enough to need treatment.

They are the red brown crab shaped spots on the larva. There may have been more of them as some of the brood were drones which take longer to develop in the cell which gives the varroa mite longer to develop. I have put a collection floor on the hive to try and assess the level of infestation by counting the number that are dropped but I may treat them anyway.
I then gave the larvae to the chickens who enjoyed them immensely.

On Friday the weather was fine enough to go into hive 2 and put a new brood chamber above the old to try and tempt the colony onto clean fresh wax. I went through the old brood chamber removing brace comb wherever I could. This colony was nowhere near as strong as hive 3 and there was a small patch of bees dead in cells which was an indication of starvation over winter. This despite there being a large lump of candy still to eat in March. Still there was normal healthy brood in there and I actually spotted the queen. Of course by the time I reached for the cage to capture her, she had wandered off again so she is still unmarked like the others. I have put a weak sugar solution on this hive to fool them into thinking it is a nectar flow which is supposed to stimulate them into activity but they still seem very lethargic.

On Saturday teatime, I strolled down to see what the bees where doing and was sent into a panic by a large cloud of bees massing outside hive 3. Some of the books say that unusual activity can be sign that they are preparing to swarm. It would be very early for a swarm given the late spring we have had, but this is a large and active colony who had already shown signs that the brood chamber was not sufficient for their needs. I would have to go into the hive and see what was going on despite the weather still being on the cold side. Thinking I might as well kill two birds with one stone, I took the new brood body and started to transfer the frames over. The bees didn't like it. They had been trying to keep the hive at 35 degrees and now I was taking it apart in a temperature of about 12. They buzzed around angrily in a cloud and I got stung once on the inside of my elbow. I'm surprised it wasn't more.
Whilst doing my lightning quick inspection of angry bees, I did spot a queen cup at the side of one frame. It didn't appear to have anything in it. Queen cups can mean several things. The most harmless possibility is that  they are a practice for later in the season. The next possibility is in my efforts to get rid of the plastic pot of comb I have inadvertently killed the queen and the queen cell is an emergency replacement. However this would not be possible with an empty cell or even one with an egg laid in it that I didn't spot, as it would need the queen present to lay in it. The worst case scenario, is that the bees are preparing to swarm and building a queen cup to leave a new queen to take over the remnants of the hive after the majority of the bees have left with the old queen.
So my plan of action, is to inspect again either today or tomorrow and if the queen cell is sealed then I need to separate the queen cell and most of the bees from the queen and a couple of frames of brood. In other words do an artificial swarm so that the bees are in the position they would be after a swarm either queenless and building up the colony again or in a small colony led by the old queen which also needs building up. However I went to the Beverley Beekeepers Annual Auction (splendid, bought loads of stuff very cheap) and talking there to beekeepers, it was suggested that what I saw was an orientation flight, when young bees come out for the first time and buzz round trying to work out where they are, so all might be well and there could be no need to panic.
We shall see but I bet it won't be the first time I am panicking this season.

Of Quail and Chickens and Bees and Boys

Quail and Chickens and Bees and Boys are really all that I have been thinking about these last few days although I was forced to consider DIY as well when my neighbour complained that if I didn't do something about the garage door it was likely to blow down on her car in the next strong winds.

On the quail front, Tiny Quail died as expected, shortly after I had written about her. I think this is is actually a picture of Una but Tiny looked exactly the same, except a little smaller and less lively. Here is a picture of the quails in the brooder before Mopsy and Cottentail made their disastrous bid for freedom. Now that we have only one of the Golden Quail left, Rosie says that she doesn't want to call her Flopsy any more so names are being considered on a yellow theme from plain Goldie up to Celandine and Jonquil.

I have noticed these last two days, that Una is not looking very lively and does not seem to be growing very fast. It might be because of her poor start in life. but I worry that  she is not warm enough since I raised the heat lamp so that we could slip a grid across the top of the box to prevent the bigger two escaping.

Regarding the chickens, I have to report the sad news, that no sooner did I get the two new Fenton Rose birds, than one has been got by the fox.

It is very frustrating that I had kept her in the coop for a week to get used to where home is, and then only on Saturday,  started letting her free range in the garden. On Monday I let her out at 6.30 and by 9 she had disappeared. An investigation on the valley revealed a handful of feathers.
I had recently gone round the garden fences, checking and where necessary, blocking escape routes so it was very annoying. Of course if chickens indulge in this sort of behaviour what can they expect?

This is Amelia perching on top of the hen coop which is 7 if not 8 feet high. I should point out that Amelia has had her wings clipped, which is meant to unbalance her and make flying difficult. I would rather she didn't fly into the valley and offer herself as a meal for a fox, as she is at the moment, my only layer.

I was intending to write about bees next as I spent most of Monday putting hives and frames together and then yesterday hoping the weather would be good enough for the first spring inspection. It wasn't but we had a bit of a crisis so had to go in anyway. However the Boy has woken up and come into my bed so that tale will have to wait until tomorrow.
Rosie and I missed the Boy one morning, he wasn't in his room or the bathroom  and he hadn't gone downstairs. We found him in my room where he had quietly got into my bed, found my kindle and settled down to play on it.

  

Frogging

My sister, Claire stayed on with me for a night after the funeral, so yesterday I took her for a walk on the valley. She shares my superstition about magpies, so much surreptitious saluting took place followed by corresponding satisfaction at seeing a pair of them.
It was the hottest day of the year so far at 15 degrees, but with a really strong blustery wind, excellent clothes drying weather but the ideas I'd had about opening up the bee hives for their first Spring inspection had to be put away for another day.
On the valley, it would have been a good day to fly a kite. It was a lot greener than my last visit and there were little yellow flowers out ( probably celandines but I ought to check). By the railway line we saw a kestrel which flew past and perched for a long time in a tree. I had my binoculars with me but staring into the sun in a head wind, didn't make for good viewing.
We headed of course for the pond, where I was anxious to see if the kingfisher is still resident. If he is he didn't show himself nor did the heron that I occasionally see. The heron was missing out, as the pond was stuffed with frogs. The water was really clear and every few feet, was at least one frog, frequently mating in a shamelessly exhibitionist manner. We were staring at one tangle of frogs, trying to count the legs to work out if there was two or three involved when a dogwalker interrupted us. Claire hastily slipped her camera in her pocket and said that she felt almost like a pervert being caught staring at frog sex. The woman cheerfully remarked that they had named it Sex in the Valley and that coming down to the pond had given rise to a new activity, frogging.
Rosie has gone on an art trip to Berlin leaving me in sole charge of Oliver for a few days. I might introduce him to the joys of frogging later today.

Of Birds and Bees

Although I wrote the last post on Friday morning, I didn't get chance to publish it before I went away  to the BBKA convention. I think I shall have to write a separate post all about the convention as I have returned absolutely buzzing (of course) with ideas, in fact I stuffed my brain so full of new information that half way through the last lecture it put up the full signs and refused to accept any more.
I have returned earlier than I hoped, I wanted to stay the full three days but Sunday is the education day where there are all day workshops which must be pre booked, with only a few ad hoc lectures so it was not too difficult to decide to come home early. This is for two reasons, firstly it is the funeral of my cousin's husband tomorrow. Ian was a lovely man described rather surprisingly, by my sister in an email of condolence  to his brother in law, as a centaur. She meant that in the sixties, he was so outside our experience that he seemed almost mythical, our lower middle class childhood in an unexceptional suburb of Leeds, did not include handsome wealthy young business men who drove Aston Martins. Some of the boys of our acquaintance actually thought he was James Bond. He was also funny and down to earth and I am very sad at his death.
However because of the funeral, one of my other sisters is coming to stay so I thought it would not be a bad idea if I came home early to give the homestead a wash and brush up. This idea was further reinforced by a phone call I had with Rosie on Friday, when she realised that she didn't have her key and was locked out of the house all weekend. This didn't matter for Rosie, who could easily stay at her Dad's but the quail in the brooder box would be unattended for 48 hours.
So I changed my plans, after the last lecture on Saturday, I went and bought two new chickens. They are a new hybrid, Fenton Rose, and I have long fancied their sister the Fenton Blue to satisfy my hankering for blue eggs. They are only sold by two or three suppliers so it was convenient that one of them is based on the road between Newport,  where the convention was, and the M6. Chickens safely in their box, I went back to my motel and in half an hour had a shower, a burger, a cup of tea and caught up on the news, and then set off for home at 7.30. Later I wished I hadn't taken that half hour's rest.
Unlike Friday morning, the motorways were clear and I had a good drive, getting home about 9.30. I put the new chickens straight into the hen house, hoping that introducing them when the others were asleep would make it easier for them to be accepted in the morning and then went to check on the brooder. My worst fears, that the heat-lamp would set fire to their bedding, had not been realised. My second worst fears had, I only had three quail in the box, three were missing. I eventually tracked them down to a corner under the sofa. One was dead and another was dying. I tortured myself wondering if I hadn't taken that half hour's rest or I hadn't stopped to buy the chickens, I might have been in time to save the dying quail. I raised the heat-lamp to just above the box so that I could put a grid across to prevent further escapes. However this morning, Tiny Quail, the one that hatched on Thursday was looking very poorly. By raising the lamp I suspect I made it too cold for her, I lowered it again but she was not looking good.

A Quail Tale

When I lasted posted, I had given up on the quail eggs. It was Tuesday, three days after they were due to hatch and I was depressed that despite the signs of life when candled and despite my faithfully turning of eggs, nothing had happened. I didn't know why, whether it was too cold outside the incubator or whether I had got the humidity wrong but I had given up and decided to have a rest from trying to hatch eggs and possibly think about buying a more sophisticated incubator.
So you can imagine my shock when lying in bed on Tuesday night, I heard a loud chirping in the room. I shot out of bed and there was a chick in the incubator, unlike last year's chickens it had hatched cleanly and quickly and was already drying off and moving around. Although in retrospect I think it may have hatched a few hours earlier and because it had been quiet for a while I had just been unaware of its existence. I immediately got very excited and hoped for more to hatch overnight but in the morning there was just our il Sunday one and only chick looking pretty healthy and running around. We named her Una for obvious reasons.
By Wednesday night I had fixed up the brooding arrangements, a large plastic storage box under a heat lamp in the corner of the living room. I had intended to carry on rearing them in my bedroom but for one tiny chick, Una is pretty noisy. She looked very small and lost in the big box and I worried that if she got too cold  she would have no-one to cuddle up to. So I got on the phone and found a poultry breeder in Farsley who had some 10 day old quail chicks he would let me have for a pound each. He said he only had three though, I said this was fine as they were primarily company for Una. When I got there though he threw in (not literally) a fourth chick who had a damaged foot from birth, although he seems to get around fine on it. I have christened him Tim, after Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. Tim and Una are both brown and stripey. Now that Una's baby feathers have fluffed up she really does look like a big bumble bee running around the brooder. The other three are Golden quails and I don't know what to call them, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail come to mind. The older quails are in a less attractive stage than Una of beginning to grow their adult feathers and are showing several bald patches.
The story is not finished there though as yesterday afternoon I was again stunned to hear cheeping from the incubator. Amazingly after five days and after I had stopped bothering to add water to the incubator, another chick had hatched. She didn't look as large or as active as Una (who is no longer the one and only) but she made it through the night.
I am going away to the beekeeping  convention now until Sunday (expect the next post to be full of bee news) but I shall leave the incubator switched on just in case.

Today's the Day!

Apologies for the recent lack of communication, our internet has been distinctly patchy recently. Frustration with the lack of service has driven me to the local library to use their internet. Whilst very grateful for the free access, I am being driven to distraction by the loud chatting indulged in by librarians. Whatever happened to silence in libraries? The seven people using the computers and the two or three browsing for books are by contrast totally quiet.
I felt I had to post today as it is the first official day of the Gilligan Wood soap business. I did the official sign over at the Job Centre yesterday where I found out that my business plan had actually been approved on 1st March so God knows why they then kept me waiting for 5 weeks. My first task when I got online this afternoon was to register with HMRC to pay self employed National Insurance contributions and taxes by self assessment.
More to say regarding bees (good) and quail (bad) and whether to go ahead with the Otley Show but I think this will really have to wait until I have the peace of my own computer.
Hope to fill you in tomorrow.

In which I become the Hungry Caterpillar

On Easter Sunday a medium sized, not so young, woman  ate some Easter Eggs

and a family dinner (including the Lidl Three Bird Roast of which the general opinion was that a large chicken or duck would have been just as good), but she was still hungry.
On Monday in a Mexican themed night she ate fajitas and nachos
 but she was still hungry.
On Tuesday it was the Boy's third birthday, she ate a birthday tea including little egg sandwiches and sausage  rolls, chocolate brownies

pirate cupcakes (complete with the Black Spot)

and some pirate birthday cake (in a cop out from making it at home, I bought it at Sainsbury's and do recommend that)

In the evening the woman and her daughters went out to a restaurant and ate a large carvery meal.
Now she was no longer a medium sized woman and no longer hungry having eaten to capacity and beyond.
This was more the situation last night:

 That picture incidentally, is taken from Allan Ahlberg's Bravest Ever Bear. Allan Ahlberg is probably my favourite living children's author, at least for the under sevens.
Today, we are off to Bridlington, to visit Boy's great grandma, hopefully this doesn't mean mandatory fish and chips. Tomorrow, thankfully, normal life and diet will resume.