Of Bees and an Old Joke

Just as well I've been pushing myself to do the painting these last few days, as I woke up this morning to pouring rain, I had to put my raincoat over my pyjamas to go let the chickens out. Despite the rain they came shooting out of their house as if they hadn't eaten for a month. Of course, since having to re-roof the run to keep the fox out , they now have an area to go in that is under cover although today’s rain was still coming in through the chicken wire sides of the run. None of the chickens are laying at the moment which is a bit depressing, the two chicks are still too young, although the Orpington has grown huge, the three ex batts have been putting all their energy into growing their feathers back and do look almost respectable now, Mary and Amelia have no excuse. Last year Amelia stopped laying in the autumn and didn't start again until January so I may have to resign myself to having to buy eggs for a while.

The quail are no better as regards laying and really it is time I moved their cages into the garage for the winter as they are not as hardy as the chickens. Oliver and I may go to sort out a space for them later. At the moment we are sitting comfortably on the sofa playing Ceebeebies games on one laptop, whilst I try and write this on another.

Yesterday, as soon as I’d dropped Oliver off at nursery I was out in the garden. First, I did the long overdue task of sorting the bees out for winter, feeding the hives that seemed light and removing any supers that didn't have any stores in them. If there were any supers with honey in, then I swapped them over so that they are now under the brood boxes instead of on top. On two of the hives I reduced the size of the entrances by putting a wooden block in place. I only seemed to have two of these though so I will have to buy another three and also buy more of the metal mouse guards which are pinned into place to stop mice raiding the honey during the winter. It is also time to treat the hives against varroa and then, after that, I can safely leave them alone for a while. I was encouraged at how healthy the hives were looking, all five hives were stronger than any of  the hives I had last year. I could also see bees coming in with their backs coated in white pollen which is a sign that they have been visiting Himalayan balsam, an invasive foreign plant which is much disliked by everyone except beekeepers who appreciate the pollen it can provide late in the season. It is good to know that my bees are within flying range of Himalayan balsam just as it is good to know they can access alder catkins in February for an early start to their season. Next year my challenge with the bees is to try to pre-empt swarming. Although it was good experience, handling this years swarms, and has allowed me to build up to five hives, to get a good honey harvest, the bees really need to be  able to concentrate on bringing the nectar in rather than building up a new colony after swarming.

Inevitably, inspecting the bees took longer than I thought, and it was nearly five by the time I’d finished putting everything away but as Oliver was spending the night with his other grandparents, I didn't have to collect him from nursery so I was able to zip out into the front garden and do a little more in my mission to obliterate the orange paint. Yesterday was the turn of the drainpipe,

which copying all the neighbours I painted black.

 As the drainpipe is next to my neighbours front door, it put me in mind of the pun I once heard on ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’, ‘Was it you who spilt black paint outside the front door? Well go and never darken my doorstep again!’.

A Brief (Ha Ha) Update

Good Morning All !
I realise that it is several weeks since I wrote, and that fact has been languishing on my conscience and featuring daily on my to do list (or facienda) for at least the last week. The trouble is that the longer I left it the more there is to write about and the bigger the task appears. I think I shall just have to write an overview today and then write several more in-depth blogs. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for heavy rain, a perfect day for sitting at a computer.

Firstly the soapy business, the Great Yorkshire Show was very hot and very busy and a little like an endurance test, I was there from 7.30 am to 7.30 pm being pleasant and chatty and basically saying the same thing over and over again 'It's all made from beeswax, an amazing natural moisturiser. I am a beekeeper you know' By the end of the day I was sick of the sound of my own voice and pitied my poor neighbours. Like at Bramham I met an amazing bunch of entrepreneurial women and in quiet periods the marquee was almost like a study group or tutorial. The key topic of discussion was Twitter, some were old hands, some just starting (ie me - @Gilliganwood feel free to add me if you are that way inclined) and some were complete novices.  Whilst on the subject of e-marketing my website  www.gilliganwood.com is now open for business. I won't say the website is complete, the pages on the benefits of beeswax are looking very bare and the 'What we've been doing' page is also in need of updating (another candidate for a wet Monday) but should anyone have an urgent need for a beeswax based skin balm they can now buy online.

Secondly the poultry, so much has happened here that they will definitely need a post devoted to them. Una the quail has started laying! She now lives in a hutch with Goldie, Tim being separated, in another hutch, both hutches in urgent need of more females. I saved up Una's eggs and made mini scotch eggs for us to take on a beach picnic. They were very cute and had the huge advantage of not having as much egg as a normal scotch egg. Amelia turned broody so I bought in some fertilised eggs and let her sit on them. She (or I) timed the whole thing really badly as they were due to hatch in the middle of the Great Yorkshire Show, which led me to refuse the opportunity of going for a drink with the words 'No, I must rush home, my eggs are about to hatch', the ladies eyed my dubiously and agreed that they mustn't hinder me. Two out of the five eggs hatched, a black Orpington and a Brahma. If that isn't enough poultry excitement, last Sunday I collected three ex battery hens and brought them home to recuperate and provide me with eggs. More about all of them plus photos, tomorrow.

The bees, also have kept me busy, partly this was my fault as being occupied with the business I left them to their own devices, which inevitably led to swarms. One of the swarms decided to settle at the top of the hawthorn tree that I didn't prune last winter. Remembering how I felt when I was pruning in the winter I asked my neighbour, Dave who is a climber for help. He involved his son, Kris and then in the way of our street, my other neighbour, Nicky came out to offer advice and ended up filming it all on her mobile phone. If possible I shall put this too on the blog in days to come. The next step I have to tackle in beekeeping is harvesting the honey. Last year the weather was so bad that there wasn't any honey to harvest but this year I have at least one full super, undoubtedly there would have been more if I hadn't let them swarm. Although there are ways of extracting honey without using an extractor, my plan is to put my name down to borrow one from the Leeds BBKA.

I'm afraid I have neglected the garden a bit this summer, all the hopes I had for growing my own veg didn't really happen. I have a few potatoes and carrots, a handful of tomatoes and one courgette. There are some onions in the plot but I have neglected them so much that I don't know how they are doing. It has been a reasonable year for fruit though, I picked a pound of red currants and added it to a pound of rhubarb I'd stashed in the freezer earlier and two pounds of bought strawberries and made a surprisingly tasty jam. The gooseberries have reached their peak of ripeness this weekend. I have been watching them carefully as I adore gooseberries that are ripe enough to be sweet whilst still keeping their crunch. I think the only way to achieve this gooseberry perfection is to grow them yourself. Promisingly there are berries on the cranberry bush this year that are looking pretty big, although still green. Hopefully there will be enough for home grown cranberry sauce at Christmas.

There has been work done on the house, as I am totally fed up with how bad my internet connection is and I am going to seek a new provider. However, I have suspicions that although the loss of internet for 12 hours at a time, is the fault of the provider, the extreme slowness of the system is probably down to my wiring. If I am going to let a telephone engineer into my bedroom to sort this out, then I would rather that he did not have to pick his way over sewing machines, spare computers, soap ingredients, wool, clothes and everything thing else that has found a home on my bedroom floor. This tied in nicely with the Mortgage Free in Three's challenge to chuck 100 things in 10 days http://mortgagefreeinthree.com/forum/the-100-things-in-10-days-challenge/  After several days work I can now see vast expanses of floor, I reckon by next weekend I should have it all in shape. Rosie is also busy throwing things out as she is moving into a flat for part of the week from September and is in the process of reassessing her belongings in a what to take, what to leave and I wouldn't wear that again if you paid me mode. So far she has managed three bin bags of clothes to charity shops and several bin bags of rubbish. I think I will write more about Rosie's flat in future if she will let me as it is going to be an interesting challenge to take a  basement  student flat furnished with basic necessities and turn it into something homely and creative on next to nothing. Her eldest sister Maddie has already crocheted a blanket for her. Incidentally since I showed the WIRE ladies, some blue genitalia that Maddie had knitted for a friend, she was ever after referred to as 'your daughter, the obscene knitter'.

Finally on the health front I remember mentioning in January that I needed to drop a size by summer so that I could fit into a wetsuit I'd bought in the sale. Frankly this never happened and by Bramham I had mysteriously gone up a size! I don't know how that happens, I take my eye off things and the weight just rushes on. So I have finally started dieting again and since Bramham have lost a stone. I don't want to say too much about this though, as other people's diets are not interesting. I will just say that having worked in an office where people were always counting points or on red days or green days or having complicated regimes where they couldn't mix carbohydrates and proteins, I am simply cutting back on my food. I do realise however that on a limited intake every calorie has to pull its weight so I am trying to go for healthy foods high in vitamins and minerals.

Phew! I think that is the end of the update. I bet you're glad I went for the brief version with no pictures or involved stories. I will save those for the next few days.

And relax.....

Well it's been a tough few days.

Friday was a 19 hour day and then as I still wasn’t ready, I was up at 4.30 on Saturday. After all the hard work and stress the show itself was a crashing disappointment as I took only £63 and the rent was £80.  It was awful weather and everyone was suffering, but I have to accept that it didn’t fly off the stall when people were there. 

This dismal photo is just before the steady drenching rain.

Still there are several positives to take from it 1) having a deadline spurred me on to get everything ready 2) I have an idea what is going to sell (Gardener’s skin balm 3) I have several ideas of what I can do to improve presentation 4) I may have to readjust my ideas of how long it will take to make it profitable.

Yesterday was meant to be a day of recuperation, pottering around, slowly getting organised again but after separating the quail and getting the two male quail into a cage (much needed- Goldie has been chasing Una round the brooder box with sex in mind and she is not ready for that sort of thing), I took a stroll round the garden and noticed I had a swarm.

Same tree as last year conveniently, about 8- 10 feet off the ground.

I called beekeeping friend who came round with her two boys and her friend and Rosie and Oliver came out to watch too, Oliver looking very cute in his beekeeping suit.

 Confidently I climbed the ladder ready to brush them into a cardboard box. Unfortunately they had clustered in an awkward place where two branches crossed, still as long as I got the queen it would be alright as the others would follow. I didn't get her and it wasn't alright. I got 80% of the bees down and inverted the box over a sheet, which they slowly left and returned to the tree. Meanwhile  friend’s son got stung  on the arm and went screaming out of the garden,  friend’s friend got a bee entangled in her hair and in the general stress and panic she got stung on the scalp (ouch!). We administered antihistamine cream, and took a deep breath and started again – this time without spectators.

Second time around, the bees were quite irritable. I was up the ladder again, holding the box in one hand and trying to brush them in with the other, when they started stinging me on the arm that was holding the box. I tried to ignore it but it got too much and I had to retire again.

Friend decided to take her entourage home and I called Steve who is Oliver’s father’s father.

 Steve started keeping bees at the same time as me, but his died over the winter. I said if he helped me take the swarm he could have it. By the time he arrived, I had had the idea of balancing the box above them and trying to drive them into it. This did seem to work although it took a long time. 

When it was full, Steve went up the ladder and tried to close the flaps of the box. Disturbed, at least half the bees plummeted straight down to earth. We brought down what we had and again inverted the box over a large piece of netting. This time we must have had the queen as slowly all the other bees went in the box. Then all that was needed was to tie the netting round the box, put it in the back of the car (!) and drive 3 miles to Steve’s hives and then shake them into a hive box. Job done. By that time it was 9 o’clock and I was seriously ready for bed.

Monday I was shattered and battered, my arm which had been the site of multiple stings had a red swollen area about 5 inches by 6, nevertheless I thought I had better go in the hive that had swarmed and see how many queen cells they had made as I didn't want the risk of them throwing a secondary swarm. Without the queen the bees were cross. To my absolute horror I spotted one crawling INSIDE MY VEIL. I squashed it with my glove and took off down the garden to where I could undo my suit, take out the dead bee and get properly zipped up again.

Second time around I discovered many queen cells, I removed some and I took one on a frame of brood plus two other frames and put them in a nucleus box to try to rear a fourth colony. Bending down to look at the hive, I thought I had been stung on the back but I moved quickly and the sting didn't fully go in. Shortly after though I definitely got stung on the ankle (foolishly I was only wearing trainers). As it was in such an awkward place I wanted to get antihistamine cream on it as soon as possible so I put the hive back together and hobbled down the garden at full speed. 

I'm sure I have left more than one queen cell in the hive and should really go back in again to check, but the weather forecast for the next few days is not good. We may well get a second swarm from that hive.

Some Reassurance ....I Think.....

Last night I took my photo of the queen cells to the Leeds Beekeeping Association night and asked for advice. Robin Tomlinson, who has around 50 hives and has been keeping bees for 30 years or so, took one look at them and said they were supersedure cells built by the bees to replace a dead or failing queen and that I should leave the hive alone for three weeks. He then complicated things by looking at another photo and saying I had an emergency queen cell where the bees try to take an existing worker bee cell and turn it into a queen. He said I should go in and destroy any cells like this as they don't make good queens. Then the beekeepers in general started looking at my photos and trying to assess the health of the colony from the appearance of the sealed brood cells in the photo, whether they were drone cells or slightly raised worker cells which were deformed slightly due to the presence of either chalk brood or chilled brood.
So I am taking Robin's advice and leaving them to get on with whatever they are doing. Much as I would like to go in for another look, and check how many queen cells were actually there and if there are any signs of disease, this isn't strictly necessary and I don't really have the time. My best hope is that they do a swift and efficient supersedure and that the new queen is stronger than the old one as this hive has never really thrived.
Just in case they do swarm, I have filled a nucleus box with empty frames of foundation and left it temptingly nearby.
On the soap front, both the printer and the labels arrived safely yesterday so I have much to get on with.

Where did the time go?

Somehow life has got frantically busy.
I have my first show on Saturday which is the Otley Show. It is so I hear a good show, about 40 minutes away, busy and popular without being scary like the Great Yorkshire Show. Preparations were going okay. Well to be truthful I had a mental block in my head that said 'I can't do anything until I get the labels sorted out'. Then last week someone asked for samples saying they would call round the following night, I said that would be fine and then spent the next day sweating over the label design and totally forgot about what prices to quote her. I then spent the next morning writing up a price list in a three fold little brochure. This is good as it will be going out on the stall at Otley.
Having finished the label design all I had to do now was order the rest of the labels and buy a laser printer which I did on Monday. My internet was down again so I had to do this from the library. The printer is due to arrive today, the labels, I don't know when, sincerely hope it is before Friday.
So my list of things to do for the show was to finish fiddling with the labels to make sure they print out aligned  properly, to cut and label the soap, to make and label the balms and body butters and to check the set up for the stall, tablecloth, lighting, display etc. It seemed a full programme but manageable but then this happened:

That is a sealed queen cell and means that unless I do something quickly, a swarm is imminent. I took advantage of a small burst of sunny weather to do a quick inspection yesterday and found that in hive 2. You should be impressed that I managed to take a picture as punching a security code into a touch screen phone whilst wearing leather gloves is not easy. Nor is holding the frame in one hand, the phone in another and somehow managing to press the shutter button again in leather gloves. I didn't want to take the gloves off as the bees weren't happy and there were a lot buzzing round and crawling on me.
Now I have to do something fairly quickly here, I have two options (three if you include doing nothing and then possibly watching a swarm flying away), making up an artificial swarm in a separate box to the side of the hive or following the Demaree method and separating the queen cells and most of the brood from the queen by putting them in separate boxes within the same hive.
I like the Demaree method, it has the advantage of not splitting the colony and letting the flying bees work away as usual whilst the new queen hatches and is mated and starts laying. Also if I have read things wrong and these are not swarm cells but supersedure cells where the colony has decided to replace a poor queen then I haven't lost anything as the colony is still basically intact. I have two problems, the Demaree method calls for a brood box with the old queen in it topped by a queen excluder, then a super, then a Demaree board and then another brood box with the queen cells in. I don't have a Demaree board, which is like a queen excluder but with a hole cut out of the side to allow the new queen to leave the hive and mate. I could probably get by with using a spare queen excluder for the next few days but I haven't got one of them either although I can buy one tonight at the LBKA meeting. My other problem is that I have not yet seen the queen in this hive.
I don't have much time to decide what to do, if they haven't swarmed already the bees will swarm between 10 and 4 on the next fine day. Fortunately it is due to rain until 3 today so I can probably risk leaving it until tomorrow morning when Oliver is at nursery.
Meanwhile the the two male quails are practically fully grown now and need to be out of the brooder box. I have been bidding on ebay for the last two weeks for an old rabbit hutch which could be converted for quail. I was finally successful on Monday getting one for £19 which I picked up yesterday. I could do with getting it out of the back of the car, cleaned out and put inside somewhere to let the quail acclimatise to life without the heat lamp before transferring it to the hen coop. This may not happen before Sunday as I have to prioritise the Otley Show and the swarm.
Finally Mary laid her second egg yesterday (I think). She still doesn't know what a nestbox is for and laid it in a heap of dust.

The Queen! I saw the queen!

Despite what I said the other day, I feel I'm getting to grips with beekeeping, it is no longer a huge mystery that makes my head whirl, I'm even thinking of taking exams in it. Yep the BBKA take it seriously enough to offer a complete exam route http://www.bbka.org.uk/learn/examinations__assessments. There is a Basic Assessment for everyone, then you can choose whether to go down the practical or theoretical route or to do everything and become a Master Beekeeper.
One thing has been holding me back though, the fear that I shall never learn how to spot the queen. Last year   we lost the marked queen in a swarm so by the end of the summer I had three unmarked queens. On every inspection I looked for the queen but newly hatched queens are small and not easily spotted and the weather was so bad last year that the bees would not tolerate the hive being open for long while I searched for the needle in the haystack
You might think if the bees are doing well, and the hive is full of young healthy brood, that it doesn't matter if I can't spot the queen. This is true up to a point, but most manipulations require the queen. Making an artificial swarm to ward off the real thing, for example, calls for the queen to be put in one brood box and the majority of brood and bees in another.
So I was amazed and delighted when I spotted the queen in hive 1 yesterday. Hive 1 is our original hive, it is much less vigorous than hive 3 with brood on 5 frames but from chatting to other beekeepers I find this is pretty average. Having less bees in the hive certainly made it easier to spot the queen. Having spotted her, she was so different from the other bees that I had to laugh at all my attempts to spot her previous when I would stare anxiously at drones or even large worker bees worrying that I might be missing the queen. Here I would love to show you photographs but I was on my own at the hive and holding a frame of bees in one hand and trying to find the marking cage with the other whilst keeping the queen in sight and having my veil buzzed by guard bees. Photographs weren't going to happen. Gingerly putting the frame down on the hive, whilst worrying that I would crush bees on the underside, I popped the marking cage over the queen like putting a glass over a spider. There I inserted the sponge covered plunger which stops her escaping. The marking cage is designed so that as you move the plunger down to the mesh coated end, the queen is forced down until she is against the mesh and can be marked. In my panic and excitement I pushed the plunger down until her underside was trapped against the mesh. there seemed little point in marking that so I pulled the plunger back and gave her the freedom to turn round so I could try again.
The beekeeping world has adopted a standard rotation of the colours blue, white, yellow,red and green so that by marking the queen, it not only makes it easy to spot her but it is possible to say when she was born as well. Last year's colour was yellow and I had dutifully bought the appropriate marker pen so I took it in hand and tried to dab it on her back. Truthfully I didn't do very well, too scared of damaging her I think, and some of it landed on her wings as she moved as I didn't have her pressed securely against the mesh, again too scared of damaging her. Some people clip the queen's wings to restrict her ability to leave with a swarm. I can't imagine how I would ever manage to do that. Fortunately the beekeeping world is divided on whether it is worth it or not so I don't have to.
So very pleased with myself, I now have a queen bee with faint traces of yellow markings which may well brush off in the hive. My next manipulation (apart from still trying to find and mark the queens in the other two hives) is .to move a frame of brood from hive 3 to hive 1 to try and equalise things a little. Hive 3, bless them is going amazing well given the late cold winter and has brood on 9 frames. Although I would like to use the Demaree method of artificial swarming to make a couple of nuclei and increase my number of hives, I would prefer to leave this until mid to late May so in the meantime reducing their colony by 1 frame will actually give them more room in the hive to expand and delay swarming.

Spring is here, Spring is here!

I woke early this morning. I'm not sure what time as I don't currently have a clock in the bedroom (maybe I unplugged it to plug in the incubator) but it looked early, the sun was just coming up and the birds were tweeting away at the dawn chorus. I came downstairs to make tea and put some washing on, normal morning stuff and then went outside to let the chickens out, which is also part of the routine.
It was so nice out there, fresh and green in the early sun that I wandered around the garden, (I managed to cut the lawn for the first time this year on Wednesday and it was looking good). I took the opportunity to pin down a loose floor in hive 3, I always forget when I am suited up and during the day the guard bees don't like a hand messing around the entrance to the hive.
Then I followed temptation and slipped onto the valley. It looked very beautiful in the early sun, clouds of blossom covering what I'm guessing to be ornamental cherry trees.Hopefully a good source of pollen and nectar for the bees. I wished I had brought a camera but this being a spur of the moment visit I didn't even have my phone. From a bend in the path I caught a fox staring at me, no doubt appalled by the candy striped dressing gown and check pyjamas. They may be a menace to my chickens but I would love to see cubs. I returned home and checked the time- ten to six.

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.

  

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.

The Joys of Spring and Soap Labels

I was going to start today's post off with a moan about the weather, how cold and grey and miserable and more like November than March it is. I went on to the Valley specially to take a photo for you of the dreary grey wet landscape but then I saw this

 and this:

 Clearly Spring is on its way, its just having to fight to get here.
The hens weren't having any of this joys of spring nonsense, they looked exactly how L would feel if I'd been forced outside today; cold, wet and fed up.

Only two of those hens are mine by the way, the other two are visitors. I'm not sure from which neighbours garden though, I thought it was the right side but they seemed as if they were about to return (visit) the left side. No matter, they all return to there coops by nightfall.
So today has been an inside day .
I turned out the new batch of Lemon and Lime soap but can't say that it is a more noticeable yellow colour than the last batch:

I think I was a bit too cautious when adding the annatto colour there. Third time lucky I hope.

The new batch of Gardener's soap came out a terrific colour though. I like it a lot and it frees up the subtle pale green colour to be used by Verbena.

 The rest of the day has been spent playing with label design. I discovered Avery do a pack of oval labels on kraft brown background which I was instantly smitten with. I have been trying different fonts and experimenting with colours and here are some of the results:

 Aren't they lovely?
The idea was that I would wrap each soap in brown kraft paper and then stick a label on the front with probably another on the back for ingredients and address and all the legal gubbins. The prototype looks like this:

But then I printed the labels off on cream business weight paper and experimented with wrapping the soap in that with no extra label. It looks better than I expected:

 I think I still like the brown label better though. Both are just experiments of course, if you are thinking that the visible creases and the jagged edge to the paper don't really cut the mustard.
More exciting news is that I have a launch date for my first sales. It will be be more in the way of a dress rehearsal than the first night, as I am sharing a stall with 3 other members of the Leeds Beekeepers Association at Thwaite Mills Industrial Museum on Easter Sunday. I don't know how much room there will be for my products but it will be quite nice to have other people there to ease me back into the routine of standing behind a stall. I'm also hoping that there will be lots of bee chat that I can pick up useful tips from.
If anyone is in the Leeds area over Easter and fancies coming down to talk soap or bees (or quail or cakes or whatever) it would be good to see you.

Pests, Diseases and a Scary Prospect to Come

Last night I went to the penultimate talk in the Leeds Beekeepers Association winter programme, which was also the first I'd made it to this season which is a shame as I do enjoy going. I certainly need all the bee knowledge I can get and I like to feel part of the beekeeping world. When two gentlemen in their early sixties sitting behind me, asked each other if their bees had been out flying during the day I wanted to turn round and say 'Mine were out too'. When one of them started listing heavy metal bands I was more intrigued. It didn't look likely  to be their music of choice, although Ozzy Osbourne, himself, is also a gentleman in his sixties. I wondered if this was the music they played to their bees.
The talk was by Dr Steven Martin formerly of the University of Sheffield, now of the University of Salford. He has been conducting some ground breaking research into the interaction between the bee parasite varroa and various bee viruses. . The varroa mite hit the beekeeping world about 20 years ago and had pretty much the same impact as HIV had on the human world, the carefree days of leaving the bees undisturbed and letting them get on with making honey were gone forever. Without monitoring and regular treatment (akin to keeping an eye out for headlice in school children) the varroa mite will multiply rapidly and the colony will dwindle rapidly until it cannot sustain itself.
Recently there has been a new threat to bees in the shape of Colony Collapse Disorder, where entire apiaries can be mysteriously wiped out without warning. This has only happened in the northern hemisphere and has been much more common in the United States although as Dr Martin dryly pointed out, as commercial beekeepers in the US can receive government compensation for Colony Collapse Disorder, any mysterious death of a colony will be blamed on CCD. In the US there is an additional stress on the bees, due to the commercial beekeepers transporting the bees thousands of miles across the country to the fruit orchards.
Dr Martin has suffered the intense hardship of having to go to Hawaii to conduct his research. Actually there is a good reason for this, in that Hawaii is made up of a group of 6 islands which until recently were varroa free, then some  years ago it was found on  Oahu, the island where most of the people live and from then it was only a matter of time until it made it to Big Island (official name Hawaii) where immense commercial apiaries are sited. Thus by acting quickly, Dr Martin and his team had a set of islands to compare, one had established varroa, one was in its first two years of varroa and the others were still varroa free. Leaving out all the details, the results of the research were that they discovered, that the presence of varroa weakened the bees sufficiently to let one virus, the Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) flourish and it is this rather than the actual varroa mites that are killing the bees.
All very interesting, however the only conclusions from the research are what we already know, that we need to keep on top of controlling varroa.
In answer to a question from the audience, Dr Martin also touched on the scary prospect of the Asian Hornet (vespa velutina nigrithorax) making it to Britain from France, where it was accidentally introduced in 2005. This is scary for our bees, as the hornets hover in front of the hive killing the bees as they return, but it is also scary for humans, as although the sting is not much worse than a bee sting, hornets can organise themselves into an attacking group. Possibly the most useful tip from the evening was, if you see a hornets nest in the woods, leave it well alone.

The Rat, the Cat and the Bees

The above title sounds like the name of some 1930's thriller but this is literally a tale about bees, a cat and a rat.
It was a beautiful day yesterday, sunny and what passes for warm at 9 degrees compared to the 2 degrees we've had recently. I was out in the garden checking on everything and was relieved to see bees emerging from all three hives. There is some time to go before winter is passed but to see that all three hives have made it to mid February is encouraging. During cold spells, bees stay huddled in the hive trying to keep the temperature round the queen at 35 degrees and eating their stores of honey or the candy I provided to top up their stores. During this time they produce waste as normal but rather than dirty their hives they have the ability to hold it in their bodies until the next fine day. So when I saw a cloud of bees outside each hive I assumed they were all rushing outside to relieve themselves like coach passengers at Leicester Forest Service Station rushing to the toilets. However sitting on the familiar stone outside the hive, I was very encouraged to see some of the bees were managing to bring pollen back to the hive. There are not many sources of pollen at the moment but the alder catkins are one.

 Incidentally the tape you can see round the hive is because I bought the hive off ebay from China and it is so badly made that without the tape there are gaps between the brood box and the super which would allow other bees to enter and rob this hive of its stores. When spring is here properly, I shall put on a second brood box, encourage the bees to move into that one and then take the first one away for cleaning and to fix the gap.
Whilst I was sitting peacefully watching the bees, next door's cat Archie was sitting on the wall of the compost heap. Archie is a mean cat, he has never been the same since a terrible accident when he got caught in some wire and spent three days trapped in a hedge. The vet had to amputate his tail and it has left him soured and bitter. Nevertheless, I was I suppose, grateful to him when he dropped behind the compost heap and came out after a short struggle with a dead rat.


 The compost heap backs against the fence, the other side of which is the neighbour's chickens so I presume the rat was after chicken feed or possibly eggs. I was less grateful when he deposited it in the middle of the lawn. It was not an object of beauty as you can see. I wrapped a paper tissue round my hand and gingerly picked it up by the tail and walked it the full length of the garden down to the bin, leaving it on the bin whilst I went inside to get a bag or something to wrap it in. It then occurred to me that rather than sending it to landfill, it would be more environmentally friendly to let it decompose naturally and become food for other creatures. So I picked it up again and once more strode the length of the garden  until I could hurl it over the fence into the wooded undergrowth of the valley beyond.
I feel I spent too much time yesterday striding round the garden in wellingtons with a dead rat swinging from my hand. Such behaviour will not get me on the cover of Vogue.

 

A Swarm in May

Exciting news this morning, for me at any rate, I received an e-mail inviting me to add my name to the Leeds Beekeepers Association swarm list. This is a list of volunteers who are prepared to drop what they are doing and go and rescue swarms from gardens, shops, buildings wherever.
The requirement for going on the swarm list is that you have had at least 12 months beekeeping experience so I couldn't apply last year. Nevertheless I did get to deal with a swarm, when my own hive decided to swarm. I had already lost a swarm in May when half the hive took off and settled at the top of my neighbour's 60ft tree, all I could do was watch it in frustration whilst devising wildly impractical plans for trying to reach it. After a few days the scout bees had found a good site for a permanent home and the swarm took off never to be seen again.
As my initial nucleus of bees had cost me £100, I didn't like this, so took action to prevent them swarming again by splitting the remaining hive into two. Neither of the two new hives had active queens and the theory goes that the first of the queen cells to hatch in each hive will kill any other prospective queens and then on a fine day fly off, get mated and then return to the hive to spend the rest of her life laying eggs whilst the colony builds up around her.
So I was quite annoyed when my by now very small original colony decided to swarm again. Fortunately they landed in a hawthorn tree in my garden:

However I was not totally unaided, Oliver wanted to help:

Here again the theory says that bees are at their most docile when they are swarming as they have no hive to defend and they are in fact unable to sting as they have gorged themselves so much on honey in preparation for the journey that they cannot get their stingers in to the right position. Be that as it may, when I went up the ladder with a clothes brush to sweep them into a box, I was wearing the bee suit and I did still get stung on the hand. It was such a terrible summer last year that I don't think my bees had any honey stores to gorge on.
Once I had the queen and most of the swarm in a cardboard box, I tipped it up on a sheet below the tree and left it propped up for the bees I had missed, to come to find the queen.

 Then at night when they were all quiet and had stopped flying, I took the box down the garden to the spare hive and emptied them into it.
After that it was a waiting and wondering time, hoping that the virgin queen managed to get mated and start laying. It is recommended that they are disturbed as little as possible during this time, so I used to go and sit on a stone near the entrance to the hive and watch the foraging bees coming into the hive. If I could see pollen on the back legs, I felt reassured as pollen is used to feed newly hatched bees although it is stored as well. Oliver would come and join me watching bees, hence the photograph at the top of the blog.
Well, I was lucky in that by the end of the season all three hives were queen right, that is mated and laying. They were all small in size and amount of stores as would be expected given the poor summer so I fed them with a sugar candy I'd cooked up, rather like making crystallized toffee. All I can do now is cross my fingers that they make it through to spring.

A Black Dog in a White World

We didn't get as much snow as I was expecting, but still as I walked out on the valley beyond the bottom of my garden, the combination of the snow and all encompassing cloud made everything eerily white

Jess disturbed a pair of foxes who bounded off into the undergrowth. Lovely to watch but disturbingly close to my chickens. On my return I checked on the beehives but there was very little snow on them.

A cold winter is actually better for bees, than a mild one. Mild weather at the wrong time can entice them out of the hive when there is no pollen to collect.The chickens are now benefiting from the roofing panels I put up over the chicken run, which has given them a dry snow free corner to get at their food. I may put up another panel though, as the entrance board to the house was covered with snow, which they wouldn't like.That can wait for better weather. This afternoon I will be indoors, on the sofa, wrapped in my knitted blanket. I would like to say that I will be on the laptop, working on the cash-flow forecast for the soap business, but it is more likely that I will be gazing mesmerised out of the window, watching the hundreds of tiny white flakes dancing dizzily down to earth.

A New Life

Welcome.
Join me as I craft out a new life for myself.

 I want to  find a way of living that is fulfilling. It is about self sufficiency but also about how that ideal can be adapted for those of us who have to live in the city. I can’t wait for that elusive lottery win to buy my dream home in the country, I need to start living life as I want it now. It is about being frugal as frugality means  freedom from money grubbing but not to the point when I will be eating nasty food just because it is cheap.

A year ago I was in a well paid job. I had financial security but nothing to look forward to until I retired. Everything I liked doing had to be squeezed in evenings and weekends and the list of things I would like to do if only I had the time was growing longer and longer. I don’t want to go back to living like that; I need to forge a new life where time is more important than money.

So there will be a lot of decluttering, a fair bit of baking, some knitting, some desperate diy ,much gardening, a lot about chickens and bees, a good deal about soap and setting up a craft business and who knows what else.

It will be about growing it and making it and doing it yourself and not just because I have no money but because I find it satisfying to look at a completed item and say ‘I made that’.