Update report

Line of Apple Trees

Cobnuts

Its been a while since I have done an update. However the orchard doesn't stop. It continues and the cycle of life goes on.

Its been a very successful year in the orchard. I still hear hundreds of grasshoppers, and see loads of moths and butterfly's, that's this week the 1st week of September. Fruit wise we have had a bumper crop, we have had cherries they are all gone, we still have plums and apples and pears. The cobnuts are plentiful and we have had some almonds.

Almonds

I haven't had a very successful year at bee keeping. I lost my weakest colony to wasps a couple of weeks ago. That was very disappointing. I was away for a weekend and over that 2 week period I wasn't able to carry out my weekly checks and lost the colony. Upon my return I found the hive contained no bees but hundreds of  wasps, that was scary. I have had problems with queens this year getting them mated and had a drone layer.

The wasps I see this week have started suck up the sugars from decaying fruit.

Apple tree with Fruit

Multiple eggs on a Frame.

Frames with cells with multiple eggs

Brood 

On my routine inspection of the hives I found a frame which had multiple eggs in a number of cells. This is really strange as the queen has been laying well for the last couple of weeks and she is about a year old. This normally happen when you have laying workers or its a new queen and she is still learning, how to lay eggs.

Bees on the Frame

I also noted a couple of bees with K wing over the previous weeks. As a result I have applied MAQ Stripes to all the hives. I want ensure that the varroa mites are are low levels.

Bees from all the hives have now started to produce Drones as well as traditional workers. I have not seen any Queen cells yet, although I found a single play cup which I think is new. It looks like the swarming season will be upon us soon.

The orchard is now alive and murmuring with life. Every thing from bumbles bee's collecting pollen and the cherry trees coming into blossom alone with some of the Pear trees. The Almond trees have almost finished flowering. We are well into spring and Summer is just weeks away. I still have to start cutting the grass and that should start to get underway in the next week or so.

Bumble Bee Collecting Pollen

2015 Spring Convention

I attended the British Bee Keepers Association (BBKA) Spring Convention held at Harper Adams University. I attended a number of lectures and also attended the trade show.

Biology, diagnosis and control of SHB Peter Neumann
This is was an interesting lecture. Peter Neuman a Swiss expert who has travelled the world and given advice to various governments on various Bee diseases gave a lecture on the SHB.

How lucky we are; bees and the public Adam Hart
In this lecture professor Adam Hart spoken how bee keepers act with the public and how bee keeping can encourage people get interested with bees, bee keeping and science.

Honey bees surviving varroa without control Peter Neumann
Another intesresting lecture about the life cycle of varroa and its effects with honeybees. He also highlighted Breeding for Varroa tolerant bees

Thinking super-organismally: how evolutionary biology can make us better beekeepers Keith Delaplane
I enjoyed Keith's lectures enourmously so much so that I also attended the second lecture the following day. This was on what makes the Honey bee a super organism, and how they would behave and in the wild, and how some of those points could improve bee keeping in general.

How thinking super-organismally can improve honey bee breeding Keith Delaplane
This was a continuation of the lecture from the day before. However this lecture was sponsored by Bee Craft. He also mentioned lots of research that had been carried out here in the UK on bee breeding and how with the aid of artifical insemination he had been able to breed bees to be good at specifc traits. It was an intresting lecture.

I have made notes in most of these lectures and will get them written up and also upload them as a blog/diary entry.

St Andrews Botanic Garden

Picture of Peace Garden St Andrews Botanic Garden

Orchard at St Andrews Botanic Gardens

I visited the small orchard at the St Andrews Botanic Garden whist on a trip to Scotland.

Lichen

Hives at St Andrews Botanic Gardens

The Gardens are nice and if you are in or near St Andrews its worth a visit. The garden has a small orchard with various fruit trees, but this time of the year they are still relatively dormant. They have small trees not sure what root stock but I can see they have little space left to add more. I did see trees that looked like they were going to plant elsewhere and they have an area in which they grow rootstock for future trees before grafting. The air in St Andrews is very clean and lichen is growing on many of the trees, I saw at least 4 different varieties. Lichen on trees is a very good indicator of air quality.

Picture of the orchard

Picture of the orchard

The gardens also have a number of bee hives. The hives are not really for public viewing, they aren't visible to the public, you need to know where they are, as they are in the staff only area. I spoke to one of the gardeners and he said I could go and visit the hives. He pointed me in the right direction and I was off. They have a good number of hives. I wanted to see Smiths Hives but I didn't see any Smith Hives. Smiths Hives have traditionally been popular in Scotland, they hold around 50,000 bees, they are smaller than British National Hives and much smaller than Langstroth's.

Bees Buds and Blossom

First Blossom

Bumble Bee

Honey Bees

Spring is finally here.

The buds are getting bigger and the blossom is starting to bloom. That's obvious as the pictures show. The ground is still a bit wet and the muddy in places.

The grass is also looking brown as some of the older grass is had dried and died out. The young shoots are coming up.

On the down side a couple of horses have been in and had a wander round.


The pictures also show the bees all the hives in the orchard have done well. On a couple I have seen 5/6 frames of bees s they have done very well. I can also see the eggs and the larvae coming through. I will have the supers on the hives by the end of the week. I want to get them on sooner so as to deter them from swarming.

The bumble bees have also started appearing.

At the moments its just the queens that are rearing the next generation.

Start of spring

Daffodils starting to come into bloom

 Its the start of spring and the 40 Kgs of daffodils that I planted back in the autumn months have started to come into blossom. They are are nice. They also brighten up the orchard floor this time of year. They aren't bee friendly  and they are also poisonous but make the place nice.

Mole Mounds

The past couple of weeks have produced a large number of mole mounds and hills, near the entrance of the orchard. I see them most years, and its also good to see them. I always worry when parts of the orchard are flooded cold that the moles will survive.

Crocuses starting to Bloom

The crocuses are also coming out and they also add lots of colour and they are more bee friends however I need to get more planted later this year for spring next year.

I have started putting suppers on the hives, but as yet not on the hives in the orchard. Its been a busy couple of weeks study for the retake of the Module three British Beekeepers exam and a recent trip to India where I saw Apis Cerana, Aps Florea and Apis Dorsata bees.

Bees starting to come out

The bees at the orchard are also getting ready for the coming year, I have seen them coming and going however I have not yet checked the brood. However will when we get a couple of days of good weather.
I did attended the BeeTradex show on the 7th March and have bought a couple of bits for this year. However I still need to get a couple of bits and more on that in the next couple of blog entries.

Started Pruning the apple trees

Apple tree before Pruning

 Its that time of year when the apple trees get a prune. It encourages growth and vigor. I have pruned a number of the smaller trees and started on the larger ones. The larger ones will take a couple of weekends to get done, and a ladder.

Larvae found in a dead branch

I am using a pair of secateurs and a small bow saw. I am aiming for a goblet looking tree. So that branches are not touching and everything is growing outwards and not into the tree, this will open up the tree to light and hence give it more space also to grow. It will take a while.

But it will mean that this year the tree will grow more and be able to stretch out. Anything that is growing in the wrong direction is cut out.

In terms of wild life I saw honey bees out looking for forage and taking advantage of the warmer weather for cleansing flights. I also sow a number of caterpillars and larvae of one sort or another.

The ground is still wet but the daffodils are coming up nicely and because of the wind its bitterly cold.

BBKA Introduction to Microscopy Stoneleigh

Attended the Warwickshire Bee Keepers Introduction to Microscopy.

I took my own microscopes in and used them for the practical work
We looked at Pollen grains and attempted to look for Nosema spores in dead bees under compound microscopes.

I also did a dissection of a been looking for acrine and Tracheal Mite using a dissection microscope.

All the practicals were very useful, I need to gain more practical experience using the microscopes. I would also like to have my own library of pollen samples from the orchard.

We learn to setup microscopes, the chemicals used to stain pollen, How to identify pollen, which is difficult but the pollen grains are very pretty. I had sample of Jasmine, and Snowdrops. The Jasmine pollen was nice very intricate the snowdrop pollen was a little boring.

It was an educational day.

Daffodils are coming up

Daffodils coming through

Towards the end of last year I had planted kilos of daffodils and they have started to come up. They will look great in a couple weeks.

I have also hefted the hives and they all have food and they seem fine. Lots of bees. I collected some for a microscopy course I will be attending.

Module 3 results

The results arrived, and I didn't pass. The pass mark was 60% I got 45%. It was disappointing a very disappointing result.

It wasn't just me but all of us in the study group that had failed the exam. We had started the study for module six but we have dropped that and begun again on Module 3. We plan to retake the exam again in March.

Over the past couple of days I have started to reread the notes and its going in much easier I hope that its stays. Some of it is just a recap. So I have gone through European Foul Brood and American Foul Brood the most serious illness that bees can get infected with . AFB the bee dies of septicemia and EFB the larvae dies from starvation as the bacteria competes for food with the larvae.

Lots more study to get done.