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.