Hello Everyone,
I thought that as I’ve tucked up all of the girls ready for winter, now is the time to look back at the beekeeping year. I want to reflect on what I’ve done right, the mistakes I’ve made - what I’ve learned from them, and finally, what plans I have for the future.
At the end of last year my plan for 2021 was to go from my two hives, Laura and Kate, to a max of 15 colonies. Kat was extremely dubious about this as she, quite rightly, wanted the focus of the year to concentrate on keeping Laura and Kate healthy and producing lots of honey. The idea I had was to buy two overwintered Nucs from a fellow beekeeper and use those to increase my colonies.
Although it was possible, it didn’t work out the way I planned, as the Nucs I purchased weren’t very good. They were on the wrong size frame, which meant that we had to do a complicated manipulation to transfer them from their “14x12” frames to our BS National (much smaller) far too early in the year when the bee clusters hadn’t bounced back enough after winter. They were weak Nucs as well which I shouldn’t have accepted, but as I was still new to this, my naivety got the better of me. Later on, we found issues with the queens in both colonies which set back the spring build up for months. This produced so many problems throughout the year that I’ve only just got a handle on in the past three months.
Fortunately for my future customers and my business in general, I learn from my mistakes. Getting Nucs in this condition helped me realise the issues you can have from poorly managed colonies (I was the one managing them poorly in this case). The experience in righting my wrongs has taught me a lot about the hives, how they work early in the year and how/when to actually start doing big manipulations. It’s also REALLY put me off the idea of using different frame sizes, as it just complicates everything if you need to move brood from one colony to another. When I start to sell Nucs in the future I’m going to make sure that they’re super strong with a good queen and on the right frame size for my customer. I’m not going to let them get into the same mess as myself this year as it’s not just unfair to them but also the bees too.
So, with my plans using the overwintered nucs scuppered, I had to look to my golden girls, Laura and Kate, to fulfil my 15-colony goal. Kat wasn’t happy about this, but we compromised, and I promised to only use Laura if she was strong enough to donate brood and bees as well as collect a honey crop.
Fortunately for me, Laura is a beast of a hive. She pretty much exploded in early May meaning that I had to make some Nucs out of her anyway to prevent swarming. I used this opportunity to try queen rearing, through a method called grafting. Queen rearing is a really good business to get into as it is relatively inexpensive for the price of good queens and you can stock all of your colonies with the best genetics you can find. What we found out from our experience is that neither of us are very good at grafting … We’d meticulously put larvae into the plastic queen cups and the bees would keep cleaning them out again. It’s very frustrating, as other beekeepers make it look so simple on YouTube but of course they will have years of experience and will probably edit their videos to make themselves look awesome.
Instead we just placed a frame of eggs into a queenless nuc and pretty much just left them to it. This method doesn’t usually produce the best queens but gave us perfectly functional ones to keep us expanding throughout the year. During my last inspections, all of the queens seemed to be fit and healthy, laying well with hives absolutely jam packed with bees, so the method obviously works well enough for now. I’m still wanting to get the grafting down or at least another method of queen rearing as I want the ability to produce perfect queens en-masse for sale.
I’ve just purchased something called a Nicot queen rearing kit - I’ll go into more details about it closer to the time of use, but it seems right up my alley with no touching of the very fragile larvae required. Perfect for those with unruly mitts, like myself.
I didn’t quite manage my goal of producing 15 colonies out of my own hives. I only managed to make 5 Laying Queens from Laura in the end as although she produced 15 Virgin Queens throughout the year, only a third managed to get mated and return to their colonies. I think there are a lot of reasons behind this extremely low success rate. All over the country beekeepers have been complaining about how poor their queen rearing has been this year. It’s been either very wet and cold or super-hot and dry with only a few weeks of decent weather dotted sparsely here and there, which made it hard for us to plan when to start our rearing. I’ve also found that swifts/swallows roost in the walls of the barn above my apiary and they love snacking on bee queens, so I’ve decided to change my queen rearing location to one further away from insectivore lairs. Queens need clear skies and warm relatively still air to mate really well so with the weather the way it’s been I’m surprised I was as successful as I’ve been.
“So Greg,” I hear you say “if only five of your queens were successful that only makes nine colonies… I remember you state in a past post that you now have seventeen colonies going into winter… clearly you’re bad at maths but you surely can’t be THAT bad, can you?!”
“Fear not!” says I “This is the part where I talk about SWARMS!”
Early April I put myself forward on Facebook and Instagram as a ‘swarm catcher extraordinaire’ (even though I’d only actually read books and watched videos on how to collect them) to boost my apiary numbers. I also set up a bunch of ‘bait boxes’ around Rainford to collect any passing swarms.
Around May I got my first callout, “big cluster of bees on my plant! Quick, I need help!”. I kissed a bewildered Kat goodbye, threw all of my beekeeping gear into the back on my car and drove off in a blur (keeping under the speed limit obviously). I found the house of the desperate caller and suited up. Up their drive I swaggered, the hero of the hour, here to save the day. The gentleman opened the front door and frantically waves at a huge Buddleia in his garden before slamming the door again.
Feeling like an astronaut on his first spacewalk I slowly strode to the purple bush to confront my first ever swarm. After standing there for a few minutes clueless, I unzipped my hood and poddled back over to the door again to ask the bloke where the swarm actually was.
He eventually came out to show me and pointed over and over at the bush stating “Look at it! There are bees everywhere! It’s a swarm!”
The day was warm and there were just a large number of foraging bees on his bush, nothing that I could do really. I explained this to him and that the bees REALLY aren’t interested in him when there’s such bountiful food on offer. I even handled a few of the bees to prove that they only want to go back to the flowers to collect the nectar. He seemed to calm quite fast and apologised for calling me out.
This seemed to be the first of many similar callouts. Each time I would arrive at a location, suit up, heroically stride to the door and it would either be a bumblebee nest or just some overly enthusiastic foragers. After the fiftieth callout Kat told me to ask questions before going out to someone’s property. They were:
How long have they been there?
If it’s only a few hours then they’re perfect for collecting, if its several days then chances are that they’ve built some comb, which is tricky to remove.
Where are the bees located?
I might need a ladder if they’re up high or some other piece of equipment.
How big are they?
If they’re tiny then it might not be a swarm at all and if they’re huge, I might need to bring a hive to collect rather than my usual Nuc box.
Have you called anyone else?
Once I arrived at the same time as two other beekeepers. We all had a lovely chat about bumblebees and then went our separate ways.
Have you done anything to the swarm?
Some people try to get rid of the swarm themselves because they think there is a charge for swarm removal. They do this by spraying it with a hose or other, not very nice, things. It can change the temper of a swarm or mean I need to bring extra stuff to help them dry out and not die.
Can you take a picture and send it to me please?
This is the best thing. I can identify the type of insect and can let the person know if they are even honeybees or if there is anything I can do.
Strangely I only collected one actual swarm from someone’s house this year and it just so happened to be next door to a work colleague who loves showing people the pictures of me in my bee suit. I wrote a post about that swarm collection which you should give a read if you’re interested, it was quite fun.
I surprisingly collected two swarms from down the side of my house from two of my bait hives. I don’t know exactly what I did to attract them to me but must have done it well. The first one was a Prime swarm as well which meant it was actually strong enough to produce me a bit of honey this year! I was so lucky with catchi….. why are you looking at me like that?
“That’s twelve Greg...” you say in exasperation “come on, cough up… where are the last five from?”
I cheated…
It was my wedding this year… and we were given some money from my workplace… so I decided to buy some expensive queens and set them up in nucs made up from Laura.
I only bought three though! A Buckfast, A Carniolan and a "Jolanta bred" native honeybee. I bought them so late in the year that I thought they would stay as Nucs until the next spring but they’re so prolific that they’re in full hives already! In fact, they seem to have more bees than most of my other hives, which is bizarre. I’m going to have to keep an eye on them over winter as I’m a bit worried they’ll eat their way through their stores super-fast.
I decided to make two more Nucs out of Laura in August as these expensive queens outgrew theirs so fast. It’s always useful to overwinter some Nucleus colonies in case you get any hives dying over the cold months. Usually if you find no signs of disease in the comb you can just plop the Nuc frames (and bees) into the hive and it’ll be like nothing happened to the original colony come spring. Andrea from B4Biodiversity contacted me with a spare Virgin Queen that she couldn’t home herself. I placed her in one of the Queenless Nucs from Laura and bought a Queen from my local association and popped that into the other Queenless Nuc.
There you have it, 17 colonies going into winter and although only 5 of the Queens are actually offspring of Laura; she provided the bees and drawn comb for 5 others and still produced a honey crop which is incredible if you think about it.
So, lets summarise:
The Good
I’ve filled both apiaries with bees meaning next year, should they all survive winter, I will have a much bigger honey crop available to sell.
I’ve been given space for a new apiary at Rainford Allotments and everyone seems super nice. I’m going to be using this space as a Nuc and Queen Production yard next year, leaving my other colonies to focus on honey.
I’ve made a lot of contacts and some have genuinely bent over backwards to help me this year. Andrea from B4BioDiversity is just the best person ever, I couldn’t have done so well without her advice and I’m truly grateful.
I have incredible friends and family who have helped me develop my brand and business. Thank you!
My label designs and products are excellent and have had a lot of praise. I find it hard to promote myself, my nature forces me to try to be modest and not to big myself up in case I mess up and everything blows up in my face BUT the amount of compliments I’ve had about everything has given me a stack of pride and confidence in my work.
My apiary management is on point. Landowners talk to each other it seems and I’m getting offers to set up new apiaries around St Helens and Ormskirk. It feels strange being asked to set up an Apiary someone’s land, usually it’s the other way around.
The Bad
I bought some Overwintered Nucs that really weren’t fit for purpose and have had to deal with it throughout the year.
I can’t graft queens to save my life.
I wasted a lot of diesel driving from house to house when I was getting calls about swarms.
I’ve spent too little time with my wife... It’s very easy for me to get carried away when I’m doing something that I love. And I LOVE beekeeping, it’s the best fun you can have when surrounded by stinging insects. Unfortunately, this year I have probably spent more time doing something bee or business related than spending time with Kat. Even now I’m putting together frames and building hive stands out of pallets. I can’t let this happen again next year.
The Downright Daft
Final sting score of the year:
Kat – 2
Greg – 50+
Kat has clearly not been annoying the bees enough as far as I’m concerned…
The future
My tasks this coming year are the following:
Produce lots of honey.
Build up to fill all of my 21 hives with strong colonies for next winter.
Find a queen rearing method that works for me and start selling the best queens.
Start selling Nucs of bees to new beekeepers and experienced ones who want to expand.
Possibly set up some hives at Kat’s dad’s house to collect Heather Honey.
Complete several grades of beekeeping qualifications.
Stick to a monthly schedule for writing blog posts. It’s a bit higgledy piggledy this year and I think consistent release dates will help keep you lovely readers interested. Also, only making it once a month will take a lot of pressure from mine and Kat’s shoulders.
For the most part my monthly blog will be my usual waffly diary, letting you know what I’ve been up to. I think I will also add extras every so often that focus on particular aspects of beekeeping. My most read post was about wasps late in the year so it must be more interesting than what I’ve had for breakfast.
Build a big returning customer base.
Dress up my Market Stall better to look more professional.
Make comb honey and chunk honey for the first time.
Comb honey is unextracted honey, served in wax sealed honeycomb cells. It is as close as you can get to eating honey straight from the hive with absolutely no processing or manipulation at all. Everything is edible, even the wax and I’ll be posting about my attempt at it in spring or summer next year.
Chunk honey is a hybrid of Comb honey and Jarred Runny Honey. In essence it is our normal Rainford Honey with slices of comb honey floating inside. Some people prefer this as you get both the texture and taste of the wax honeycomb but there is more honey to spread onto your toast. It’s a good mix between the two =)
Start a honey extraction service for beekeepers without the facilities, to save them money.
Start making cider for sale (finally!)
Most importantly. Work out a schedule with Kat so I can spend more time with her. I may have millions of bees, but she’ll always be my true queen. #husbandpoints
And that’s all folks!
I don’t foresee any more blog posts from now until spring next year so I’m going to finish off with a picture dump of gift boxes I’ve made for sale at the Inglenook Christmas Market on the 11th of December 2021.
Please have a nosey and if you want to come down to say hello then that would be ace!
Hope you’re all safe and well (and Happy Christmas/New Year!)
Greg