Beekeeping, guided by instinct more than anything
So my little colony of bees has remained a little colony, they’ve got some brood and made some stores of honey, but they haven’t ballooned into the bee mega-city that I hoped for. They were at such a level that my beekeeping mentor, chum and next door neighbour Dan proclaimed as being ‘fucked if it’s a cold Winter’. So what to do? Luckily another swarm appeared at our literal doorsteps.
Summer Swarm
Dan had some old beehive supers (basically a box with no top or bottom that holds frames for the bees to build comb on, they stack one above the other to build a hive) stored by his garage and a swarm managed to get in. This involved a lot of beard scratching when discovered, I went round as I could hear the swarm and offered some help by scratching my beard as well. Dan moved onto swearing and arm waving after a while but then, when all hope and balance seemed lost, hit upon the idea of combining this swarm with mine to build a bigger colony. Eh? was my answer, but apparently it’s a thing.
We agreed to do something about it in a couple of days – another reason I like beekeeping, procrastination seems part and parcel of the process.
Researching a Bee Husbandry Conundrum
Then I stupidly started reading up on it. Wow there’s a lot of different views on how anything should be done in beekeeping, and a lot of contradictions. When we reconvened I was relieved Dan had a plan, it wasn’t a plan that I’d read anywhere, but by this point I was beginning to think beekeeping involves some knowledge, experience and an ability to just wing it. So the supers with the new bees were placed on top of my hive and the entrance partially obstructed with grass and twigs. I didn’t find out what the twigs were for, I nodded at some point and then was embarrassed to ask. I assume they were to confuse them a bit and to get friendly with my colony.
They were there for a couple of weeks, during which my lot just seemd to ignore them whilst the new ones went through phases of torpor and getting angry and busy as if they were about to swarm again. The angry bit concerned me a bit when we came to look at what was going on inside.
Friendly Neighbours?
This last sunday afternoon we dressed up in what my step-daughter described as our ‘Klu Klux Klan’ outfits, there is a resemblance to be fair, just not the pointy hat bit. Or the racism. We lifted the lid on the new bees super and found them to be pretty well behaved on the whole, we could find no queen however hard we looked, maybe she had left with a small swarm? Or we were just too short sighted and cack-handed to find her. There wasn’t much brood which suggested the lady was absent. So then we looked at my original colony which showed no significant change, all healthy, just not many of them Now it was time to combine colonies.
The Newspaper Method
This is a technique I’ve read of in more than one place and one that Dan has used many times, so it’s actually a thing rather than an opinion. We put a layer of newspaper over my colonies brood box, then a queen excluder and then the the new colonies supers on top.
The idea is that in the act of the bees chewing through the paper from both sides it lets their pheromones mingle so they lose the instinct to kill and rob. If only humans were as simple. Now we have to do the core beekeeping activity; leave them alone and hope they sort it out.
The ideal result is that they mingle and get along fine so there are enough to get through the colder months, we can feed them a bit as well to ensure that. Then they can start the Spring successfully and make loads of wonderful honey. As of the day after the scene is looking pretty angry, which is when I took the picture at the head of the post. I’m worried we missed the queen in the new lot and we’ve started a war, just need to be patient…
UPDATE: they chewed through the paper within a few hours, no evidence of warfare so far…
Cover pic: Iain Hazlewood
