The four quarter days are:

• Lady day or the Feast of the Annunciation 25th March;
• Midsummer’s day around 25th June;
• Michaelmas 29th September;
• Christmas 25th December – lest we forget. Fat chance.

They all approximately coincide with either an equinox or a solstice.

Equinoxes

An equinox is when day and night are of equal duration. There are two of them – spring and autumn:

• Spring equinox 21st March;
• Autumn equinox 23rd September.

Solstices

As for the solstices there are two of these too – summer and winter.

• Summer solstice (longest day and shortest night) 21st June;
• Winter solstice (shortest day and longest night) 22nd December.

Christmas

Nobody knows the day or the month when Jesus Christ was actually born. However, the Feast of the Annunciation falls on the 25th March which is when Christians celebrate the day Gabriel called on Mary to tell her she was to be the mother of the son of God.

Imagine that!

Christmas is exactly 9 months after the Feast of the Annunciation. That’s biology for you.

Christmas also coincides approximately with the Winter Solstice on 22nd December. Also known as The Shortest Day. Now there’s cause to celebrate.

Christmas Traditions

You don’t need me to tell you about the ‘traditions’ of Christmas. Suffice to say, it is cruel that we have to bear it in the middle of the darkest, wettest and most depressing time of the year. It’s enough to push you over the edge!

We can never really know what Jesus might think about Christmas traditions, However, we do know what happened when he discovered the merchants had set up shop in the temple, so we can guess:

‘But what about the bees?’ says you…

Us beekeepers are fortunate because there is a lot of stuff out there to be getting on with at christmas.

Treat them

The bees should have been fed and treated for Varroa after the honey was extracted at the end of summer. However, midwinter is the time when the queen bees should be off lay and there should be a short broodless period which is ideal for a backup treatment with Oxalic acid. I say should be because it is not always the case especially in a mild year or where they ivy bloomed late. So long as there has been a bit of cold weather – below 15 degrees – and a decent interval since you last saw yellow ivy pollen going in to the hives – Christmas should be perfect.

Click here for how to do that.

Click here for more about Oxalic acid for Beekeepers.

I should add that midwinter treatment may not be necessary if you are confident that the conditions in autumn were good enough to allow your thymol/MAQS to work properly.

Feed them

While you are out there – check the feed status of your bees. Heft the hives to assess the weight and if they seem light put some fondant on. It won’t do any harm and if they need it later – it’s there.

If the bees seem weak and are clustering close to the top of the frames you could choose to remove the crownboard and place the fondant directly onto the bees where they will find it easily. If you do this – add an eke and pack the space around the fondant with old jumpers, sacking or some other cosy stuff.

Don’t put pollen substitute on yet – too early – wait for February.

Apiary Watch

Make sure the hive roofs are weighted down with stones or tied with ropes – winter has hardly started and there could be gales. And there could be animals.

Maintenance

Mend broken equipment. Treat spare boxes if they need it. Make up new stuff but don’t put wax into new frames till spring or it will just lose its fragrance and go all crispy then the bees won’t work it properly – they’ll draw all that abstract stuff with holes and buttresses.

All your equipment, supers, spare brood boxes etc could all do with a good scrape down – propolis flakes off well in the cold weather.  Save all the little bits of beeswax you will be amazed how it mounts up.

Click here for how to tackle your beeswax mountain.

Strip down old frames with black, knackered or holy wax. Holy wax is comb with holes in it. Burn the really black horrible wax – use if for lighting fires that’s the only thing it’s good for.

Save the paler, cleaner wax and render it:

Click here for how to render beeswax.

Then do something interesting with it but take care not to set fire to yourself:

Click here for beeswax polish recipe

Click here for beeswax lipbalm recipe

Click here for beeswax handcream recipe

Click here for candle making

Click here for soap making

Wax Moth

If you are storing used brood frames and you know you have a  wax moth problem you might like to take this opportunity to treat them with acetic acid. Acetic acid is not the stuff you put on your chips – treat it with respect.

Click here for how to do that thing

There is also a biological control agent from Vita which uses a micro-organism to attack wax moth.  The product is called Certan and the micro-organism is called Bacillus thuringiensis.

Click here for Certan information

Christmas Forage

There is very little floral forage out there for the bees at Christmas. This year there is quite a lot of gorse in bloom. In some years there may be the dregs of the ivy. Also some winter garden plants such as Mahonia or even snowdrops.

• Ivy pollen is yellow
• Gorse is orange/brown
• Snowdrops pollen is orange/brown too
• Click here for more about ivy
• Click here for how to take a crop of ivy honey.

Happy New Year!

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2017.  All Rights Reserved.

Housing

When not in action it is housed out of sight in a little pocket within the sting chamber at the rear-end of the abdomen where its hangs suspended from the sting chamber membrane.

In repose the stinging apparatus is pulled in and tucked away rather like the back-actor of a JCB in transit (the shaft of the sting corresponding to the bucket); folded in such a way that the business end, the sting itself, is safely scabbarded within a two-lobed sheath. The two lobes of the sheath are to the right of this picture and the tip of the wicked black sting is just visible beneath.

Stinging Apparatus

• The shaft of the sting is made up of three long, slender, pointed, pieces – the stylet and 2 barbed lancets. These all slot together, the two lancets side-by-side with the broader stylet on top, in such a way that all three parts are able to slide freely and independently. A channel runs between the three pieces and it is through this that the poison is dispatched;
• The venom gland which makes the poison, feeding it into a venom sac, where it is stored until needed;
• The alkali gland which supplies a lubricant to the base of the shaft, presumably to assist its penetration into the skin of the victim.

Stinging Mechanism

When called into action the apparatus drops down releasing the shaft from the sheath allowing the sting to swing into the ‘ready’ position – poised with the point protruding from the tip of the abdomen thus:

When the worker bee stings, the abdomen is thrust sharply downwards, pushing the shaft of the sting into the skin of the victim where the lancet barbs give it its initial hold. As if that wasn’t enough the lancets are then alternately forced deeper and deeper in, the barbs holding each successive gain and the interlocked stylet charging in from behind sliding down the lancets and further into the wound made by them. Valves on the base of the lancets drive venom down the poison channel where it is released into the wound.

Bloody Hell!

The interaction of a series of cunningly placed muscles and hinged plates continues to push and pull the sting deeper and deeper into the unfortunate victim even after the stinging apparatus has become detached from the bee. When the sting is detached from the bee, the guts follow and the bee dies.

A couple of photos here – click for a close up of my pain.

When removing a sting – scrape it from the wound outwards rather than trying seize it by that handy looking little bulb on the end because that’s the venom sac and squeezing it will empty the remaining venom into the wound.

Sources

Hooper,T. Guide to Bees and Honey. Blandford, London. 1991.

Snodgrass,R.E. The Anatomy of the Honey Bee. In The Hive and the Honey Bee. Ed. Dadant and Sons. Dadant Publications. Illinois. USA. 1979.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2016.  All Rights Reserved.

And here’s where two of them started fighting like Jack Russell terriers:

Click the photos for close-ups.

Click here to listen to queen bees piping.

Click here for more about the queen bee.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2016.  All Rights Reserved.

Irish natives are in green.

Click the table for a close up then let me know if I’ve missed any:

If you’ve noticed Berberis is missing – Click here for Berberis darwinii

Click here for February Bee Flowers

Click here for March Bee Flowers

Click here for April Bee Flowers

Click here for June Bee Flowers

Click here for July Bee Flowers

Click here for August Bee Flowers

Click here for September Bee Flowers

Click here for October Bee Flowers

Click here for November Bee Flowers

Click here for a general seasonal guide to important bee flowers

Click here for photos of pollen load colours

Click here for Bee Trees: Horse Chestnut

Click here for Bee Trees: Hawthorn

Click here for Bee Trees: Poplar

Click here for Bee Trees: Sycamore

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2016.  All Rights Reserved.

However something else to throw into the equation is that if you do take up beekeeping there should eventually be a payback in terms of honey which you can then either consume yourself or you can sell it. So an interesting way to consider the cost of starting up beekeeping is in jars of honey instead of euro.

The results of this exercise for 2009 and 2016 are shown in the table below where:

• Costs of the essential items of beekeeping equipment are shown in euro and in jars of honey;
• In 2009 the average price of a 1lb jar of Irish honey was €5. In 2016 the price is more like €7 or more for something like heather or hawthorn;
• The prices you see here are not for the cheapest equipment on the market so if you are prepared to shop around you could pay substantially less than this. However, remember – what they say ‘buy cheap, buy twice’;
• A Sheriff bee suit is not cheap but the design and the materials are top notch and it will last you for at least 5 years. If you have an accident and torch your veil you can phone them and talk to a human and they’ll sell you a replacement. Not an option if your suit comes from somewhere far, far away;
• Similarly – a grade 1 cedar hive from Thornes isn’t cheap but cedar is durable so you won’t need to treat it. All it needs is a bit of respect and it should last for 20 years;
• Bees are best bought from your local beekeeper or beekeeping association. Never import bees or buy from someone who is importing bees – it might be bit cheaper but you might then be the person responsible for bringing in the next obnoxious bee disease;
• The cheapest bees are swarms but there aren’t many of those about since someone imported Varroa with his or her bees.

The totals are interesting. Beekeeping has become very popular lately so the costs of equipment and of bees have gone up quite a lot in euro €622.20 in 2009 compared to €850.70 in 2016.

However, the really interesting bit is when you look at the costs in jars of honey 124 jars in 2009 and 121 jars in 2016!

Not much difference is there?

That’s because local Irish honey has become a very much sought-after product. So sought after in fact the price of honey has risen faster than the price of equipment.

That said – you’ll never see a rich beekeeper.

Click here for Sheriff bee suits

Click here Thorne’s bee hives

Click here to find your local Beekeeper Association

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Includes talks, hands-on practical sessions with live bees, honey extraction and SKBA membership.

Booking now – only €50 – including membership of South Kildare Beekeepers for 2016.

For further details:

• http://southkildarebeekeepers.org/beginners.html
• https://www.facebook.com/SouthKildareBeekeepers

Poplars are a complex, wind-pollinated, pioneer tree species and they interbreed like mad; as a result they can be difficult to identify. There are many species world wide and several native to Europe. In addition, fast growing hybrid cultivars have been bred and these are much planted for timber. There is also interest in the fast growing varieties for short rotation coppice as a biomass crop.

In Ireland only two Poplars are considered native – although other species have been introduced as ornamental trees or for timber, shelter-belt or screening.

Irish Native Poplars

• European aspen or Populus tremula;
• Black poplar – Populus nigra – although there is some doubt about this one.

The European aspen is a very glamorous autumn tree when the weather is right as this photo below shows. By the way, if you click on any of these photos you’ll get a better view:

And here are some individual aspen leaves:

Note the broadly toothed or wavy leaf margins which distinguish it from the related American species Populus tremuloides or Quaking aspen.

Both of the aspen species have flattened petioles or leaf stems which makes the leaves flutter and clatter in every tiny breeze. Hence the names: tremula and tremuloides.

Non-Native Poplar Species in Ireland

In addition other species of poplar have been planted as ornamentals or as timber trees:

• White poplar or P. alba;
• Western Balsam poplar or P. trichocarpa;
• Many hybrids of P. trichocarpa x black poplar and perhaps P. deltoides x black poplar which can be planted for fast growing timber or as short rotation coppice for biomass cropping.

White poplar or P. alba

The white poplar P. alba is a native of Morocco and the Iberian peninsula and central Europe. It is widely planted throughout Ireland and Britain as an ornamental having attractive leaves with white, felted undersides which flicker brilliantly when stirred by the wind.

Again, it is possible the bees visit the catkins of these early in the year and gather a little pollen but it is not something I’ve ever seen personally.

Western Balsam poplar or P. trichocarpa

In addition is P. trichocarpa or Western Balsam Poplar which has been widely planted as a shelter-belt tree, or for screening, or as a fast growing timber tree. Such as this lovely row below on the river Barrow just below Milford near Carlow. I don’t know why they were planted (she added hastily) but they are in a line and they are lovely. Like all poplars these are thriving close to the river which does flood in the winter. In fact it floods in summer too.

In spring these trees look like the picture below:

A bit plain?

Not at all. At that time of the year, late March, just as the buds are breaking and the new leaves are unfurling – the scent of them is wonderful. It is this smell that gives them their name and any beekeeper getting a whiff of this will immediately recognise it as propolis.  So would the bees who most certainly visit for the propolis and perhaps the catkins too.

These (above) are the late-summer leaves of the Balsam poplar. The slightly serrated leaf-edges distinguish P. trichocarpa from the closely related P. deltoides and hybrids. When the leaves are freshly opened in spring they have a slightly wet look, are sticky to the touch and strongly propolis scented.

In addition to the propolis and the possible catkin-pollen, poplars have a further possible value to the bees Melampsora rust spores.

Melampsora Rust Spores

Poplars are susceptible to a genera of rust fungi called Melampsora. These fungi invade the leaves of poplars causing blisters or pustules which eventually rupture to release the powdery orange spores which no doubt have given rise to the common name of ‘rust’.

Honey bees will gather the spores of Melampsora rusts in times when pollen sources may be scarce. This year I saw my bees bringing in large quantities of bright tangerine orange pollen – or what I thought to be pollen but when I tried to identify it the only thing that was anything like that colour in the pollen guide (and from Mr. Google of course) was Melampsora rust spores. This is what they looked like but the photos don’t do justice to the vivid orange colour of the spores.

An unfortunate consequence for the trees is that the bees are helping to vector the disease.

So that’s three things the bees get from Poplars – a little pollen, propolis and an emergency pollen substitute.

Poplar Timber Uses

Poplars are fast growing so the timber tends to be on the light side. It is used nowadays for paper pulp, joinery, veneers and plywood.

In the past it was used in carts and floorboards and also in a Medieval architectural technique known as cruck building where pairs of massive curved beams were upended and joined to form a roof which was then thatched.

Here’s an interesting one: because the wood is odourless it is considered ‘food safe’ and is much used in France to make those lovely cheese boxes Camembert comes in. It is also used to make fruit boxes. This is why you see so many groves of poplars growing in France – much bedecked with mistletoe.

Still in France – apparently when a landowner has a daughter he plants a grove of poplars. The reason being that by the time she is ready to marry, the poplars will be ready to be felled (fast growing you see!) and the price the farmer gets for the timber is used for the dowry. You learn something new every day – or so they say.

Poplar wood is not much use as firewood because it spits but it can be grown in short rotation coppice and chipped for use in wood burning electricity generators or made into pellets for pellet burning boilers.

For other bee trees:

Click here for Bee Trees – Hawthorn

Click here for Bee Trees – Hazel

Click here for  Bee Trees – Horse Chestnut

Cick here for Bee Trees – Ivy

Click here for  Bee Trees – Sycamore

Click here for Bee Trees – Willow

Click here for Bee Trees – Lime

Click here for Melampsora Rust Spore

References

Edlin,H.L. The Tree Key. Frederick Warne, London. 1978

Hart,C. Practical Forestry. Alex Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire. 1991

Hart,C & Raymond,C. British Trees in Colour. Michael Joseph Ltd., London 1974

Howes,F.N. Plants and Beekeeping. Faber and Faber, London 1945

Isebrands,J.G. & Richardson,J. Poplars and Willows: Trees for Society and the Environment. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and CABI . http://www.fao.org/3/a-i2670e.pdf

Kirk,W.D.J, A Colour Guide to the Pollen Loads of the Honey Bee. IBRA 1994

Phillips,R. Trees in Britain, Europe and North America. Pan Books. London. 1978

Strouts,R.G & Winter,T.G. Diagnosis of Ill Health in Trees. Forestry Commission. 1994

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Preparation

Dequeen 7 days in advance of the new queen’s arrival;

Or:

If you have colony you think is queenless – you need to be sure. Add in a test frame with young larvae – not just eggs – they will eat alien eggs but will adopt alien larvae and draw queen cells from them if they are queenless. If they do not draw queen cells they are not queenless.

One Week Later

Either way – 7 days later, go carefully through the colony again and knock off all of the queen cells.

• Gently shake the bees off so you can be sure you them all – if you miss even one crappy little thing they will not accept the new queen;
• Your new queen will be accompanied by an escort of worker bees. Let these girls out of the cage – your queen must go alone into her new home. In the cage that is!
• Make sure the candy cavity is plugged with candy.
• Remove the protective plastic gate so the bees can chew their way through the candy to get to their queen;
• Suspend the cage from a frame near the middle of the brood nest – where the bees would expect to find her. Most postal cages are equipped with a little loop so you can do something imaginative with a matchstick or some local twiggery;

Leave the bees seriously alone for a week – then:

• After a week go carefully through the colony.
• Look out for the queen – she should have been marked by your supplier. If you can’t find the queen – look for eggs, as long as there are eggs all is well; close it up and leave it alone.
• Look for queen cells and don’t panic if there are some. Sometimes the bees mistake a queen newly coming into lay for a queen going out of lay and prepare to supersede. Just knock the cells off and as long as you have seen eggs – walk away;

Occasionally, the bees have not released the queen – perhaps the candy is too hard, the queen is off lay or they don’t understand the principle! Carefully release her – they should have got used to her after a week and usually she just runs down between the frames to the manner born.

Click here for the Basics of Queen Bee Introduction

Click here for the Matchbox Method of Queen Bee Introduction

Click here for the Paper Bag Method of Queen Bee introduction

Click here for How to Introduce a Queen Bee to an Apidea

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Starter Fuels

As with starting any fire you need a starter fuel which lights easily and can be deftly thrust down to the bottom of the smoker without it being so volatile it sets fire to your sleeves or spits sparks at your veil.

The most convenient stuff I’ve found for this job is the shredded cardboard Thorne’s use to package your beekeeping supplies. However, do be aware when using cardboard that it contains various chemicals – glues etc that may be detrimental to bee health so it’s not something you should use a great deal of. Just a little bunch of this should be enough to get it going. Puff puff

Never burn plastic. Burning plastic releases Dioxins which are about the most toxic chemicals in the world, not only to humans but almost certainly bees too, so look out for plastic film in amongst cardboard.

Once your starter is well lit and smoking healthily you can start to add in some of your main smoker mixture. Puff puff

Smoker Mixture

Your main smoker mixture should be a mixture of stuff that keeps it going and stuff that damps it down. Autumn is the season to be gather it.

If you have too much of the stuff that keeps it going – the smoke will be too hot and it will scorch the wings off the poor bees. It may even turn into a flame thrower.  If you have too much of the stuff that damps it down – it will go out. Puff puff fffp

Stuff a handful of your smoker mixture on top of your starter. Include some shredded up rotten wood or beechnut husks to give you some embers in the bottom. Puff puff

Once it’s going well you can pack it down very hard onto your embers and it will smoulder well for a long time. Get into the habit of giving a bit of a puff to keep it going. Puff puff

Covering the top of the pine needles with a wad of dried grass will stop them all from sticking out and getting stuck in the lid. Puff puff

Hessian is a great fuel – it seems to contain the perfect mixture of stuff to keep it going and stuff to keep it cool. Once you have it properly lit, and that can be a bit of a fight at first, it will smoulder away all day. Puff puff

You used to be able to buy bee-tobacco but I haven’t seen it lately. It was very rough tobacco – too rough to consider smoking yourself but good enough for the bees because it was claimed the nicotine would help kill Varroa.

Some Stuff to Stick in your Smoker

• Rotted hessian cut into strips and rolled up into ‘cartridges’. This is a prince among fuels;
• Pine needles – the ultimate smoker fuel;
• Dried grass – too much of this can stifle it but a twisted tuft curled into a cap for the needles is useful –  they can be irritatingly difficult to tuck in otherwise;
• Dried leaves or bracken – these can burn too hot;
• Dried moss – great to damp things down a bit;
• Rotten hardwood. A spongy white-rot is lovely but some types of brown-rot produce a fuel that burns too hot in which case – stuff some dried grass or moss on top;
• Dried dung.  Species of faeces isn’t important but it must be a herbivore – deer, rabbit or horse;
• Turf mould – little tiny crumbly bits of turf or peat – just a soupçon;
• Old denim – I haven’t tried this but I’m told it’s good. However, we also know that bees react badly to blue dyes;
• Pine cones – one or two of these are great as bottom embers.

You can mix a lot of this up in the wheelbarrow and store in sacks till you need it. Make sure you always have a sackful with you or you may be reduced to rummaging about in the undergrowth for suitable fuel.

Careful with this activity – it can lead you into the wrong species of faeces.

When you have finished

Don’t tip your smoker out willy-nilly unless you are sure you are not going to start a fire. Instead – plug the mouth of the smoker with a tightly twisted tuft of green grass.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.

Of course neither begging nor borrowing is open to them but they know how to steal!

Once robbing has started it is very difficult to stop so the best thing to do is try and prevent it from starting.

Here’s how:

How to Prevent Robbing

• Close entrances down to a couple of inches (or less) as soon as the summer flows have stopped. The smaller the entrance the easier it is for the bees to defend it.  The wider the entrance the easier it is for robbing bees or wasps to slip in unnoticed and a habit is established ;
• Set up a wasp trap but set it up well away from your bees or it will just attract every wasp in town – don’t bait it with honey or you will find it full of your bees;
• Keep all doors and windows to your honey house tightly closed!
• When you feed your bees, feed in the evening so that more bees will have discovered the exact location of their feed during the night and have stopped hysterically doing the round dance;
• The round dance is the dance the bees do to tell each other that there is a huge quantity of this thick nourishing 2:1 syrup really really close to here. When bees witness this dance and receive a sample from the dancer they immediately rush out the door and try and get in next door or the door of the weakest hive;
• It’ s bad practice for disease prevention reasons – but if you deliberately set things out to be robbed make sure it is more than 100m from your hives or the bees will do the bloody round dance and all go robbing each other instead of the thing or things it is you want cleaned;
• Don’t go slopping feed about the place;
• Don’t go to the apiary with an open bucket of oozy beeswax scrapings all reeking of honey – the bees will go mad in quicksticks. Get a cover for your bucket and keep it covered;
• If you have weak colonies – turn them ‘the cold way’ for the robbing season and narrow the entrances to about half an inch. This way robbers at the entrance are facing down the centre frames of the nest – and all the bees are looking back at them! A weak colony set up ‘the warm way’ will not notice robbers slipping in through the entrance and running up the inside of the front wall;
• The cold way is where the box is placed on the floor so that the frames are perpendicular to the entrance block;
• The warm way is where the box is placed on the floor so that the frames are horizontal to the entrance block.

How to Stop Robbing

Once robbing has started your haven’t really got many options.

• You can bung the hive up and take it away;
• You can let the bees rob it out completely – then when they’ve stopped, quietly slip in some frames of feed from elsewhere before they starve;
• Using your imagination and whatever materials you may have at hand – build a little tunnel just one beespace wide and a couple of inches deep at the entrance. Robbers hate the thought of a long dark corridor. Seriously, this can work but only if you have the time, you like a challenge, have a particularly precious nuc and no other options.

Click here for more about wasps

If you’ve got something there I’ve missed – please add it here because it really is a scourge – there’s a contact form at the bottom of the page.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015.  All Rights Reserved.