Heather Honey | Beespoke Info

At this time of the year (spring) remote hive monitoring really comes into its own. I have an Arnia Hive Scale at one of my apiaries and it gives me a good idea what is happening not only in the monitored hive but also a rough idea of what is happening over there.

Since I installed it 2 months ago, apart from a sudden vertical jump when I put a super on to accommodate the growing population, it had been recording a steady decrease in weight but for the last 3 days it began to register an increase!

Here, have a look at this…

Arnia Hive Scale Data

So I filled the van with supers and just as well because all the hives there were working very hard. From a distance I had thought there mush be rape in flower close by but no – from the grey green pollen loads I have to conclude that sycamore is coming in.

Click here for Bee Trees: Sycamore

Click here for How to Set up your Arnia Monitors

Click here for How Install your Arnia Monitors

Click here for more about Remote Bee Hive Monitoring and applications

Click here for Arnia Remote Hive Monitoring Data

Click here for Arnia website

Click here for a video overview of the Basic Hive Scale

Click here for video instructions on how to assemble your Basic Scale

Click here for How to Make your own Scale Hive

Click here for Bees, Honey and a Scale Hive

Click here for Remote Hive Monitoring Action

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Moisture Content of Honey

Gimlet — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 15:31:45 +0000

Get this: the moisture content of ripe honey (~17%) is about the same as ripe cereals such as barley, wheat, triticale etc!

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Himalayan Balsam or Impatiens glandulifera

Gimlet — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 10:51:13 +0000

Himalayan balsam or Impatiens glandulifera originates in the Himalayas – surprise surprise. It was introduced to Europe as a garden plant but it quickly escaped the confines of the garden and joined the ranks of ‘Invasive Pests’. Other such plant species include Japanese knotweed, Giant hogweed, Sycamore or Acer pseudoplatanus and Trifids.

An alternative explanation for its arrival in this side of the world is the cotton industry. Balsam seeds came in with raw cotton bolls and during the cotton milling process they escaped into the rivers. The cotton mills being powered by water were of course situated close to fast moving water. I like this idea because it fits neatly with childhood memories of holidays in Lancashire 50 years ago where Himalayan balsam was a common occupant of stream banks and ditches. Like the ditch near the sweet shop where we used to buy sherbert in paper cones.

Ecological Disaster Area

Himalayan balsam has become unpopular because it spreads very quickly along watercourses and pushes out the native perennial vegetation.

Himalayan balsam moving in beneath dying ash trees

Ok says you – may the best man win, it is very pretty and the bees love it. Not so fast says I and look what happens when winter comes:

Himalayan balsam dies because it’s an annual;
River banks are left bare because not much is going to grow in winter;
Winter water levels and faster flowing water erode the naked river banks;
Hey presto – flooding.

Description

The fancy name is Impatiens glandulilfera the same family as Bizzy Lizzies: aka Impatiens walleriana. ‘Impatiens‘ because the ripe seed pods burst – impatiently – in your hand, firing seeds into the distance. The ‘glandulifera’ bit relates to its creepy mucus-secreting glands which are thought to be redundant artefacts inherited from carnivorous ancestor plants. The unpleasant rank smell is thought to come from the mucus. That smell takes me right back to the sweet shop and the sherbert.

Actually when you look at the pink or white flowers there’s a bit of the Pitcher plant about them with that frilly-lipped, gaping mouth and bulbous back end.

The plant is tall and stately – often topping 6ft in height – taller than many policemen nowadays. It can possibly reach as high as 10ft.

Jack Warner as PC Dixon in ‘The Blue Lamp’ and Himalayan Balsam flower as gay policeman’s helmet

You’ll recognise this chap of course – this is the actor Jack Warner as PC George Dixon in the black and white 1950 film ‘The Blue Lamp’. You’ll see from his old style police helmet exactly how the Himalayan balsam got its common name. The flowers are approximately the same shape but as if worked on by a gay milliner.

‘Evening all’, PC George Dixon as ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ television series

After his success in ‘The Blue Lamp’ (1950) with Dirk Bogarde – PC Dixon escaped the confines of the old black and white movie and went global (like Himalayan balsam) as ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ occupying TV screens across the nation from 1955-76 by which time he was in his eighties and available in colour.

But I digress.

As a bee plant

It is a very popular and reliable plant for the bees who will travel some distance for the nectar. Flowering as it does in August it fills the gap between the end of the summer main crop and the autumnal ivy flow helping the bees going into winter.

Popular too with beekeepers who may take a late summer crop from it.

You will know if your bees have been on the balsam as they will have a distinctive white smudge of pollen on the thorax like this:

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Heathering

Gimlet — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 14:56:49 +0000

In this part of the world – July is the time to get the bees to the heather – if the flow is early you’ll miss it. But before you do that – have you got a heather site?

Here are some notes on what makes a good one.

Finding a good heather site can be quite difficult bearing in mind the often difficult terrain, security and the needs of the bees. This one above has pluses and minuses but overall it is a good one.

Here’s a picture of the bees working yesterday (temperature only 12 degrees C) note the pale pinkish beige pollen loads. Bell heather is more white. Click photo for a close up.

Ling Heather (Calluna Vulgaris) pollen loads

The Plusses

It is very high up the hill (440m or nearly 1500ft) and surrounded by stands of pure ling (Calluna vulgaris) with patches of bell (Erica spp) heather in amongst. The bees literally have their feet in the heather;
Only upland heather sites will give you pure ling heather honey. The altitude here places any ivy (Hedera helix) out of range if the two flows do coincide which has been known in the past. Pure ling heather honey does not granulate unless it has something else in it – especially ivy. If you are producing sections or comb honey that’s the last thing you need!
There are patches of rosebay willowherb (Chamerion or Epilobium angustifolium pollen loads are blue) up here where the ground has been disturbed for forestry or the like. In previous years the bees have brought this in along with the ling but it didn’t seem to make the heather granulate and the flavour and colour was only slightly paler than pure ling. Not a problem then.
The site faces east so the sun gets them up early in the morning. Also it is in a little bowl in the hillside with rising ground behind which protects the bees from the prevailing westerly winds. West or north facing slopes can be very shady and cold;
It is secure and well away from public roads and footpaths.

The Minuses

The hawk-eyed amongst you will have noticed the heather beetle damage in for foreground but the heather is recovering well and there is plenty of forage despite that;
It can be very windy up here and that is hard on the bees if they are trying to fly although any cyclists out there don’t need to be told about the pros and cons of a strong head wind – especially if you head out into one.
There are other hazards though namely fellow residents and visiting bipeds;
There are rather a lot of sheep on the hill but they have been recently shorn – at least one of these colonies is a bit on the assertive side and I trust them to look after themselves if anyone woolly comes rubbing.
There are also deer and for the first time I saw wild goats here yesterday but they were at a respectful distance. Not sure how much of a threat they could be – they look rather hairy.
Crocodiles (!) of hikers pass not far from here and the occasional lost one walks right by on the wrong track quite close to the bees. Fortunately the hives are not visible from the track. Even if they were – walkers aren’t usually the type to pitch stones or set fire to heather but you never know.

Click here for how to prepare bees for the heather

Click here for how to take a crop of heather honey

Click here for the Heather Ecosystem

Click here for how to get sections

Click here for Heather Honey recipe

The post Heathering first appeared on Beespoke Info.

How to get Section Honey

Gimlet — Sun, 31 May 2015 20:30:17 +0000

Section honey is the creme de la creme of honeys.

Good sections command high prices and beekeepers will tell you the reason is that they are hard got. The bees hate to work all those corners and will often swarm instead. Or the weather will turn on you and you’ll be left with a lot of waste.

There is not much you can do about the weather but here are a few things you can consider to maximise your chances. Basically:

The Hive
The Bees
The Forage
Whether the Weather

The Hive

In the good old days, double wall hives were more common than they are today – and so were sections. Could they be connected…?

This is a WBC hive:

WBC Hive – the bees love it!

Here are some benefits of a double walled hive:

Sections involve a lot of wax-working for the bees and for this they require heat. Double-walled hives such as a CDB or a WBC are, as a consequence, well insulated so perfect for drawing wax.
The insulating effect of the double walls also helps to keep hives cool.
WBC hives traditionally painted white adds to the cooling effect; you can stand them in a nice sunny spot without them overheating.
When sited in a sunny spot, the bees get up nice and early and work long days.
Fewer bees are needed to keep the brood nest warm and are instead pushed upwards into the section crate or out into the field to forage.

If you don’t have one of these you could use an ordinary hive or better still a polystyrene hive with an insulated section crate and a deep roof. However, both of these hives would be prone to overheating if placed in full sunshine.

The Bees

The bees need to be as strong as possible under a young and vigorous queen. There are various ways of strengthening a colony but when going for sections don’t do this until you are sure that a spell of good weather is going to coincide with the flowering period of a suitable nectar source such as hawthorn/sycamore or clover/blackberry. If you have rape nearby – wait till it’s gone – rape honey will granulate in your sections.

Here are some ways of building up a colony:

Add frames of emerging brood from other hives. Use emerging brood so the host colony is not burdened with feeding them. Also hatching brood will leave valuable laying space for your queen.
Use the Third Box Principle or the Newspaper method and unite two colonies but don’t forget to remove the queen from the weaker of the two colonies.

Click here for the Third Box Principle

Click here for the Newspaper Method

Another way of strengthening a colony is to place another strong hive beside your target colony and if a strong flow obliges – move it to the other side so the bees go to your section hive.

Of course the flip side of bulking up a colony is that the congestion will almost certainly cause the bees to swarm so make sure you give them plenty of super space until your flow commences – IF it commences. Don’t do bulk up till a flow looks likely.

When that happens:

Remove the supers and the queen excluder;
Place your section crate directly onto the brood box – no excluder;
Add the crown board equipped with porter bee escapes;
Add the super or supers of bees covered with a canvas quilt or another crown board to clear the bees down into the section crate;
Stand back and cross your fingers.

The bees will work sections better without a queen excluder. It is unlikely but always possible that the queen will start to lay into the sections so you might want to put the excluder back once the bees are up and working them.

The Forage

Perfect sections must contain a honey which is slow to granulate such as hawthorn, clover or better still – ling heather.

Never, ever fill sections with oilseed rape.

Don’t start sections too close to the June gap or you’ll be left high and dry.

Whether the Weather

You will of course need good weather too and you’ll need it to coincide with the local forage. If it doesn’t oblige, you may as well not bother with sections, keep them in supers instead.

So Far …

Here’s how the bees are getting on so far this horrible cold wet spring. Of course they probably won’t cap it all… because this wind is going to flick all the sycamore/hawthorn flowers off then here comes the blithering June gap!

Update – 10th June 2015

The cold weather has held the trees back on this chilly hill. As a result we still have sycamore and hawthorn in bloom here and now we even have weather – set fair all the way till the middle of next week they say. Yesterday the scale hive registered a 7lb gain.

Perfect weather for sections then.

Well yes and no.

Predictably the hive was full of queen cells yesterday. Also, annoyingly – the brood box was stuffed with honey. Why won’t they just stuff the sections and give themselves more space!

So what can I do?

Primitive I know but rightly or wrongly I’ve broken them all down in the hope the bees will stay put for just a few more days and cap the remaining sections.

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Heather Ecosystem

Gimlet — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 09:14:40 +0000

When beekeepers think heather, they think weather and ‘Will it ever stop bloody raining?’

Or you might wonder – ‘IS there a flow at all?’ Because often there isn’t and you can never tell in advance if it will or if it won’t. Heather honey is the most bewitching and frustrating of all honeys; if you can get a crop of sections or cut comb honey it’s close to heaven and so costly and disappointing when it fails.

But there’s more to it than the weather. It’s the ecology – Stupid!

Distribution

Calluna vulgaris or Ling heather is widespread at all altitudes across Northern Europe from Spain to Scandinavia and from the Azores to the Urals but tends to dominate where the environment is harsh and/or nutrient stressed. As we all know, it tolerates extreme cold without damage but it is intolerant of shade.

Soil

Calluna is seldom found in fertile lowland situations because it is a ‘calcifuge’ ie it can’t bear limey or base soils but likes instead, an acid soil. This tends to make it a plant of stressed environments, either mountain or bog where excessive rain and cold create acid soils which are also usually low in available nitrogen.

It can get a foothold in moderately receptive soil environments. Once established, the cast-off leaves decay to a dark brown acidic humus. In this way Calluna is able to adapt certain soil environments to suit its own requirements.

Moisture

While Calluna is almost always found in areas of high rainfall – it is actually intolerant of waterlogging and grows best where there is moderate drainage. In super-saturated areas Calluna tends to give way to Ericaceous heathers ie Erica tetralix or E. caerulea – also Molinea caerulea or Purple Moor Grass. Where Calluna is found growing in bogs, the roots tend to be restricted to the top few inches of peat and above the upper extent of the summer water table. If this is still too wet – it will pull up its skirts and occupy the hummocks.

Growth Habit

When it finds conditions it likes – C. vulgaris is a long lived, woody dwarf shrub – often reaching 30 and even 35 years old. The life cycle is divided into four phases:

Pioneer – 3-6 years – flowering after the 1st year;
Building – Up to 15 or 20 years. Densely branched shrub with maximum canopy cover and nothing growing beneath. Flowering freely;
Mature – Over 20 years. Plants become leggy – up to 1.2 metres – with mosses and lichens beginning to occupy the open area at the centre of the plant;
Degenerate – Over 25 years. Central branches die out leaving a gap which may be colonised by other species perhaps upland trees such as Rowan or Scots Pine before young Calluna plants can establish.

For the beekeeper, the Building and Mature phases are most useful to the beekeeper as they can give rise to vast areas of carpet-form heather which is when flowering is most profuse.

Careful burning of heather at intervals in concert with managed grazing can remove stands of degenerate heather and create instead a shifting mosaic of different aged stands of heather which are of great benefit to wildlife – especially Red Grouse (Lagopus lagopus), many species of bees and other insects. Beneficial to Hill farmers also.

Burning correctly is a skill. Ideally the fire should only kill over-mature specimens leaving younger plants to regenerate from the base and creating space to allow seeds to germinate. A slow moving fire over dry peat can get too hot, killing all heather plants and destroying the seeds present in the seed bank. In such cases regeneration is slow, if at all, and other species may move in instead. And there may be soil erosion.

Grazing

Calluna benefits from moderate browsing which can promote the aforementioned dense, single-species, topiaried carpet.

Sheep and Deer are browsers rather than grazers such as cattle: they pick and choose – mostly young shoots which is like light pruning and beneficial in its effects. However, overstocking of sheep/deer forces them to browse more deeply, and damagingly, into the woody heart of the plant. It also reduces the ability of heather to regenerate; young plants are unable to establish or are grazed to extinction leading to thinning stands of gangly, senescent heather. Excessive trampling creates bare patches leading to soil erosion or invasion of other less valuable species.

Cattle are disastrous for heather – they graze indiscriminately and their great heavy feet cause severe damage to soft peaty soils leading inevitable to soil erosion.

Heather also provides habitat for the Red Grouse (Lagopus lagopus) which relies on heather for 90% of it’s adult diet. It also requires heather of varying ages for shelter and cover and areas in which to nest and to rear young. The young birds are reared on insects foraged in the heather – the only carnivorous phase in the bird’s life. As such it is completely dependent on heather for its life-cycle.

I never heard of overgrazing by grouse – instead this bird can be regarded as the ‘canary’ when recognising when conservation is necessary. In other words – if it is absent or dwindling from heathery uplands something is wrong. Click here for the Irish Red Grouse Association.

Heather Beetle is a wild creature whose boom-and-bust life cycle can lead to overgrazing by the larvae and even death of great swathes of heather. Sometimes the whole system is replaced by other less desirable vegetation communities such as Molinia caerulea aka Purple Moor Grass with or without assorted sedges and moss. This creature, the heather beetle is also known as Lochmaea suturalis. Here it is:

In a ‘normal’ year, heather beetle harmlessly carries out its life cycle eating heather leaves and hibernating in the soil. However in some years the population rockets and the heather suffers a beetle-grazing epidemic to the extent that extensive areas are wiped out.

Here’s a picture of severe heather beetle damage in a lowland raised bog, Narraghmore, Co.Kildare:

Pollination

The flowers of Calluna are able to both self and cross pollinate but an outside agent either the wind or an insect is required in both cases. In experiments where flowers are enclosed and outside agents excluded, pollination does not occur.

If you look closely at the flowers of C. vulgaris you will see that the arrangement of pollination paraphernalia lends itself to a generalist approach enabling both insect and wind transfer of pollen.

Either way, once a flower is pollinated by the wind or another insect rather than one of your honey bees, the secretion of nectar dries up!

Wind Pollination The pollen-bearing anthers are safely enclosed within the heather flower. When weather is damp and wet, the pollen remains clumped on the anthers and is not washed away by the rain. When weather is dry and windy, however, it is liberally shaken out and blown hither and yon. The stigmas meanwhile are out in the elements where they can obviously take advantage of passing clouds of pollen. So if there is a long period of dry windy weather and the flowers are quickly wind pollinated the likelihood of a strong nectar flow is reduced.

Here’s a picture of my dog Bunty in the heather. She used to love a trip to the hills but the poor girl was the victim of a pollen allergy and the free release of heather pollen on a sunny day would set up such an itch she would spend most of her time rolling around and scratching till she bled.

Insect Pollination We are all familiar with the buzz of activity in the flowering heather what with bumble bees, honey bees, butterflies and others. Flowers are visited by about 35 species of insects.

Nectar to attract insects is secreted from nectaries inside and at the base of the flower below the anthers. As such, visiting insects inevitably transfer pollen from their bodies onto the stigma and pick up pollen from the anthers as the reach down for the nectar.

Bumble bees and honey bees are the most efficient pollinators as they carry the most pollen and they get up very early in the morning!

Thrip pollination The architecture of heather flowers does not allow for rain pollination. However where Calluna lives it can rain for days or even weeks on end. No surprise then, that heather does have a trick up its sleeve for those wet years when neither wind nor flying insects can do the job.

There is a tiny creature – a thrip – called Taeniothrips ericae – which is found on both Calluna and Ericaceous heathers. It spends almost its entire life cycle within the flowers, romping about between the anthers picking up pollen and eating nectar. There are about 4-6 thrips per flower but male thrips are rare. As a consequence females leave home on sexual maturity and roam from flower to flower looking for a mate. The picture below from Hagerup (1950) shows a female thrip using the stigma of a flower as a launch pad (Figure 2.). No doubt she lands on many of these during her wanderings and inevitably pollination must occur. Later work in Norway by Haslerud (1974) concluded that pollination by thrips was only significant in very wet climates. Click picture for a close up.

By the way, pollination aside, these insects have the same boom and bust life cycles as the heather beetle and Irish developers. In boom years each flower may be full of baby thriplets eating all that heather nectar before our bees can get there. And you know yourself how the honey bee hates competition – they’ll just go for the ivy instead!

In Essex I remember plagues of tiny black corn thrips or ‘Thunderbugs’; some years the air would be full of them. They’re probably extinct now.

A Hardy Plant?

In the absence of over-grazing by mammals, birds or insects – Calluna fares surprisingly well in hostile environments on acid/nutrient poor soils and in cold, wet, upland areas with strong winds etc. It grows quickly into a large, long lived, vigorous plant which puts out a profusion of flowers year on year.

How does it do it?

Read on…

Mycorrhizal Symbiosis

To cope with the stresses of the very extreme environments of mountain and bog, Calluna has evolved a symbiotic relationship, with an assortment of soil fungi including Rhizocyphus ericae and Phialocephala fortinii complex. Fungi involved in these symbioses are termed Mycorrhizae or ‘fungus roots’.

Don’t go away – this is simpler and far more interesting than you can imagine!

Here is the simplified basis for Calluna’s mycorrhizal symbiosis:

Calluna is nitrogen-limited because there is so little available in the stressed environments it inhabits but it does have an unlimited supply of carbon which it captures from the air via photosynthesis.
Fungi, on the other hand, are enzymatic powerhouses – well able to break down acidic litter and suck up nitrogen in conditions which thwart most plants. As a result, soil fungi have an abundance of nitrogen but they are carbon-limited.

The roots of the heather link up with microscopic fungal hyphae thus plugging themselves into a fungal network of mycellium which ramifies outwards through the soil breaking down litter and supplying nitrogen to the plant which in return supplies carbon products to the fungus.

There’s more – these fungi are termed endomycorrhyzas which means they actually penetrate the roots and grow inside the plant as well – a hand in glove relationship! Fungal hyphae can be found throughout the plant even as far as the ovules with their ripening seeds. Sounds a bit like The Borg (1992,1996) don’t it? Researchers believe that in this way, plants are inoculated with their mycorrhyzal partners when they are seeds – how clever is that!

Conservation

A survey of potential Red Grouse habitat in Ireland in 2008 revealed 22% of the total grouse habitat to be severely damaged by overgrazing, 30% moderately damaged while only 34% remains undamaged. For Red Grouse Habitat read Calluna vulgaris.

It should be of concern to beekeepers as well as sheep farmers that over 50% of total heather is damaged.

Sources

Crushell,P. & O’Callaghan, R.J. (2008) A Survey of Red Grouse (Lagopus lagopus) Habitat in Ireland 2007 – 2008: an assessment of habitat condition and land-use impacts. Report for BirdWatch Ireland & The National Parks and Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Ireland.

Gimmingham,C.H. (1960) Biological Flora of the British Isles: Calluna vulgaris Journal of Ecology

Hagerup, O. (1950). Thrips Pollination in Calluna. K. Danske vidensk. Selsk., Biol. Medd., 18 1-16

Hazard.C., Gosling.P., Mitchell.D.T., Doohan.F.M. & Bending.G.D. (2013) Diversity of fungi associated with hair roots of Ericaceous plants is affected by land use. Article first published online: 28 NOV 2013. DOI: 10.1111/1574-6941.12247. © 2013 Federation of European Microbiological Societies

Haslerud, H.D. (1974) Pollination of some Ericaceae in Norway.
Nord. J. Bot. 21: 211–216.

Mahy, G., De Sloover, J., & Jacquemart,A. (1998) The generalist pollination system and reproductive success of Calluna vulgaris
in the Upper Ardenne. Can. J. Bot. Vol. 76 1843-51

Mohamed, B.F. & Gimmingham,C.H. (1970) The Morphology of Vegetative Regeneration of Calluna vulgaris. New Phytologist. 69, 743-750

Rayner,M.C. (1925) The Nutrition of Mycorrhiza Plants : Calluna vulgaris. Journal of Experimental Biology

Star Trek: The Next Generation: I Borg Season 5, Episode 23 (1992)

The post Heather Ecosystem first appeared on Beespoke Info.

How to take a crop of heather honey

Gimlet — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 10:02:21 +0000

Ling heather (Calluna vulgaris) honey is out there on its own for flavour and character. It is rich, reddish amber in colour with a musky flavour; open the jar and the scent of the hills will fill the room. Turn the jar upside down and it won’t budge – this is because it is thixotropic – in other words it forms a viscous gel and will not flow which means it cannot be spun out of the frames like other honeys but has to be pressed from the comb or sold in the comb either as sections or cut-comb.

Heather honey is much sought-after (lovely heather honey recipe here) and commands a great price but to get a crop is not easy so the beekeeper needs to know about the Known Unknowns and Known Knowns. Not to mention the Unknown Unknowns.

The Known Unknowns

There are factors the beekeeper knows about and knows he can’t do anything about – basically the heather and the weather:

Heather is flakey – it doesn’t always yield nectar;
Even if the heather does yield – the weather in the hills at the end of summer can be flakey too.

The Unknown Unknowns

There are also factors he doesn’t know he doesn’t know about. Heather is just part of a complex ecosystem consisting of all sorts of things you might not have heard of, some or all of which may have profound effects on the honey flow or lack or it. Click here for more on the Calluna vulgaris ecosystem.

The Known Knowns

But there are things the beekeeper can do to maximise the chances of a crop despite the known unknowns: – pay special attention to the known knowns:

Queen age;
Colony size;
Hive material;
Feed;
Exclude the excluder;
Foundation;
Lowland sites vs Upland sites.

Queen Age

Queens need to be young – preferably mated in June of the same year. Such queens will be just building up and will expand the brood nest in response to a flow and honey will be readily packed into the super. This expansion of the brood nest will also provide the colony with a strong, young cohort of workers to take them through the winter.

Older queens, even one-year olds, may have been laying since March and are tired. Their brood nests will be contracting and the workers will be getting ready for winter; any heather honey brought in will be packed into the brood box rather than up in the super. Bringing in a crop of heather honey will also deplete the winter bees and the colony under a tired queen will not be able to replace them. This is probably behind the notion that heather honey is bad for winter bees.

Colony Size

The colony needs to be as strong as possible. The best bet is to unite two colonies then clear them into a single National brood box and, if necessary, requeen with a young queen. If you use Snelgrove Boards then these management methods will provide you with colonies in perfect condition under new queens ripe for the heather. Click here for more on Snelgrove

Commercial boxes are too big for Irish conditions and you will almost certainly find most of your heather crop downstairs in that enormous brood box.

Don’t be greedy. Only put one super on at a time. If you put two on, not only are you asking for more than you are likely to get but also you are putting a great big draughty attic above the bees when what they need is warmth to draw that lovely white heather wax. And you do want your honey capped don’t you? If there is a huge flow you can always add another super later.

Hive Material

Polystyrene hives have advantages and they have disadvantages but for the heather they’re perfect because they are so warm. This is important because it can be cold in the hills and the bees need warmth to draw wax and ripen the honey. More on hives and materials here.

Feed

Feed the bees really well for heather – you want them stuffed to the gunwales. Remember they can be up in the hills for up to 6 weeks and it might rain for the duration. I’ve known this to happen and brought them back pitifully light, with no brood at all and not a grain of pollen.

So give them 2 gallons of strong syrup or 7 litres of Ambrosia or other beefeed before you put the supers on. That way they will pack it down into the brood chamber filling every cell so if there’s heather then it has nowhere to go except upstairs.

Whether you feed them at home before you take them to the hills or take them to the hills and feed them up there is entirely up to you – it’s as broad as it is long. That said – if it turns cold in the hills – and it often does – they probably won’t take their lovely syrup down. Best feed them as soon as possible after removing your summer honey.

Exclude the excluder

You shouldn’t need a queen excluder – especially if you have fed them well and the bees have a good arc of honey across the top of the brood nest – the queen will be unlikely to cross this barrier unless seriously disturbed.

Instead, spread a square of plastic film/polythene across the top bars of the brood box leaving about an inch all the way round. This will give the bees free access to the super and the queen is unlikely to come up round the edges.

If you are uneasy or jinxed put the excluder on – it just doesn’t give the bees such easy access and they may be reluctant to go up into the supers. In which case remove it till they go up then replace it – make sure the queen is downstairs or you’ll be spitting fire.

Foundation

Use unwired thin foundation for cut-comb honey but trim off a half inch strip so there is a gap above the bottom bars of the frame. This ultra-thin foundation stretches in the heat of the hive and if you don’t trim it, it will buckle where it comes up against the bottom bars of the frames and you’ll have an unsightly pleat in your lovely honeycomb.

You can use wired foundation if you like, or just put your summer supers on straight after extraction. However, you won’t be able to extract it and will either have to cut the comb and wires from the frames or scrape the honey off the midrib with one of those sturdy scrapers for taking the ice of windscreens and then shove the lot through a heather press. Either way – it’s a terrible waste – good, drawn supers are valuable.

Another alternative is to simply give the bees a 1 or 2 inch starter strip of foundation. If there is a flow, they will draw comb down from these. If there isn’t – nothing is lost. However, they will be burning precious heather honey to make more wax so if you give them foundation of some description – again you are maximising your potential honey crop.

Lowland vs Upland Heather Sites

There are two sorts of heather sites – Upland and Lowland.

Upland sites are up there in the hills where the bees have their feet in the heather. The first obvious advantage is that they are right there in the crop. The second advantage is that the higher up they are the more pure your crop is likely to be and the less likely you are to get ivy, late blackberry or fireweed mixed in with your crop. Pure heather honey is beautiful beyond compare and furthermore – it doesn’t granulate so is perfect for cut comb.

There are disadvantages though. The weather can be very bad up there – windy and wet – and bee-casualties are high. Such sites are seasonal and as such you are faced with moving bees all at once at the end of the summer when you are probably running out of energy and may have to cope with your main summer honey crop all at the same time. There is a lot of work involved in moving bees – especially if you want to do it properly.

Lowland sites are (obviously) sited down the hill in the balmier conditions but within reach of the heather. They have the advantage that they can be used the whole summer long so you can be getting your bees ready for the heather without having to move them. However, if the blackberry is late and/or the ivy is early you will not get a pure crop. Lowland sites can be much warmer and sheltered so the bees might get up earlier in the morning and work later but they are almost certainly going to have further to fly – however, it’s all downhill on the home flight.

The other type of lowland site is bog heather. I have to confess I don’t know much about bog heather honey but it is almost certainly less pure than hill heather and will contain bell heather (Erica spp.) as well as Calluna. Also, bog heather is even flakier than hill heather. More of this in the upcoming piece on heather ecology.

In a nutshell…

Upland sites are difficult: they are hard to find, access can be challenging, security can be a problem and bees need to be moved.

Lowland sites are easier in all respects but the honey is less likely to be pure.

We’ve covered the Known Unknowns and Known Knowns but to really get to the bottom of heather you need to know about the Unknown Unknowns – click here for Heather Ecology and the Unknown Unknowns.

Click here for how to prepare colonies for the heather

Click here for the heather ecosystem

Click here for more on good heather sites

The post How to take a crop of heather honey first appeared on Beespoke Info.

Sycamore Pollen

Gimlet — Mon, 12 May 2014 14:02:01 +0000

Between the showers, the sun is very strong and the the sycamores are alive with bees. One of the good things about sycamore flowers is that they hang down beneath the leaves in the shelter of the canopy so showers don’t really harm them. However, gusty squalls will tear off the flowering panicles – lovely.

The forecast for the next few days is good, so with the trees in full bloom there is a good chance of a few pounds of honey.

For more sycamore information click here

Sycamore (Acer pseodoplatanus)

If you click on this picture you should be able to see a close up of the snot green pollen loads.

The post Sycamore Pollen first appeared on Beespoke Info.