Hive Swap

For a while now, June's bees in hive #2 have been a bit of a handful.  Even though I'm pretty careful when I handle them, they've been more defensive than hive #1, and they sting me fairly regularly.  Also, they have stung their landlord Nev at least once (and tried several times).  So I decided that something needed to be done.

The best option I could come up with was to swap the colony with Ottoline's bees in the nucleus.  They are very well behaved, calm, and I don't think they've stung me at all.  Normally, this would be straightforward - just pick up each hive and swap them over.  However, I'd have then ended up with the nuc where a hive should be, and it would have messed with the aesthetics of the apiary.  Which are... y'know... the most important thing.

So, I was going to have to do it the hard way.  I suited up, lit my smoker, and got ready to move the colonies frame-by-frame.  In fairness, it went pretty smoothly.  The bees were pretty well behaved throughout, and I only got one sting.

Over in hive #1, I had a look to see if they’d made any queen cells to replace Katherine (RIP).  Indeed they had - all these and more, in fact:

Here are all the cells I cut out from all the combs:

I’ve tried to arrange them in order of age from left to right, so if you look carefully (you’ll need to click on the photo to zoom) you should see the ones on the left look more ‘maggoty’, whereas you can see the ones on the right starting to differentiate into their adult segments.

I left one cell in the hive - pictured below - this will (when she hatches) become the new queen of hive #1:

I’ll take a look this coming weekend to make sure that the new queen is alive and well.

An Accident - Or Something More Sinister?

I checked the bees on Saturday, and everything in the nucleus (Ottoline's bees) was fine.  All good in June's hive (#2) as well.

Things in Katherine's hive also looked fine - at least, at first.  There were recently-laid eggs, as well as capped and un-capped brood.  A few frames in, and I found an open queen cell, which I removed.  On the next frame were four more.  I tackled the first three, removing the small larvae and cutting out the structure of the cells to discourage the bees from re-using them.

When I got to the 4th queen cell, I noticed something odd.  Instead of the end being completely open, there was a dark shape just poking through the entrance.  At first, I thought this would be a worker bee, depositing royal jelly in the cell for the larval queen to feed on.  But, oddly, it didn't seem to be moving.  Also, it didn't look like the end of a worker bee - it didn't seem stripy enough, and it was too pointy.  I carefully cut away at the sides of the queen cell, and was amazed to pull out this:

Yep - that's Queen Katherine - dead, after being stuck head-first in a queen cell.  This is a picture showing where it was located on the frame (you can clearly see it in the corner, towards the lower part of the photo):

And here's a closer look (you can even still see specks of green paint that have rubbed off from her thorax):

This is really remarkable - it's the first time I've found a dead queen inside a hive (though I have previously seen a dead queen outside, after she was dumped there by her workers).  And the really weird thing is, it seemed from the shape of the cell - the entrance of which seemed too narrow for her to squeeze into - that the workers were sealing her in, from the outside.  This is genuinely odd - I've never seen or heard of bees behaving like this before.

So, what had happened?  Well, there are two possibilities:

1. She'd for some reason crawled into the queen cell head-first, and got stuck
   
2. The workers chased her into the cell, and killed her

Looking at option [1], it's not by any means impossible.  But it is unlikely.  A queen will always enter a queen cell abdomen-first, as she has only one business being there - to lay an egg.  She has no reason to go in head-first if the cell is empty.  And if there is already a larva in there, with royal jelly, then there's no point going in head-first either (she can't feed the larva - that's strictly a worker bee job - and she can't eat the royal jelly, as she has to be fed mouth-to-mouth by the workers).  But maybe it was a freak accident?

Or maybe not.  After all, she had laid eggs within the last day or so (I know - I saw them).  So why was she dead?  She could, perhaps, have got stuck and died - but I'm not sure there would have been enough time for her to have starved to death.  Maybe, then, she had been stung to death by the workers, who for some reason had decided to replace her.  If you look at the photo of her (click on it to see it in higher-resolution) you'll notice her wings have been damaged.  Now, that might have happened when I was getting her out of the cell.  But I suspect they may have been bitten by the workers when they attacked her.

Like inside a beehive is pretty brutal - if the workers decide the queen is not meeting their high standards, then they will cheerfully kill her off and replace her with one of their sisters.  I've had this happen a couple of times before - it's just a part of beekeeping life that you get used to.  But never before have I found the queen's body still inside the hive.  I've been keeping bees for 10 years now, and yet every season they still manage to surprise me!

In case you're wondering how the bees will cope without a queen - don't worry.  Right now, they will be making new queen cells (from the eggs I saw), and I will have a look in the hive tomorrow to see how they are getting on with raising Katherine's replacement.

Introducing... Queen June!

Every beehive has a single queen bee, and the queen in hive #2 is called June. She is named after June Almeida, who was a Scottish virologist, and a pioneer in virus imaging, identification, and diagnosis.

June started her career working in histopathology at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and then moved to St Bartholomew's Hospital in London.  In 1954 she moved to the Ontario Cancer Institute, where she worked as an electron microscopy technician.  While in Ontario she was awarded Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) for electron micrographic research of antibodies.

In 1964 June joined the research team at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London.  She worked on the hepatitis B virus and also cold viruses, as well as a new virus in humans that at the time was given the identifier B814.  June used electron microscopy to photograph organ cultures containing B814, and noticed that the structure of the virus particles was similar to two other viruses she had previously studied - infectious bronchitis of chickens, and mouse hepatitis liver inflammation.  Her previous papers on the chicken and mouse viruses had been rejected by reviewers, who believed that the viruses were actually known flu viruses.  However, with the evidence from B814, June now knew that she was looking at a new, and previously unidentified group of viruses.

June's photographs of the new viruses showed that they appeared to be surrounded by a distinctive 'halo' - caused by protein spikes on the surface of the virus.  The latin for 'halo' is 'corona', and so this family of viruses became known as 'coronaviruses'.

As well as her work on coronaviruses, June also continued to work on hepatitis B, and in the 1980s she was involved in producing micrographs of the HIV virus.  Later in her career she worked at the Wellcome Institue, and in retirement she maintained an advisory role at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School.

Here's a photo of her topical namesake, queen June:

 

Introducing... Queen Ottoline!

Every beehive has a single queen bee, and the queen in the nucleus is called Ottoline. She is named after Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, who is a British plant biologist and Professor of Plant Development at the University of Cambridge, as well as being the director of the Sainsbury Laboratory.

Ottoline studied at the University of Cambridge for both her BA and PhD degrees, and then undertook post-doctoral research at Indiana University.  In 1994 she worked at the University of York, before moving to Cambridge in 2010.

Ottoline's research includes the genetics of plant development and the interaction of plant hormones with the environment.  Notable achievements include the identification of the auxin receptor, which is a hormone that controls shoot architecture and development in plants.  She also played a key role in promoting Arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism in plant biology research.

Undertaking world-leading research has earned Ottoline a number of awards, including Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.  She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to plant science, science in society, and equality and diversity in science.  Other awards include the Rosalind Franklin Award (2007), the Genetic Society Medal (2016), and the EMBO Women in Science Award (2017).  She is a fellow of the Royal Society, an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and a Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

At the end of this month Ottoline will become Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation.  Fun fact: that's where I work!

In 2017 Ottoline was interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili for the BBC Radio 4 programme The Life Scientific.  You can listen for free on the BBC Sounds app, or via this link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08q5wxx

Finally - back to bees, and here's a picture of queen Ottoline:

More Swarms!

In my last update on Sunday 3rd May, I'd finally managed to collect the swarm from neighbour Mark's garden.  The bees were safely housed in a nucleus, and everything was back to normal.  Or so I thought.

The next day (Monday 4th) they swarmed again.  I don't know why, but for some reason the bees abandoned the nucleus and headed off to another neighbour's garden (Julia's, this time).  So, off I went again, with a bucket, loppers and the now-empty nuc for round 2.  This time, they were about 8ft up in a crab-apple tree.  At least they were easy to reach this time.  Unfortunately, they were clustered around a thick branch, just at the point where it divided.  There was nothing else for it - Julia lent me a saw and I started hacking away.  Eventually, the swarm - and accompanying branch - was free:

The only way to be sure I had all the bees was to put the piece of branch - with swarm still attached - into the nucleus, and then carry it back to the apiary.  Eventually they settled down, and I'm relieved to report they didn't swarm again.

The next incident was on the bank holiday, last Friday.  I'd checked Dorothy's colony, in the brown nucleus, 6 days previously - and all seemed fine.  Unfortunately, I must have missed a queen cell, so off they went.  This time, they decided to set up home in my neighbour Darren's chimney.  There's no way I can collect them from there, so I suppose they will just set up home and have a happy summer, undisturbed by beekeepers.

That brings us to today.  I checked the blue nucleus (the Mark / Julia swarm) first.  All looked good, and the queen has started laying.  That meant I could mark her, so I popped her in the marking cage and put a dot of blue paint on her thorax.  Next, I checked the now-queenless brown nucleus.  There were a couple of queen cells, but no sign of any new queen.  I decided it would be easier for me to manage the nucs by combining them, so I prepared by removing the old frames with the queen cells (there was very little brood, so it was a good opportunity to remove the old comb and burn it).  I then replaced with fresh.  The handy thing about the brown nuc is it has a detachable floor, which allows me to put it on top of the blue nuc and make a double-height nucleus, like this:

When combining colonies in this way there is a risk that the bees will fight, so it helps if you can make them mingle slowly, so they get used to each other.  The way this is done is by putting a layer of newspaper between the two boxes.  The bees will nibble through the paper and start to circulate through the holes that they make.  This way, they get used to each other's pheromones without getting aggressive.  At least, that's the idea - I will find out next week how they've got on.

All was fine in Katherine's hive - they were very well behaved, and no queen cells.

In hive #2 I was please to see that the new queen (the one that had emerged after the swarm) had started laying.  She also got a blue dot on her thorax, and then that was the end of the day's beekeeping.  I'm pleased to note that hive #2, which has had a bit of a temper in the last few weeks, was much better behaved today.

Now that I'm back to three laying queens, I'm hoping that's the end of all this swarming nonsense and everything will be a bit more orderly for the next few weeks.  One other thing - I have two newly-marked queens, and regular readers will know that I always name my queens when I mark them.  Tune in to the next update to find out what they're called...

Swarm... Collected!

After Friday's shenanigans, and a heavy downpour on Friday night, I was relieved to see that the bees in neighbour Mark's tree had survived the night.  They didn't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere, so yesterday I set up a spare nucleus, with one drawn and four un-drawn frames, as near as I could to the swarm cluster.  My hope was that they might smell the wax, realise that the nuc was a nice warm dry place to live, and move in.  In the meantime, I had to wait.

I used the time to check the other hives, as I wanted to know where they'd swarmed from.  Not the nucleus - Dorothy was still at home.  And Katherine was still in residence in hive #1.  That could only mean that the new queen, who was first seen last weekend in hive #2, must have swarmed.

I had a good look inside #2, and spotted a lovely big queen cell that I completely failed to see last week.  That was my mistake - if I'd seen and removed it, the bees wouldn't have swarmed.  I could see that the new (newest) queen had emerged from the cell - and I spotted her on the next frame.  She is quite distinctive-looking, with a single ginger stripe on the anterior segment of her abdomen.  At least she should be fairly easy to find in future.

Back to the swarm.  By this morning, they still hadn't moved from the tree, and it was looking like something needed to be done - Mark and his family really needed their garden back!  So, this afternoon Amelia and I tooled up and headed round to Mark's house with a spare bee suit and a very vague idea of a plan.

Mark had a couple of ladders that we could use, and was happy to join in the fun.  So I headed up a ladder with a pair of long-handled loppers, while Amelia held on tight and Mark got ready to catch.  We had to have three goes at it, because the bees kept re-clustering on the tree.  This was how it went on attempt number one:

I didn't get a video of attempt number two, but here's the third and final try:

And it's done!  The bees are now safely at home in the nucleus - hopefully they'll stay there and we'll have no more funny business.

Swarming In The Rain...

My bees swarmed today.  We'll get to that part later - first, a bit of a catch-up on what happened last weekend, and how we got to today's events.

In my last post I talked about the surfeit of queen cells in hive #2, from two weekends ago.  So, last weekend I went back to check on how things were progressing.  Here's a hive-by-hive rundown:

• Hive #1 (Katherine):  The colony are still building up slowly, but look healthy.  There were a couple of frames in the hive that were now two years old, and really needed to be replaced.  Both had capped and uncapped brood, and I didn't want to diminish the amount of brood too badly, so I decided to remove just one of them.  Interestingly, after I'd shaken the bees off, I noticed two queen cells - one uncapped and one capped.  I was a little lucky the bees hadn't swarmed.  I was surprised that the colony are making queen cells already, since they don't really seem big enough yet, but the weather up to last weekend had been very pleasant so perhaps they were just taking advantage of the conditions.  Anyway, I checked the rest of the frames thoroughly, didn't see any more queen cells, and burned the frame I'd removed.
• Nucleus (Dorothy):  These bees had built up quickly, and had even started making comb in the space between the top of the frames and the roof.  In fact, after I'd taken the roof off I realised that queen Dorothy was on the roof and not on the frames where she was supposed to be.  I carefully picked her up by her wings and popped her back inside, and then removed the excess comb from the underside of the roof.
  To slow things down a bit I took two frames of drawn comb out of the nuc and donated them to hive #1, replacing with new frames.
• Hive #2 (no queen... or...?):  I had a good look through - there were four more queen cells, which the bees had presumably decided to make just to keep me on my toes.  I removed all but one, and then checked the big queen cell that I left last weekend.  That one was open, so the queen must have emerged.  It took me a while to find her (honestly, I nearly gave up) but I did spot her eventually.  Reassured that the hive now had a queen, I removed the last queen cell and closed up.  Happy days - all three colonies have a queen!

So, the position by the end of Sunday was three colonies, all with queens and with all queen cells removed.  Great - that should have meant no risk of swarming for at least a week.

Fast forward to today, and this (it's worth having the sound turned up):

How did it happen?  I have no idea.  It wasn't great weather today - the temperature barely nudged above 12°C and it's been raining.  About half an hour after that video was taken, we had hail.  What on earth the bees were thinking, swarming in those conditions, I have no idea.  Anyway, they've done it now.  Unfortunately, they've settled about 15 feet up in a magnolia tree (they're still there as I write this) and there's no way I can get a ladder up to collect them, so they'll just have to stay there until tomorrow, when they'll presumably pick a permanent home and move in.  I've left an empty nuc with some new frames in the apiary, a little distance away from the other hives, so with a little luck they might be tempted to move in there.  Otherwise, they'll probably find a nice tree on Beechen Cliff and establish themselves as a feral colony.

One question comes to mind - which hive did they swarm from?  The answer to that will have to wait until tomorrow.  In the meantime, here's a couple of great pictures of the swarm that were captured by my neighbour Mark:

The swarm

Beekeeper fails to spot the blindingly obvious...