When I offered to write an occasional blog for Laurence I'd perhaps somewhat under estimated the amount of time a full time job, beekeeping and the rest of life would have on my ability to sit down and write something so it has been a little while since my last entry, which I hope you'll forgive and to try and make amends buckle up for a lot of unpacking the season gone by!
Just by way of a bit of background at the end of 2022 I was in a rut, debating giving it up, I'd lost an apiary site, I wasn't even sure if I still had any bees, I had a big pile of kit but no real appetite to keep going. A friend and neighbour in the village however asked if he could get involved, see what beekeeping was like and maybe give it a go. Over the winter he found an alternative site we could use and I thought we'd give one more year, maybe I could hand over my kit and ride off into the sunset or it'd give me a new lease of life. Fortunately it turned out be the latter.
Long story short, we went into winter 2023 with 3 nucs on two different sites and all 3 came through into spring this year... So we start 2024 with 2 Nucs on one site in National Poly Nucs. One nuc on another site on 14x12, all into April still alive and a decent size. I'm not going to dwell on the weather this year too much, we all know what it's been like and it's played some part in this year's proceedings, but when all is said and done, the summer hasn't actually been too bad even if it's hard to actually plan more than a few days ahead for most of it.
My basic plan, knowing we had 3 colonies to play with was basically:
Give my friend as much experience as possible. I wanted to try as many new techniques and options as out as possible, even where I already had firm opinions on what I thought was the "right" way to do something. Since I started beekeeping I've been told many times that 'this is the best way to do something, don't even bother to look at that' and so on. I've definitely formed some of my own opinions since. But where I felt we'd do no harm to the bees, if my friend has wanted to try something I've done my best to accommodate it and we've swapped notes, experiences and opinions at the end of it.
Expand the number of colonies, double up if we can. We've got 2 sites and a lot of spare kit for both hive sizes, can we reduce the spares piles into actual hives of bees and increase what we can do with them? Starting from 3 hives my target was to try and go into winter with 10 colonies in full size hives and/or Nucs. was agnostic on how we got there, and anticipated additional colonies coming from splits, from actively trying to raise queens and from the odd swarm or two
Get some honey. I haven't actually had a harvest for 2 seasons now, I get asked a lot when I'm getting some more, so for personal satisfaction and keep up the local "buzz" (sorry!) I'd like to have some honey again.
Honey! FInally!
I think I've achieved those goals. As of today in mid September 2024 we have:
60 jars of honey
3 full size colonies.
6 Nucs with Laying queens.
This year we have:
Compared 14x12 and National Hives
Experimented with Castellated spacers in Brood boxes
Compared DN1 + Spacers vs DN4 Hoffman Frames
Done a Pagden Artificial Swarm
Tried a Demaree to make nucs
Attempted to produce cut comb
Collected a swarm
Tried foundation and foundation-less frames in the supers
Bought in a couple of queens and introduced to Nuc and Full Size Colonies.
Tried different queen "catchers" cages and other techniques for catching and marking queens.
Mucked up at different times on all of the above.
Tried out different Hive tools
Made a solar extractor
Made hive stands
Still to collect some propolis now the honey is off
Managed to not actually spend very much money.
So I think that all things considered we've actually had a pretty good season. I would have liked a bit more honey and a few more Nucs, but I think we've done a lot, learned a lot and I have definitely re-found my "mojo" when it comes to beekeeping despite the reaction I had to getting stung yesterday! (might a separate blog post in that.) So to dig a little bit deeper:
National vs 14x12 Brood
I had started on Nationals and moved to 14x12 several years ago, back in 2020 I decided to experiment with Double Brood Nationals so I have two apiaries on different hives. My general feeling is that I still quite like 14x12 for the overall size of frame it gives the bees, but they definitely have their downsides. The frames are long, it can be difficult for the bees to draw them out consistently especially when the stands are not level. They aren't very flexible and as essentially brood and a half size they are heavy.
We quite like Double brood, the frames fit in the extractor, much easier to heave about, the long lugs on the frames make handling easy, dead easy to chop and change what is going on. We also tried with reasonable success the technique of moving frames of stores to the top brood box keeping space in the lower for the queen to lay and/or bees to draw comb. We've discounted going to (yet another) different hive configuration simply because of the amount of existing kit we have, but do want to try the Abelo Poly National.
My beekeeping neighbours are also part of the decision making here, they are all on National Brood and the ability to easily beg a frame of eggs, or borrow a bit of kit is that much easier when you're using the same kit as everyone else!
Verdict: Moving forwards I think we are settled on National Brood boxes.
Castellated Spacers in Brood boxes
This was very much a try not to let my personal opinion get in the way of trying something. I know some people swear by them so we gave them a go. Thankfully we both hate it! Your mileage might vary, don't let me put you off but we hated it. Ok in supers we both feel but a pain in the brood boxes. What we don't like is: It's difficult not to roll bees removing frames. On runners you can remove a frame or two to give you space to pull a frame back so you can lift it out gently. It's hard to get the frames out in the first place, they propolise the frames and the castellated spacers make it hard to get to a point you can try and lift things out. A "J" type hive tool can help here, but they're un-affectionately known as "lug breakers" when it comes to Nationals for a reason. If you need to do something that requires going back to a frame it's harder because everything has its specific place. E.g. dealing with swarm cells seems harder to deal with because you need to go through the rest of the brood box and there's nowhere convenient to put the frames.
Verdict: It was a short lived experiment and not one we want to repeat, quick trip to the local supplier for some extra runners and spacers and back we went.
DN1 vs DN4 (Hoffman) Frames
In the grand scheme of things I think I prefer DN1 with spacers, but there have been occasions we needed spacers and couldn't find a spare or two, really annoying! Hoffman frames have the spacing built into the sidebars, they don't move about, get stuck or require propolis scraping off to get a spacer on, if you can find one when you need it. The narrower spacing between frames generally means you need a dummy board to plug a gap at the back of the brood box but all things considered they are a bit less faff than DN1 + plastic spacers.
Verdict: Personally I think the extra mm or two that DN1 gives is better, they gum up less than DN4 and you don't need a dummy board, but we are going to standardise on DN4 Hoffman frames for less overall messing about moving forwards.
Hive tools
Again in the interests of trying not to let my preferences dictate future travel the one thing I let my friend spend money on was hive tools and we bought a couple of each type. even with castellated spacers we have managed not to break any lugs with the "J" type hive tool:
but we have decided that the flat tool:
wins. It's also the best DIY bit of kit I have in my armoury. You would not believe the number of general DIY things get solved with "let me just grab a hive tool" :).
Farming friends also playing a part in this part of our kit by supplying some sheep feed buckets for our soda solution that the tools live in when not actually in a beehive. Big enough to hold the tools, deep enough not to slosh soda solution all over the back of the Land Rover.
(Used to buy in pound shops, but is on amazon. Support your pound shop!)
The Soda also scotched the not entirely daft idea of colour coding hive tools for each apiary by washing off all the nice red paint that a new hive tool comes coated in once left to soak in Soda for a few days.
Verdict: J Tools are the work of the devil, but I have one in the kit bag anyway.