Making Splits and Doing My Best To Keep Ahead Of The Bees
As the 2024 season moves towards the later stages and before we know it, we will be feeding up the bees for winter, I found myself WELL overdue on giving you an update on how my season has gone so far. Like most beekeepers this year I have spent far too much time looking at the forecast and praying for better weather! But was it really all that bad?
Yes, if you’re looking for a bumper honey crop, but as I have been building up colony's to make splits and my main focus not being honey as I stand I'm quite happy with how things have gone so far.
As you know early on, I double brooded a few hives to make early splits, with the weather being far from perfect. It was 8C with a north wind on the day I did my first round of splits. But with the queens in hand, I had no choice but to get on with job. I had double brood hives at each apiary, so I could make the splits, move the bees to the next apiary, then make the splits there and so on.
I made my life harder but also saved myself a fair chunk of money by placing my splits into full size hives right from the go. This took a little planning with equipment being dropped to each apiary the day before as I wouldn't have enough space for all the hives in one go.
The extra running around is worth the gain. The main gain that I achieved by using the insulated spacer was that I would not need to jump from a 6 frame nuc up to a full-size hive. I had the ability to slowly increase the number of frames that were required to keep ahead of the bees. Along with the insulated board I made up some spacers out of 6 inch gravel board, this was stuffed with rock wool insulation to avoid heat loss through the roof.
This said, the rate of growth of the BMH F1 Buckfast queens was prolific. Once her first cycle of brood had emerged, and the cycle of brood had started their growth rate was phenomenal! You can buy queen bees here - https://www.blackmountainhoney.co.uk/product-page/f1-buckfast-queen-bees-for-sale
Most of these early splits have now been split again and have supers on. As you would with making most splits I was feeding them. At this point I was having to keep a close eye on all of my hives and feed when required! There was sufficient pollen coming in as the bees were flying when they had a chance. This came at a surprise due to the weather we were having.
Requeening Black Bees
When I started the season, I only had one hive of local black bees left to requeen with a Buckfast. This colony was a classic colony of local mongrels and they were grumpy to say the least! This was the one hive I always left to last to inspect due to 2 reasons. One if I did them first, I was still getting followed about when I was inspecting the rest of my hives and two well I just didn’t really enjoy doing them!
Their behaviour got even better when I killed the queen! The inspection at day seven when I went into take down the queen cells was far from enjoyable, shaking the bees off the frames to make sure I had the best available chance of success led to a large number of bees in the air who were far from happy.
But my bravery led to success, with the new queen accepted there was light at the end of the tunnel! For those who have badly behaved bees, I will say its far from an instant fix, you are waiting for all of her offspring to take over the hive before the colony settles down.
Along with the second issue, the black bees just don’t want to give up. For weeks following I was having to take down queen cells, at every opportunity the colony were desperate to hold onto their genetics. But now I have a very calm efficient colony with 5 supers on, so it was worth the effort.
The move to Langstroth ish
I had made the decision to purchase a over winter BMH Langstroth nuc in January, but this would lead me to running two different hive types. Something that people keep saying is not a great idea. I see where they are coming from as I now find that a little more planning is required when loading the van when heading out on inspections.
The main reason for the split was to open more doors down the line, as I SLOWLY create a small business from the bees. With the line of thought is that if I have commercial and Langstroth I can make nucs on various sizes, if required.
I am not 100% on what direction I will take, honey or Nuc sales, maybe both. If down the line I wanted to become a Bee farmer then what part of the industry would I slip into. My main concern is the UK honey market. But for now, my intentions are to stay in full time employment and to slowly find my feet with the bees. After all I still have a lot of knowledge through experience to gain, but I would like to say at this point thank you to those who have helped me out already along the way.
I have made small steps over this season, creating my own brand, labels and products. Moving everything forward to become compliant in all areas of the business and entering the world of social media! Doing you tube videos is far from in my mind, but a bit of Facebook is the starting point, so here is my shameless plug, Southwell Bees on Facebook, a like and a follow would be greatly appreciated!
Back to Beekeeping
Within my change of hive type, I ended up converting a commercial to Langstroth. Again this showed me the power and just how prolific the F1 Buckfast can be. Essentially I ended up on double brood. By luck more than judgment this ended up coinciding with a break in the weather along with a flow coming on and boy did they start filling supers!
Of all the the parts to the bee season that have given me headaches, this year supers has been the biggest! I hugely underestimated the amount that I needed, when I made up my plan and little spreadsheet (that has now been deleted) I had not anticipated that the early splits would build up so quickly and therefore had not got myself enough supers.
Luckily I have been helped out by my mentor who had a pile spare, but it has not been enough currently I am behind the bees not ahead. I fear this could lead to some self-inflicted problems. I went through a long spell with anywhere between 4-6 supers on hives that are full of bees but not finished so that I could remove them.
With the last round of good weather, they have now filled them but I don’t have the empties to add on to remove the full. I have been getting around this by removing one super in the evening, extracting it and then getting it back on in the morning.
So yet another hard lesson has been learnt, make sure you have enough equipment ready to go at all times! I can see a lot of work this winter to get me where I want to be.
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