BeeLines - January '25

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda. Happy New Year. Best wishes to everyone for an interesting and successful beekeeping year. How are your plans going for the season ahead? It might only be 100 days until the first swarm appears!

Over 7th & 8th December Storm Darragh brought significant damage to our area, with many people having several days without electricity and phone lines. We were lucky on this occasion that our electricity was only off for a few hours. Either side of us both Llanfrothen and Beddgelert had power outages. Most roads around us had significant problems with fallen trees, and were closed for many hours or a number of days. Our hives at home were okay with their heavy stones on their roofs. Two days after the storm we went to check the hives at our out-apiary. Along the lane to the hives we had to drive under an archway of fallen trees, the lower branches luckily having been removed by, we guess, the local farmer standing on the back of his pickup. Again, and luckily, the hives were okay. The only issue is the large fallen tree whose limbs straddle the field gate that we use. We hope no-one had hives blown over.

In 2023 we wrote in March BeeLines. “Will 2023 be the year when treatment-free beekeeping becomes normalised with beekeepers across the UK? Probably not, but we predict it will become a subject of interest with many more beekeepers…”

It is now January 2025 and we predict this may well be the year when the awareness of varroa resistant (VR) honey bees and treatment-free (TF) beekeeping does become significantly more prominent in the UK. Two pieces of evidence highlight this possibility. Firstly, BIBBA has taken the decision to endorse and promote TF beekeeping. Secondly, BIBBA has organised a Conference on, “Varroa Resistance through Bee Improvement”, to be held on 15th February near Stratford-upon-Avon.

BiBBA https://bibba.com/ supports the keeping of locally adapted bees and is against the importing of bees. For these two reasons we support BIBBA. If we had a magic wand we would change the title of the organisation to ‘The Native British Honey Bee Society’ - which we believe would be a better description. The BIBBA website has lots of useful and practical information available for non-members.

The BIBBA Conference https://bibba.com/varroa-resistance-through-bee-improvement/ looks likely to bring the topic of varroa resistant bees and treatment-free beekeeping to the notice of many more beekeepers in the UK. We better declare an interest, as we will both be at the Conference and Clive will be co-presenting with the other speakers - beekeepers of Llŷn & Eifionydd BKA will be sure to get a mention!

Hive weight changes. On 1st January we weighed the 7 hives we have nominated for this exercise, and found that they had all lost weight during December. The average loss was 0.61kg. The largest loss was 0.95kg, and the smallest was 0.21kg.

When you keep bees you occasionally observe a behaviour that you find hard to explain; we think the following is one example. “A Worker’s Christmas Adventure - A Story of Endurance and Sisterly Care”. In summary; we visited Llandanwg beach on Sunday 15th December. It was about 12.30pm when we arrived at the carpark and, as we got out, Shân spotted a dark-coloured honey bee on the white roof of our car. ‘Must be one of ours’, we said, as we have never seen bees at Llandanwg even on Summer days. We assumed it was dead and remarked that it had done well to stay fixed to the car roof. The following day at home at 3.45pm Shân, again, noticed a bee in exactly the same position - it had to be the same one! Our minds-boggled with the following thoughts: over 27 hours stuck to a car roof with an ambient temperature in single figures and travelled around 25 miles, how? As the bee was perfectly displayed on the white coloured roof I got my camera to take her photo. As I focused for a close-up shot I thought I saw her feelers move! I looked closely and ‘yes’ they were moving ever so slightly. I got a cotton wool bud with a tiny drop of honey on one end and offered this to the bee, while at the same time, gently huffing warm air on her. She moved! And very, very slowly she climbed onto the bud. I took the bee into the kitchen, propped the cotton wool bud and went to find Shân. When we came back her tongue was clearly out and eating the honey. Within a few minutes her wings were ‘buzzing’ and we placed the cotton wool bud and bee into a jam jar with a lid. What to do? It was now after 4.00pm and heavily dusk. I took it to a hive where I had seen a few bees flying earlier in the day. The bee was now trying to fly in the jar as I knelt by the hive entrance and tried to shake her out. The bee wouldn’t come out but I did manage to knock on the wood of the entrance and a few bees immediately emerged from the hive. Luckily, at that moment the bee seemed to shoot out and join the small throng of about six other bees. I watched, wondering what would happen. The bees gathered around the stranger, and then one by one they all slipped back into the hive, A happy ending we believe.

If you have comments, information, a bee story or tips you would like to share with members please let us know and I will include them in BeeLines.