BeeLines - May '25

If you have plans to split a hive - now may be the time! I am assuming a brood box that is pretty well full of bees with, say, brood on 6 or more frames. Continuing high pressure is giving us sunny weather, most hives have emerging drones, and the flowers on the bramble will soon be joining the already plentiful May blossom on the hedgerow hawthorn bushes; all good news for honey bees.

If you are confident to find the queen (is she marked?) the Pagden method can be used - see the LLEBKA Links to the WBKA Booklets https://llebka.org.uk/dolenni-links/ and/or numerous online videos.

If you can’t find the queen you can ‘simply’ divide the colony into two halves, between two brood boxes - i.e. your original brood box and one other brood box. The ‘half’ without a queen will raise a new queen. The two hives are centred where the original hive was positioned, and adjusted, if necessary, to share the flying bees between the two hives. This split was successfully achieved on 5th May by Alex and is shown in the three photos - thank you Alex for permission to use these great photos. Fig. 1 shows the top of the brood frames once the super (with honey) and queen excluder has been removed. It shows a strong colony with brace comb and broken drone brood. Fig. 2 shows the brood frames divided between two boxes - additional frames with foundation are still to be added to complete the 11 frames per brood box. Fig. 3 shows the two hives occupying the position of the original hive, and was taken later in the afternoon when the ‘excited bee activity’ of the spilt had calmed-down.

If you would like to discuss splitting hives feel able to contact ourselves or any committee member. Splitting a hive is a method of swarm control - but no method is a 100% guarantee of this!

Splitting a colony early in the season (now!) is a form of ‘pre-emptive’ swarm control, and assumes it is done prior to queen cells being made. Of course, you don’t have to do this, and may prefer to monitor your hives for queen cells. Once queen cells are made the colony will swarm unless remedial action is taken. Some hives, ‘magic hives’ will not make queen cells and just collect loads of honey - you will only identify such a hive if you monitor but don’t split it pre-emptively. The choice is yours!

Thanks to James and Vicky for the recently installed and informative links on our Association website https://llebka.org.uk/dolenni-links/

We would particularly direct you to the presentation on Welsh Black Bees by Dylan Elen, and also, the high quality presentations from the B4 2025 Symposium.

The B4 Project is about sustainable beekeeping with locally adapted native or near native bees. https://www.b4project.co.uk/

I thought about the importance of this project and its aims after the last LLEBKA apiary meeting - the apiary bees were so well behaved and a pleasure to handle. It was a busy meeting with some 30 members and the sun and temperature were just right for the meeting after a cool start to the day. Colonies were split and hives left open longer than ideal, while questions were answered and everyone had the chance to see eggs and queens being marked. We are so lucky with our local bees and we really do not want imported subspecies or their hybrids, such as so-called Buckfast bees, to introduce F2 aggressive traits. An article recently drawn to my attention documents the spread of non-native honey bees across Europe and makes the point that these are invasive species. The article is by authors Bouga & Kryger, with the title, “Invasive Alien Species native to parts of the EU; The European honey bee (Subspecies of Apis mellifera)”. I have a copy and will send it to any members requesting a copy.

I could stop here… but if you would like to hear of some mistakes that we made you are welcome to read-on…Mistakes! Do we ever stop making them? Clearly the answer is ‘no!’ Here are two recent examples - and they both caused problems for the same hive.

On the 2nd March we made a mistake by introducing bees rescued from a fallen tree (memories of Storm Darragh). The bees, a small collection of about 1 pint, were queenless. We made certain there was no queen by introducing them into the top of a hive through a queen-excluder, and hoped to encourage their acceptance by spraying them with sugar syrup. We tried to help these ‘lost souls’ but it did not work! The next day there was a small pile of dead bees below the hive entrance. Shân pointed out that for every bee killed (by the hive occupants) there would be two dead bees, i.e. the killing bee would die with its barbed sting unretractable. I thought the size of the pile was only about the size of the bees introduced. However, Shân has logic on her side and is probably right. That was Mistake One. And the lesson is to be very careful of introducing ‘random’ bees into a hive. The ‘newspaper method’ of uniting two colonies in the Autumn has always worked for us, but with other introductions our advice is do be very cautious - or just don’t.

Mistake Two was initiated on 20th March when we briefly checked hives for brood and changed the solid floors - of course we did not realise we were making a mistake. On 3rd April with the onset of this current spell of high pressure and warm sunny weather, we took supers to our hives in the evening. When we reached the hives there was clearly something different and puzzling to be seen at one hive; coincidentally the same hive as mentioned above in Mistake One. It was coated with bees! They were all over the roof, around the sides of the hive, and there was even a small beard hanging below the entrance. What was going on! I lifted the roof and pow, a cloud of bees that covered the top surface of the crown board took off and into the air. And they were not happy! Not happy at all. It has been quite a while since I have tasted bee venom. They were at me! I suggested to Shân that she should move away. I was stunned, very puzzled and slightly alarmed. What the heck was ‘going on’? I carefully lifted the crown board and observed that the bees looked relatively calm and normal between the brood frames. However, the attack was not diminishing and I advised Shân to move well away while I replaced the crown board and roof. Although the temperature was quite warm, it was early evening and I had not used any smoke. But this bee behaviour was totally unexpected and very unpleasant. I walked slowly away and it took quite a while and some distance to shed the last determined attacker. We both went over the event in our dreams that night: not nightmares yet, but if we couldn’t resolve this very puzzling situation nightmares might follow! The next day we were out, but in the evening, after it was dark, I viewed the hive cautiously, and from a respectful distance, by torch light out of sheer curiosity. Other than a cluster by the entrance there were no other bees to be seen.

(By the way, never attempt to inspect bees in the dark by torchlight. It doesn’t work! The disturbed bees will come at you, attach themselves to your clothing and…then they are ‘stuck’, seemingly unable to re-orientate and return to their hive in the darkness. Yes, that was another mistake we made… but that was a long time ago). The following day, 5th April and still with the ongoing lovely sun and warmth, we went to have a thorough investigation of the problem hive. The hive was gently but well ‘smoked’ and opened. Again there were an unusual number of bees around the hive and on top of the crown board. The bees were boisterous but not as bad as the two evenings before. All our hives have come through the winter with stores to spare, with two to four brood frames of sealed honey either side of the brood nest. Three frames of sealed honey were removed to give free access to the remaining frames. Looking down into the hive I noticed dead bees on the solid floor. The brood box was lifted off and the floor removed. It had a thin layer of dead bees, which were tipped some distance away. No queen was found amongst them. We then realised - Shân noticed - the dead bees were on the bottom surface of the floor: the clean floor had been placed with its entrance facing down! The bees had been unable to access their hive for 16 days! Many of you may think this is crazy. With proprietary mesh floors that are used by many members, it is very unlikely that this silly mistake will be made. Our DIY solid floors have no loose ‘entrance block’, just a small entrance cut out of one of the four sides - the underside is not too different from the top side (that is the only feeble excuse we can muster!)

The frames were examined and had sealed brood, but no eggs or larvae - and no queen could be seen. We assumed the colony was queenless. Was this the result of being trapped in the hive for 16 days? And were the dead bees on the floor the result of this incarceration, or were they related to the previously mentioned disastrous ‘bees introduced’? There are details we cannot fully understand or explain. What was clear, however, was the bees had resumed their usual reasonable to good behaviour. Thank Goodness! And what a big relief.

The colony still has plenty of bees, emerging bees and sealed brood on four frames - but no queen. We therefore cut a 40mm circle of comb - with eggs - from another hive and introduced it into the hive we had not looked after at all well. Hopefully the colony can raise queen cells and (hopefully again) it will not be too early for drones to be available to mate with a new princess queen: to be continued…

It is possible we have learnt from this second mistake. Notwithstanding the missing queen and the dead bees which we can’t fully explain, it is interesting to note that the ‘trapped colony’ did survive its entombment for 16 warmish days with just a minimum of ventilation. It is also possible that the bees found a minute entrance under the roof - hence the bees inside the roof and above the crown board. It is also interesting to note that the bees (probably) excluded from the hive did not desert their colony. And where were the bees when I could not see them by torchlight; possibly inside the roof, or Shân suggests, hanging beneath the hive on the (upside down) floor.

An update on ‘Mistake Two’: The hive did not make any queen cells on the 40mm circle of the introduced comb - they simply turned the eggs into worker brood. We found this when we examined the colony on 30th April and observed fresh brood. Contrary to our opinion the colony still had its original, and marked, queen; she had just stopped laying during the confinement caused by our silly mistake!

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