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June

DEALING WITH AN AGGRESSIVE COLONY
In early May one of the colonies in my teaching apiary started to display excessive defensive behaviour, following and stinging people for about 100 metres from the hive. I practice a zero-tolerance policy for this kind of behaviour for the following reasons:

• It is very unpleasant for me and for the people who come to the apiary to learn.
• It is bad for relations with the neighbours and members of the public passing by.
• The drones carrying the aggressive gene will mate with young queens from the area and pass on the bad behaviour to other beekeepers’ colonies.

The genetic line from which this colony was raised has so far been faultless. The colonies in my home and teaching apiaries are well known for their gentleness and calmness on the comb.
The queen was bred by me last year and until recently was being considered as an egg donor for queen raising this year.
Apart from genetic reasons, colonies can turn aggressive when there is a sudden end of a nectar flow, when robbing is taking place, when they are invaded by pests, when disturbed by noise or clumsy handling by the beekeeper. None of these conditions were present.
Varroa testing by CO2 produced only one mite from a sample of 300 bees. There were no signs of adult or brood diseases.  
Recently, the Kakugo virus (KV), which was only detected in the brain of aggressive workers of Italian bees by real-time PCR, was suggested to trigger behavioural changes in honey bees^1. My bees are not Italians, but there has been so much hybridisation that it’s impossible to know if there is any trace of Italian stock in their lineage. It’s a long shot, but it could explain the mystery of why a well-behaved colony turned nasty for no apparent reason.

Actions
The actions I took, with the help of leaners in the group, were as follows:

Conclusion  
Both colonies are calm and strong in numbers, building up for the summer flow.  
It was possible to deal with an aggressive colony by:

• splitting up the flying bees from the nurse bees
• killing the drone brood to prevent the aggressive genes from being passed on during mating,
• culling the queen.
• uniting them separately with other colonies.

Reference:  
1. Deformed wing virus is not related to honey bees’ aggressiveness. Agnès Rortais, Diana Tentcheva, Alexandros Papachristoforou, Laurent Gauthier, Gérard Arnold, Marc Edouard Colin & Max Bergoin      Virology Journal volume 3, Article number: 61 (2006) 

by Alan Baxter

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NEW START FOR 2025
Having lost four colonies in my first year I decided that when I started again this year, it would be with 100% new frames in the brood boxes and used supers. What to do with forty four 14×12 brood frames and twenty odd super frames.  I would clean the frames and recover the wax. Firstly, using my Heath Robinson wax extractor (see Ingenuity page) I stripped  the frames.  Then using the ‘Andy Method’ (2024 Association external speaker on wax cleaning) I rendered the wax and achieved 10LB of wax.  The wife can now have her oven back! Overall cost of all equipment, about £15.
by Tim Cooper.

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May

TITCHFIELD FAYRE – 4th May 2025
What a turnout today was at Titchfield fayre! We completely sold out of honey within just a few hours!! It was incredible to see so many people interested in what we do and why we do it, especially spotting the queens in the observation hives and watching the bees get to work. We even had a candle rolling activity which everyone seemed to enjoy as well! It was a great day at the fayre getting to meet loads of new people and hear their own experiences with bees, whether it was about their own bees or just bees they happened to come across in their everyday life! Thank you Titchfield community for allowing us to share our stories and hopefully get some of you interested in beekeeping yourself!
by Nathan Palmer

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April

EASTER BONNET OR CRASH HELMET?

Neither!  And you should be ashamed of not recognising a skep-in-the-making!

This weekend gone was the National Bee convention held at Harper Adams University in darkest Shropshire.  The sous-chef spent a day working on the microscope: pollen and dissected bees.  I started on the skep.  Think of it as a very tight, hard spiral of twisted straw, lashed together with long strands of other plant material.  This is what was used in bygone years to house bees and you might recognise it from various honey labels.  My skep only got as far as the crash helmet stage after 6 hours (and others in the group hadn’t even got that far).  Back home with a sack of thatcher’s straw, I’ll be finishing it over the next week or so.  Nowadays, some beekeepers will use skeps to gather up swarms of bees in the next few months (actually, lots use a cardboard box).  But mine might end up being a cherished family heirloom.

You might have spotted the couple of flowers adorning the not-quite-bonnet.  These are the results of nearly two hours hard labour turning sheets of coloured wax into fine blooms.  I think that those running the course were surprised that even a blind person could manage to make them.  It just goes to show that having no sight needn’t hold anyone back.  On the other hand, nearly half a century ago, I was in one of the tiny Capodimonte potteries in Naples (previous life as a naval officer) where they challenged me to knock up a flower from a ball of clay – Yes, managed it.

It was a terrific event, beautifully organised with special care taken to make sure that I was safe and sound throughout.  Massive thanks to Joyce and her team.  The University features agricultural and associated courses (remember Ruth from The Archers went there) so the food was excellent, the dance band was outrageous and the average age was well over 50.

We also attended several lectures and the renowned Roger Patterson from West Sussex stole the days.  It was a wonderful opportunity to meet fellow beekeepers (Mark and Wendy from Northern Ireland, the brace of vicars from Dorset and so many more that I can’t possibly list here).  A truly wonderful opportunity to meet like-minded people, argue over the finer points of beekeeping and still enjoy each other’s company.  Thumbs up to the British Beekeeping Association for another winner.

by Penny Melville-Brown

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March

ASSOCIATION COLONY UPDATE
The colony that was kindly donated by David Marsden, a former FDBKA member, has completed its quarantine.  It has been treated with Oxalic Acid for phoretic varroa and passed a health and temperament assessment before being moved to the Training Apiary 10 days ago.  This is the same procedure as for a collected swarm of unknown origin.
An inspection on Sunday 23 March revealed a colony in great need of a complete change of equipment. Many of the brood frames were rotten and broke easily, and the whole brood box was bunged up with propolis, brace comb and honey.
It was decided a shook swarm should be done as soon as the weather is warm enough.

Why Shook Swarm?
Shook swarms are carried out on colonies that need a complete change of comb or have a high level of Chalkbrood infection.  It is also a treatment for low levels of EFB that may be ordered by a Bee Inspector.
The benefit is that the colony starts again in a completely new home that is varroa-free and without of all the debris and accumulated detritus that older comb contains. Shook swarmed colonies are said to take to grow much more vigorously afterwards.
It is only suitable for colonies with at least 6 seams of bees and enough young bees 10-20 days old to draw out the large amount of comb required. A feed of thick sugar syrup is needed, even if there is a nectar flow.  Smaller colonies can be shook swarmed into a Nuc.
Shook swarm can be done between March and July. However, all the brood is lost, so shook swarm should not be carried out in the weeks before the main nectar flow as there won’t be enough foragers to benefit from it.

Equipment

• Clean floor
• Queen excluder
• Foam entrance blocker
• Clean brood box
• 11 frames of foundation
• Crown board
• Rapid feeder
• 4.5 Litres thick syrup
• Roof
• Large bin bag for old frames to be destroyed.

Method

• Move the hive to one side
• Clean the ground underneath of any debris
• Add the clean floor
• Add the queen excluder
• Add the brood box. The flying bees will return to this box.
• Close the entrance with the foam blocker to keep the bees in the box.
• Put in the frames of foundation leaving out 4 frames in the middle
• Go through the original brood box and find the queen
• Cage the queen for safe keeping and keep her warm in your pocket
• Remove the frames from the original box one by one and shake the bees off with a sharp tug taking care not to knock the frame on the side of the box.
• Any bees still clinging to the frame can be lightly brushed or stroked off with the back of your hand or with a leafy twig (not a bee brush which can damage the bees and collect dirt or infection).
• When all the bees are in the new box carefully put the remaining frames in the space and let them sink down on their own. Do not push them down.
• Release the queen onto the new frames. Do not forget and take her home!
• Remove the entrance blocker to allow the flying bees to come and go.
• Add the feeder and syrup.
• Put on the crown board and roof.

Follow-up

• Once comb is drawn, and the queen has started to lay, the queen excluder can be removed.
• They need to be supplied with syrup until all the frames have been drawn out.
• Bees can’t draw comb next to the wall of the hive so the end frames should be turned round once one side is drawn.
• Supers can be put on once all the frames have been drawn out, but not before or they will start to work on the supers.
• Oxalic acid treatment can be given before any brood is capped. The colony will then be practically varroa-free.

by Alan Baxter

February

WINTER & SPRING LOSSES
Many beekeepers suffer colony losses in winter and early spring and wonder what happened. Most losses are avoidable so let’s have a look at some of the common reasons why colonies die out, how we can prevent it and what we can do to help colonies that are vulnerable.

Health
It is important to carry out a full health inspection of the adult bees and the brood after the summer harvest. A health inspection is a visit to the colony in its own right and not combined with other work. Learn to recognise what healthy bees and brood should look like, and how to detect when something is wrong. The BBKA pocket guide on honey bee health is an excellent addition to the beekeeper’s tool kit.

Starvationhis happens when the colony runs out of food and there is no foraging to bring in stores. This could be because:

• the beekeeper was greedy and took all the colony’s honey the previous summer.
• a genetic factor whereby the bees naturally eat a lot of food.
• a mild winter when the bees are very active and need more food for work.
• The queen continues to lay and more food is needed to feed the larvae.
• There are stores but the bees cannot reach them (isolation starvation).

Prevention

• Ensure you leave enough stores for the winter. An average colony needs about 20kg of honey to last until the following spring. That means several frames of capped stores in the brood box and at least one full super.
• If they have less than this in October, feed with 4 litres of thick sugar syrup.
• Remove the queen excluder so the cluster can go into the super and not leave the queen behind to die.
• Heft the hives every 2 weeks and top up with fondant if needed.
• Give pollen supplement e.g. Candipolline and fondant in February to provide nutrition for the larvae and to stimulate the queen to lay.

Varroa
If the varroa load is high it will bring stress on the bees in winter by feeding on their fat bodies and exposing them to fatal viruses such as Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) or Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV).

Normally in winter there is a period of no brood, and the mites cannot reproduce. If the winter is mild and the queen keeps laying, there is no brood break, the mites continue to reproduce in the brood cells and to grow exponentially.

Prevention
Varroa treatment in late summer and in early December, followed by monitoring to check the success or not of the treatment, must be carried out strictly in accordance with the manufacture’s instructions and recorded on VM2.

If the numbers of varroa in summer are too high, the population of mites will continue to grow as the number of bees declines, to the point where the colony is overwhelmed, see fig below:

Graph courtesy of Randy Oliver

Small colonies
If the colony going into winter is small, they won’t have enough bees to look after the queen and to keep the brood nest warm. The queen will die and the colony will dwindle and perish.

Prevention
In autumn, unite weak colonies that have less than 5 frames of brood or put them in a nuc which is easier to keep warm. Give stimulative feeding of thin syrup in September to encourage the queen to produce more winter bees, then thick syrup to lay down as stores.

Queen failure
A colony that loses its queen in autumn or winter won’t be able to replace her with a new mated queen and the colony will dwindle and die.

Prevention
Change queens that are more than 2 years old for a new queen. If the old queens are good ones and you can’t bear to part with them, ‘retire’ them to a nuc and use them for breeding new queens next year.
Always use locally bred queens from stock that is adapted to the local environment. Buying queens imported from another country or a different part of the UK is a recipe for failure.

Nosema
If nosema is present in summer, the bees can defaecate outside the hive and, in a strong colony, the disease will often go unnoticed. However, nosema reduces the bees’ ability to absorb protein, so the bees are weaker and have shorter lives. Come autumn and winter the bees are confined to the hive, the spores spread more quickly, the number of bees is reducing but the nosema spores keep increasing, leading to winter losses or failure to build up in spring.

Prevention
Test for nosema after the summer honey harvest. Send a sample of about 30 bees to a laboratory or a beekeeper who has microscope, for testing. Alternatively, kill a few bees and pull out their intestines with fine tweezers. The midgut should be yellowy-brown, if it’s white and fragile nosema is probably present.

Remedy
There is no treatment. The spores are deposited in the comb, so put them on clean comb using the Bailey comb change for a weak colony procedure, then feed them with 2:1 sugar syrup and pollen supplement and hope for the best.

Equipment:

• Clean brood chamber containing frames of sterilised drawn comb
• 4 Dummy boards
• Queen excluder and eke with entrance block or a Bailey Board.
• Crown board
• Floor
• Contact feeder and 2:1 sugar syrup.

Method: Day 1

• Take the frame with the queen on and place it in the new brood box.
• Remove all frames without brood from original brood box and any supers.
• Close up the remaining frames in the centre of the brood box with dummy boards.
• Put frames of new drawn comb in the new box on either side of the frame with the queen.
• Match the number of drawn combs with the number in the bottom box.
• Close up the space in centre of the new box with dummy boards.
• Put a queen excluder and an eke with an entrance block (or a Bailey Board if you have one) on the old brood box.
• Close the lower entrance.
• Place the new brood box with clean drawn frames above the lower brood box.
• Put on the clean crown board.
• Feed with 2:1 sugar syrup.
• Add the roof.
• Dispose of the old comb by burning.
• Scrape and disinfect by scorching the old frames.

Day 7

• The queen in the upper box should have moved onto the new frames and started to lay.
• Remove the old frame with the remaining brood and return it to the bottom box.
• Add more drawn sterilised frames to the new box and close up with dummy boards.
• Check lower box for queen cells and remove if found.
• Remove any frames that have no brood.
• Dispose of the old comb by burning.
• Continue to feed.

Day 7-28

• Add a few more drawn sterilised frames in the top brood box.
• Remove frames with no brood from the bottom box.
• Dispose of the old comb by burning.
• Replenish the feed.

Day 28

• Place a clean floor on the stand and add an entrance blocker.
• Put the upper box on the new floor and adjust the entrance.
• Add a queen excluder then the super(s).
• Close the hive with the clean crown board and the roof.
• Remove, scrape and disinfect the old queen excluder and upper entrance or Bailey Board, lower brood box and old floor.
• Dispose of old comb by burning .

by Alan Baxter

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January

THE APIARY IN JANUARY
The days are getting longer and lighter, birdsong is in the air, there’s a growing sense of the earth awakening, reenergised after a long sleep. The winter bees in the darkness of their hives can feel this change and they are starting to prepare for spring. On milder days they will venture out on cleansing flights and to forage for pollen on Hazel, Willow, Snowdrops, early Crocus and Garrya elliptica. The incoming pollen will stimulate the queen to lay eggs and the winter bees will start to be busy again, feeding the larvae and keeping them warm.

During the coldest days of winter, the colony will have formed a cluster around the queen, maintaining a core temperature of about 18 deg C while they are broodless. The bees on the outside of the cluster or mantle, can tolerate temperatures as low as 8 deg C before they fall off and die. However, once there is brood the colony must raise the temperature of the brood nest to 35 deg C. They generate heat by a sort of shivering where they flex the big powerful flight muscles in the thorax without moving their wings.

Temperatures of the winter cluster

Some beekeepers note that their colonies are never broodless which puts an extra strain on the winter bees who must keep the brood nest at 35 deg C and feed the young larvae. They eat carbohydrate in the form of honey or sugar as fuel, so it’s important to check the weight of the hives regularly by hefting to make sure they have enough stores.

Apart from ensuring the hives are secure against the storms, checking that they have enough food, and topping up with fondant if required, there’s not much for the beekeeper to do in the apiary. In the bee shed it’s worth checking any stored supers to see if the wax moth treatment needs to be repeated, and all the usual winter jobs of repair and maintenance of equipment, making up new, or refurbishing old frames with fresh foundation ready for the coming season.
Spring is just around the corner and will be upon us before we know it.

by Alan Baxter

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JANUARY MEETING
Around 40 people attended our first meeting of 2025 on Thursday 2nd January in Catisfield memorial Hall. In addition to members there were several potential new beekeepers who are soon to commence the FDBKA beginners course.

The main part of the evening was a team quiz where six teams of mixed experience answered beekeeping related questions set by quizmaster Alan Baxter. The 3 part quiz was challenging for most, especially with the tough adjudicating by Greg Young. The Workers team were victorious with a total of 37 points.

We also made some very helpful income from the sale of second-hand equipment – some snatched up at bargain prices by those beginners.

Quotes of some attendees:
“Was great to see so many people there and was nice to see the enthusiasm the newbies had and the welcome they were given.”
“What a lovely evening.  Lots of fun.  Lots of people.  Brilliant!”

by Pete Wilson