Pupa Overboard

During yesterday's midday check of the Apiary I noticed a couple of bees on the ground just off to the side of Hive 2. They were struggling with something which looked unusually white.
On closer inspection it turned out to be a honeybee pupa.

The Mysterious Ejected Pupa

It was the only one that I could see and it just seemed a bit odd.
I was a bit perplexed.
The only way the pupa could have got there is by being physically dragged out of its cell by the workers and ejected off the edge of the landing board.
I'm not sure why though.

I had a quick trawl through the internet forums and the strongest suggestion seems to be that the colony is exhibiting 'hygienic qualities' which, apparently, is a good quality for them to exhibit.
It means that they are monitoring the brood for signs of things being not quite right, chewing open any dodgy cells and discarding the imperfect incumbents.
So the discarded pupa may imply that they've detected mites or it may imply that there's wax worm present in the hive.
However, on my regular checks there's been no sign of varroa whatsoever and there doesn't seem to be evidence of waxmoth either.
In fact, the colony seems exceedingly healthy and robust.

In addition, the pupa was quite big which implies that it was possibly a drone pupa. The ejection could be part of a general drone ejection due to a summer dearth of nectar flow. It's possible, but I must admit, I've not noticed much of a dearth recently, quite the opposite, in fact.

It's been 3 days since my last inspection so I suppose it could have been a pupa that I perhaps had inadvertently damaged. This is also a possibility but not, by any means, a certainty.

Consequently, I'm still not particularly sure what's going on.
It may be nothing serious but it'd be nice to know all the same.

It looks like it's time for some detective work down at the Apiary.

A Long Overdue Update from the BeesofSpike Apiary

The BeesofSpike are back online.

LandofSpike would like to offer his sincere apologies for his absence from the blogosphere over the last few weeks and for the lack of news from the BeesofSpike. 

This isn't due to a lack of action in the Apiary nor is it due to any Bee-related disasters. In fact, the BeesofSpike are now in the best of health, the colony has expanded excellently and the bees are currently storing up plenty of provisions in readiness for the winter.

LandofSpike's work in the Apiary has continued unabated but he has unfortunately been unable to devote any time to the blog due mainly to the demands of the BeeKeeperJuniors' summer holidays and a sizeable workload in the pesky WorldofReality.

Fortunately he has taken meticulous BeeNotes and will, in time, be able to transcribe all the action to the Land of Bees blog. 

He has also, whenever possible, photographed the important elements of his inspections, his day-to-day observations and any other bee-related activity. 

It was good to see new comb appearing on the new frames

In addition, he and the ever present BKJ1, have recorded every inspection with the trusty CamcorderofSpike.

BKJ1, inspecting

So, with the excuses out of the way, LandofSpike can now reveal that, since our last post, the bees have been doing just fine.

There she is... the important looking one in the middle

Once the good weather kicked in on July 20th and once the mite situation was under control the colony started to thrive. 

The bees eventually moved into top gear for the end of the summer.

The new comb and stores of honey have been appearing at an ever increasing pace and the new Super has filled extremely quickly.

LandofSpike has decided to leave his Bees with the Super in place for the winter. The focus for this year is to get the colony through the winter and leaving them with a big box of full and heavy frames of capped honey seems to be an obvious choice.

Honey production up and running

They are currently harvesting the final pollen of the year.

Close to the Apiary, the grounds of Spike Towers are home to large swathes of ivy so the workers are stocking up while they can.

I counted them all out and I counted them all back

The BeesofSpike have developed a seasonal taste for syrup and they are consequently taking down industrial amounts of 2:1 sugar solution from the top feeder.

Their concerted effort at draining it dry started in the first week of September and they've been at it ever since.

BeesofSpike workers taking syrup from the feeder

LandofSpike has today returned from the local supermarket with his sixth 5 kilo pack of cane sugar of the Autumn. 
He has made up yet another batch of syrup and is just waiting for it to cool before refilling the feeder in the morning.
Details of their syrup consumption will be dealt with in a separate post and will also include the methodology for preparing the feed.

A familiar sight in the LandofSpike kitchens over the past month

The varroa count is down to about 1 per day, which means that the Apiguard has done its job perfectly. The All Clear has been sounded and the colony should be able to overwinter without fear of mite attack.

There is consequently now no sign of DWV (deformed wing virus) which, whilst the varroa had hold, had afflicted some BeesofSpike workers.

A week's worth of Varroa in mid September. All hail Apiguard

The Drones have all now been booted out. 
This took place around the end of August and the start of September.

Watching workers escorting drones to the edge of the landing board then encouraging them, nightclub bouncer style, to take off into the blue, was fascinating. 

You could almost see the workers dusting off their hands as they swaggered back to the hive, job done.

No way back for the Drones

LandofSpike's smoker technique has also improved.

From a shaky, hit and miss start, he has developed a sure fire, works-every-time method. There will shortly be a smoker-dedicated post revealing his methods to a waiting world.

Foolproof smoker lighting technique soon to be revealed!

Right, that's all for now.
It's been a rather sketchy, and not particularly cohesive, précis of the recent activity in the Apiary but hopefully it gets us up to speed on the current situation.

There is an awful lot more BeesofSpike info to upload in the near future so LandofSpike is going to try and sort it into bite-size chunks.

The next post will be along very shortly.

Not All Bees are Created Equal... Honeybee Castes

Today the Land of Bees transports you back a few weeks to early April and it's a return to school at Apiary Central with BeeGuru1.

It's 9*C and looking like rain. The lesson is held outdoors.

LandofSpike is now starting to doubt the wisdom of wearing just a tshirt.

Well, it had been really very warm the day before...

However, he is from the East Coast and therefore dead 'ard. Learning about Bee Castes will keep him warm...
So here we go with a quick introduction to the Caste System of the Honeybee with some bite-size facts which, hopefully, aren't too wide of the mark.

Honeybee Society is highly structured and meticulously organised. It follows a strict Caste System in which there are 3 distinct types of bee:

The Queen

The Worker 

and The Drone

The Queen is a fertile female. She lays eggs.

That's her job. Up to 2000 a day. All the bees in the colony develop from her eggs.

The hive centres around the one Queen. As long as she's still laying. If the Queen weakens or dies the colony can replace her with a newly reared Queen. A part of the Beekeeper's job is to control the changeover of the Queen.

Lifespan: 15 days to emerge from egg. Mature for mating after 20 days. Can live 3-4 years.

The Queen is an Egg-Laying Machine

The Workers are females from a fertilized egg but are themselves infertile. 

They do all the graft and the jobs that the individual Workers undertake within the colony change as they get older.

They forage for pollen and nectar, gather water and propolis, tidy and maintain the hive, regulate the hive's temperature, care for the brood and feed the Queen & the larvae. 

It is the Workers who make the hexagonal honeycomb from wax that they secrete.

They use these cells as chambers in which to rear the brood and as stores for their precious stocks of honey and pollen.

Workers make up 95% of the colony and are all sisters.

Lifespan: 21 days to emerge from egg. Can live for up to 36 days. Over-wintering Workers can live for 6 months.

Out all day foraging then has to come home and look after the kids

The Drones, who are stingless, are fertile males from an unfertilized egg. Their function is to fertilize the new Queens. They do not forage nor do they do any housework. In fact by the end of the summer, once they're no more use and are just lazing around on the sofa watching Sky Sports, the Workers have had enough and boot them out of the hive to die. 

Lifespan: 24 days to emerge from egg. Mature for mating after 37 days. Can live up to 59 days.

The drone has similar life skills to the human male

So, Honeybee Society is pretty nailed down. It works because every bee knows it's place and is hot-wired to carry out its pre-destined task with unerring devotion.

It doesn't take much of a leap of imagination to see the colony as the organism and the individual bees as composite parts of the whole.

It's possible to see it as a bit Orwellian, and Huxley, in a fatalistic mood, would recognise the predetermination of the individuals. 

But bees ain't humans so everything works just fine.

There the lesson ends, but before we leave BeeGuru1 and our alfresco learning zone at Apiary Central there's a short Q&A session with a small prize for the student with the most correct answers.

LandofSpike was hoping the prize might be a jacket.