Showing posts with label Queen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Queen. Show all posts

Wednesday 29 July 2015

Wasp Observations: Harvesting Wood Pulp and Hive Incursions

It's a little early in the year to be talking about wasps.
However in the last few days I've had a couple of reminders that during the summer the wasp colonies are already with us and are growing steadily.


Introduction
In the spring hibernating queen wasps wake from their winter slumbers and set about building tiny wasp starter homes out of sculpted wood pulp with a few cells to lay their eggs in.
These do look quite cute but, actually, they are not cute at all.

Tiny wasp starter homes built in the spring by the queen wasp

Once this initial build has grown to a reasonable size she stops foraging and constructing and leaves those menial tasks to her workers so that she can concentrate on the egg laying.
To build the nests the wasps have to gather wood, pulp it down and stick it together into those familiar papery ball-shaped nests which hang menacingly from trees or appear in your attic seemingly from nowhere.


Wasp Observation #1
Last week, whilst holidaying in the Baltic (oh yes indeed!), we were presented with an excellent example of wasps harvesting wood pulp to use to build their nests.
I spotted three wooden benches on the seafront which had a lot of wasp activity around them even though there was no obvious prey, no sugary drinks and no ice creams anywhere nearby.
I decided to sit down and observe what the wasps were up to. Sure enough, they were landing on the benches, chewing off a thin layer from the surface of the wood and flying off with it.
The pattern of the chewing seemed to be always the same: a straight line about an inch long furrowed into the surface of the wood.

wasps bite into wooden bench
Wooden bench with evidence of wasps harvesting pulp for nest building

The nest grows as the colony grows until by the end of the summer it's a full blown papery nest full of critters and the stripy villains then start to become a problem for picnickers and beekeepers alike.
So, I guess, in about a month's time there's going to be a pretty big wasps' nest in the vicinity of Travemunde seafront.
Incidentally, a few years ago, I observed wasps harvesting pulp from a length of 12mm balsa in my garden and the crunching sound that they made was significantly loud. By the end of the summer they'd managed to bite right the way through it.


The wasps don't usually become a major problem for the hives until the end of the summer when their colony has reached maximum size, the honeydew-secreting larvae have all grown into adults and the flyers need an alternative sugar fix.
If your hives are in the vicinity of bins full of food waste, areas with lots of wood chip or orchards with rotting fruit the wasps will already be attracted to that area.
They will persistently search for weak points to gain access to the hive.
However, if your colonies are weak, you can have problems with wasp incursions much earlier in the season...


Wasp Observation #2
Today we were working on the hives in Apiary Central in the park opposite Spike Acres.
There are two colonies there at the moment: one is strong, the second is weak.
I observed the comings and goings at the entrances for a while and noticed that wasps were trying to gain entry to both hives.
They were constantly repelled from the strong hive but gained access several times to the weaker hive.

Wasp incursion into a weak colony: Apiary Central in the local park

On opening the second hive there was evidence of honey robbing.
It's a free feed for persistent wasps with the weaker colony unable to resist them.
There is a frame feeder in this hive which also is a major attraction for wasps.
We have just re-queened this hive and tomorrow we will be reducing the entrance to 3 holes to give the bees a greater chance of making a defence against further incursions, much like Horatius on the bridge across the Tiber...
We will also set some wasp traps.

It might be a long war of attrition against the wasps for this hive this summer.


If this leaves you thirsting for more wasp information, rest assured, the LandofBees blog will be revisiting the subject of wasps in the near future.




Sunday 7 October 2012

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.




Friday 4 May 2012

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.