Your Bees are in the Post

LandofSpike has ordered his bees.

A Five Frame Nucleus of Buckfasts.
The Queen's already marked, which is good, as that means LandofSpike won't have to risk squashing her to death trying to mark her himself.

She's not clipped but that shouldn't be a problem.
The Nuc will be Varroa treated before despatch and will have brood eggs and flying workers.
And, happily, it's all on National frames which will slot right into the Beebox.

They're due to arrive at Spike Towers by registered post in a couple of weeks.

LandofSpike's postman, I'm sure, will be delighted.

Yes, he's delighted

On the one hand LandofSpike is really rather excited about the Imminent Bee Arrival, but on the other hand, he's seriously wondering what on earth he thinks he's playing at.

Up Above the Ground... Bees on Stilts

LandofSpike and BKJ1 have built a stand for the Beebox.

It needed one.

Because Beeboxes like to be raised above the ground.

There are several reasons for this:

a) Working at a Manageable Height

If the hive is positioned too low or too high it's going to be a difficult job hefting honey-laden supers and brood boxes.
Even day-to-day inspections are more arduous if the box is positioned incorrectly.

Ouch to beekeeper back problems.

b) Fresh air

Keeping the hive away from the ground helps to minimise problems with the damp and helps with the ventilation of the hive.

c) Creature Incursion

An elevated hive helps keep crawling insects, especially ants, at bay.

Setting the legs in a margarine tub of cooking oil is a good idea. The sea of oil is a good insect barrier.

CONSTRUCTION

Making the hive stand was a simple enough job.

LandofSpike made it 30" long x 20" wide.

He used 4" x 2" lumber to construct the hive stand and fixed it together with 5mm x 75mm screws.

LandofSpike's Secret Blueprints

The platform was designed so the base of the hive would be at 14" above the ground.

The back legs continued above the deck level to form an end stop for the rear of the hive.

At the front a landing board for the bees was fashioned from an offcut of 15mm planking and it was held in place by some strategically positioned supports.

Without landing board

And with landing board

Once completed the stand was given a couple of coats of garden wood preserver. 

The landing board was painted with the more bee-friendly Dulux Weathershield. 

A landing board isn't really necessary but it's nice to watch the bees crawling around on it rather than just darting efficiently into their front door.

Apparently they like a highly visible landing area so it was painted a highly visible Classic Cream colour.

Weatherproofed stand with hive and landing board

LandofSpike now has to do a little more work on the western borders of Spike Acres before it is fully transformed into the new BeesofSpike Apiary. It just needs a bit more screening along its eastern edge, some more grass and a bit of weatherproofing.

Then all we need is some Livestock.

Living in a Box... Some New Accommodation

It's all very well waxing lyrical about the splendour of being a beekeeper but at some point our beeless blogger does need to have some actual real-life contact with his own boxful of bees.

It does cost though.

So LandofSpike has eventually had to bite the bullet and release funds from his Empire's not particularly vast Reserves of Wealth.

Over the last few weeks Purchase Orders have been raised and orders have been placed.

Subsequently, the Post Room at Spike Towers has been kept busy receiving regular deliveries of Bee-related Equipment from a worthy array of suppliers.

It's very tempting to list all the exciting new arrivals but this post will put aside hive tools, bee brushes and smokers for the time being and deal with our Most Important Piece of New Kit...

The Hive has arrived.

It's rather smart.

It's from Finland and is called The Beebox.

It takes National frames and is made not of cedar but is lovingly crafted out of EPS.

Yes, that's Expanded Polystyrene. 

Not particularly traditional in this country, but hopefully functional, user-friendly and warm in the winter. And with any luck, the bees will love it.

LandofSpike and BKJ1 have spent some time piecing it together and painting it.

It comes flat-packed and slots easily together.

The unpainted Beebox

It currently comprises of (from the top down) a roof, an inner cover, a top feeder, 2 supers, a queen excluder, a brood box and a base with varroa mesh and tray. And a big strap to tie it down.

The Beebox has a cool entrance reducer

Modern Beekeeping recommended painting the Hive with Dulux Weathershield Smooth Masonry Paint. 

So it got several coats of the stuff in different colours for the different components.

LandofSpike thinks it looks pretty good.

How it all fits together

The boys have also been constructing a big stack of frames.

The delightfully and cunningly designed Hoffman ones.

Ten full size frames for the brood box and ten smaller frames for each super.

Frame components

Completed frame

It's a goodly task once you get your rhythm and is extremely satisfying.

BKJ1 was particularly good at it.

LandofSpike will spend some time on frames and frame making in a later post.

The Beebox, painted, but still masked up

So with the Hive now looking box-tastic the next task is to make a stand to keep it well above the ground.

LandofSpike will be lovingly handcrafting this himself.

Anyone who has seen his previous attempts at woodworking will have some idea of exactly just how magnificent this will be...

Deforestation and the Dawn of Empire

The area which marks the Western Boundary of Spike Acres has been a bit neglected of late. 

For example...

And...

So it was with some trepidation that LandofSpike and Beekeeper Junior Number 1 made their way through the undergrowth armed only with standard issue machetes, some homemade napalm, a compass and a fully stocked toolbox. 

Their mission?

To clear a space for the Land of Bees.

More wilderness

Actually, it wasn't too bad.

The vegetation put up only a token resistance and in no time at all sackfuls of the green stuff had been hacked away and a clear earth floor had appeared beneath their feet.

Predictably, removing all the ivy, dust and detritus of the ages from the nooks and crannies in the wall and fence revealed some critters so grisly that even the bug-loving BKJ1 had to think twice before approaching them. 

home to some pretty sizeable MiniBeasts

Several of Shelob's relatives seemed to have set up camp in the ivy and leaf litter under the Boundary Fence and they seemed none too pleased to be disturbed. A couple of the brutes even decided to attack each other. We let them get on with it.

BKJ1 also found a grub which was, frankly, enormous. It turned out to be a stag beetle larva. Sadly there's no photo of this colossus as LandofSpike was so flabbergasted by its immense bulk he forgot to photograph it.

One major consideration when setting up the Land of Bees was that the site needed to be as unobtrusive and as secluded as possible. 

A nicely concealed hive makes for a happier human community. It would also give the bees a calm area in which to get on with their work unimpeded, and isolated from the rest of Spike Acres.

So screening the area on all sides was going to be essential and, possibly, a bit pricey. 

Luckily, during the day's excavations, LandofSpike was able to unearth and salvage some willow screens left behind by the previous civilisation that had colonised the area in a bygone age. 
Largely unaffected by the passage of time, the screens were ready to be re-erected and restored to their former glory.

Evidence of an Earlier Civilisation

Perfectly preserved and re-usable relics

Meanwhile BKJ1 made a great job of converting a reclaimed pallet into a sturdy beekeeper platform. 

New slats were nailed into place and then the whole thing was given a liberal coating of weatherproofing paint.

BKJ1 contemplates his handiwork

The reclaimed willow screen was in great nick and with some judicial trimming and a bit of frame construction it has given the Land of Bees excellent protection on its western and northern borders.

Well, at least it looks less wild than it did 3 hours ago

So that's it for the time being...

Before the Beebox can be installed, the southern and eastern boundaries still need to be screened off, the ground needs to be leveled and the wooden bits still need some more weatherproofing. 

We also need a little weatherproof box to keep all the beekeepery kit in.

However, neat and tidy as it is, that bare earth does still look a bit unsatisfactory.

Fortunately, LandofSpike has spotted some big chunks of turf in a skip very close to Spike Towers.

It looks very much like that discarded grass needs to be liberated and given a new bee-friendly home.

Right Suborder, Wrong Genus

Spike Towers is finally home to a colony of insects.

Unfortunately it's not the expected arrival of a 5 frame nucleus of Apis mellifera carnica but a surprisingly robust colony of ants. 

And they've decided to take up residence in the bathroom.

There really are quite a lot of them.

Lots of these

LandofSpike supposes that the higher than average rainfall this month has sluiced them out of their usual subterranean home and into the relatively more arid environs of Spike Towers.

At this moment a bitter struggle for territorial advantage is probably raging between the newcomers and the previously dominant silverfish.

This untimely invasion may, however, be opportune, for on his last visit to the Secret Underground Vault which harbours his Empire's Capital Reserves, LandofSpike couldn't help but notice that the coffers were more than unusually empty.

Not many of these

Consequently, LandofSpike is considering postponing his acquisition of a flight of honeybees and adopting, in their stead, the already installed, and therefore significantly cheaper, colony of ants.

AntsofSpike could make perfect sense.

It would mean that emphasis would shift from honey production to a prospective entry into the fledgling formic acid market. 

A FriendofSpike has suggested that he could even diversify into cultivating and marketing that nutritious fungus that the ants produce. 

With careful husbandry and a couple of well placed features in the Sunday supplements, FungusofSpike could possibly become next year's Groovy New Superfood.

LandofSpike could solve World Hunger at a stroke or, better still, get totally minted by opening the World's First Ant Salon and Exclusive AntFungus Restaurant in Primrose Hill.

Or, conversely, LandofSpike could just stop wasting everybody's time with his nonsensical AntTalk and make sure his next post is actually about honeybees.

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.

The Land of Bees Schoolroom... A Bit of Latin

Today, the Land of Bees will be taking us back to school.

This will be happening pretty regularly so stop moaning and settle down.

While LandofSpike understands that it's not totally necessary to know which Suborder or Phylum bees belong to when you're tucking into some bread & honey, knowing a bit about which branch of the Tree of Life our bees have built their nests on is no bad thing.

So sit up straight and pay attention at the back of the class, it's time for a bit of Latin.

Our subject is the European Honeybee, Apis mellifera.

Apis is Latin for Bee.

Mellifera can be split into melli meaning honey and ferre meaning to carry.

So Apis mellifera is the Honey-Carrying Bee. 

Easy peasy.

Every organism has its place in the Hierarchy of Biological Classification, bees being no exception.

Our handy chart will guide us through the Classification of the European Honeybee with, hopefully, a minimum of glaring errors.

Those creatures at the bottom of the Classification are just a few subspecies of Apis mellifera, but they're the important ones for beekeepers.

In our next visit to the Land of Bees Schoolroom, LandofSpike will be casting his gaze over these fellers and seeing why beekeepers need to know all about them.