Beekeeping chit chat

I see our forum gets a mention in Sept edition of An Beachaire.
Welcome to any new beeks who've landed here from there

-Coley.

on the river wrote: »

what do bee keepers do in the winter months ?

Huddle in a dark corner and try to stay warm...

The real answer, I think, is probably just repairing equipment (or building new stuff), reading books and making plans!

A lot of beekeepers will do a winter treatment on their bees for varroa mite, typically around the New Year but that's a 10 minute job per hive.

on the river wrote: »

what do bee keepers do in the winter months ?

Sit down and make plans for the following year and work out what ill need,

Queen rearing - get some apideas
Increasing stock - get nucs/hives/wax/frames etc
Work out how many supers ill need and make them (usually 3 per hive)
Also look at what equipment need fixing/replacing
Try and find new apiaries
Keep an eye on the mead ive made! :P

I have a few books that i have read a few times but ive ordered a new one to read over the winter as well.

So even though the season is over, there is still plenty to do!

As long as the sheep stay away from the hives, the bees and the wasps will have no interest in them.

The location of the wasps nest is a coincidence - at this time of year, the adult wasps are catching small insects for the larvae, but later on in the year they'll be looking for something sweet, so they'll be annoying the bees just as they annoy us when we have something sweet. Normally the bees can keep them out and if there's a beekeeper about, he'll know how to help them.

PUMPINGPLUMBER wrote: »

Hi folks
I did a course last year,i think maybe 6 or 8 night spread over 6 or 8 weeks.when finished the theory you have to buy a Bee suit to go to work with the hives,you can buy a hive [450 euro] maybe cheaper,you are given a Queen to put into your hive if you decide to buy one,if you dont buy a hive you can still attend and work on other hives .the course was 100 euro to do,WELL WORTH IT.Fingal area.When you get used to handling the Bees and can prevent swarming etc you can take your hive to your own neck of the woods.Im only a novice still under suspervision with my hive,but really enjoying

I am hoping to start an evening course in Fingal in Feb. I really wanted to go to the one in Gormanstown last month but couldn't due to work. I have wanted to keep bees for years.

Thanks for the tip. Where is that one based? Would you recommend it?

Thanks for that. I am on the alert list for the Fingal one which suits me best. They open the bookings in September. I will definitely read up on the subject too. I read bits and pieces and am on the Facebook pages but I get a bit lost with the jargon.

Effects wrote: »

I read the haynes manual a few times until it all sank in.
Ted Hoopers book is more in depth and I refer to it a lot.

Haynes is definitely something all beginners need to read. However, Hooper is way too much for folk starting out.

If anyone is thinking of taking it up, find your local Beekeeping Association and ask them when their beginners course starts. Typically they're in the winter when the beekeepers don't have too much to do.

Nipper Man wrote: »

I have heard that too and it seems that the Honey from your own area is better for your Hay Fever, because the bees collect the pollen for the area around where you live and this seems to help with the Hay Fever.

FYI, there's no evidence for this. The only research I'm familiar with only used a small sample, and it found that there was no effect. However this small sample leads me to discount it. So no reliable evidence for or against the idea.

Also, since Ireland is pretty uniform in plants, "local" here means pretty much anywhere in the country.

Bees are still under threat from spraying and GMO crops that are creeping into Ireland as well and this is a very bad thing.

GMOs don't harm bees or humans. There has been extensive research into this, and the idea that they're harmful is a load of bunkum.

As for spraying, yes this can be bad. However, if the sprayers follow instructions, the impact is minor. On the other hand, there appear to be major problems with seeds coated with neonicitinoids, so more research is needed there.

It appears that if we humans don't curb our bad practices, then we are putting the Human Race in peril and I guess that it really is the big company's who have thousands of acres of farmland who are doing the most damage to the Bee population.

From my experience, farmers are very aware of what's needed and are very accommodating to beekeepers. However, the IFA seems to have a much more cavalier attitude to things, incorrectly assuming that managing the environment is not part of their goals.

In reality one of the major impacts on bee populations is this "natural beekeeping" where no attempt is made to curb the populations of varroa. These are the people who nurture disease in the hope that somehow the bees will survive, and ignoring the damage they're doing to surrounding colonies. I have selected my queens this year based on their hygienic behaviour based on varroa counts. This has been quite successful - I just did a count over the weekend and only one hive had excessive mites. However, I also started treatment to ensure that my bees can thrive and survive the winter. Next year, I'll requeen that less successful hive and continue to selectively breed until they can actually handle the varroa on their own. This is actually the goal of natural beekeeping, but while they're struggling, I'm optimistic that I'm heading there.

Honey is an amazing food from what I hear these days and the Pharma people don't want to hear that it is useful for healing wounds and the like because they wont be able to control it, unless government's make it Illegal to keep Honey Bee's.

What on earth are you talking about? Honey is used routinely for treating wounds nowadays. Its antibiotic properties have been well known for some time, but it's only the past few years that they've been able to remove the Clostridium botulinum spores to allow its safe use. (These are the bacterial spores that make honey unsafe for very young children).

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

@bp breeding based on varroa counts like you're doing/planning will be highly unlikely to get you anywhere in terms of progress against varroa unless you are controlling mating, otherwise you have no idea what you are breeding from and what its being mated with. On a larger scale it might have the potential to identify a few marker genes but thats still a long shot as the majority of hives will have multiple strains within them

Partially true: drones are 100% genetic copies of the queen because they're haploid. The workers are the ones that pick up the unknown genes. If neighbouring beekeepers practice the same selection criteria as I do (and they do), their drones will carry that hygienic behaviour to match my queens' behaviours. Some of my queens will carry the gene and others won't. By selective breeding I hope to eventually hit the point where the majority force the non-hygienic behaviour out of the population.

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

How will you stop your queen being mated with a non varroa tolerant drone who comes from a hive not evaluated yet or from a drone a good few miles away from you who closes the distance over a number of days?
How will your hives be set up to make sure its a fair test and doesnt favour negative traits?
What percentage of workers must remove varroa to have an effect on the total population, if a low proportion of workers can reduce overall levels you could breed from a hive with a low varroa population and be actually grafting an egg fertilised by a drone with a high susceptibility to varroa.

Arista are running a programme in spain to breed vsh bees from carnica and buckfast, all lines being evaluated are all ii'd to a single drone afaik. Nothing being left to chance compared to what you described, I'd say within 5-10 years there'll be commercial lines from it.

NIHBS are running a programme here too. The way it works is that you do counts in May and August, and breed from the hives that show very low numbers. Of course, there's a large risk of mating with drones that screw my plans up, but I'm doing it much less rigorously than the Spanish (and others). I suppose if I was really serious I'd get into AI. As for contamination, the apiaries around me (at least those I know of) all practise the same methods, and some are much more careful, only mating queens in specific locations which they have flooded with controlled drones. The LBKA apiary is trying to establish itself as a supplier of good drones too, so I'll bring my apideas along to there to be mated next year.

While that's good news with the work they're doing in Spain, with the news about the further spread of small hive beetle, I hope folk are very, very, very careful about imports: importing from a laboratory is one thing, but importing bees from an arbitrary breeder is akin to Russian roulette.

Of course, it's important to breed for other traits too, such as docility (particularly with AMM who have a bit of a reputation), such that I ended up deliberately squishing a queen for the first time a couple of weeks ago - that just seemed so wrong!