Two hives have been added to my local area this year, ( and with that two new keepers.) Next door and in the valley one over. Shiny new hives with no propolis. Two new keepers still excited and fascinated. Both have been on the BBK course and have demonstrated enough competence this summer to make me relax. The keepers are fine but their bees are another story. They seem to be lackadaisical and almost lethargic. This makes them a pleasure to work with, but worrying. The first evidence was when I opened the hive next door. The nuc of bees seemed to be keeping to the core of the frames in the classic winter rugby ball shape. The outer frames were not only bee free but also the foundation was not drawn out. This coupled with crowding and eggs and grubs on the brace comb under the middle frames made me suggest adding an additional super above the brood box, (but under the queen excluder) just so that her majesty would have more space to lay. That was the middle of August and now, (the start of September) the new super of frames have not been drawn out. I hope that the bees will make it through the winter.
At the same time as adding a brood super we added a partially foundationed super above the queen excluder. There is a lot of heather round here and though it might be optimistic to hope for that, cut-comb seems like a good first product for a small-holding that has no extractor, (and does not really want to borrow one - more on that later.) After two weeks the cut-comb super not only had zero bees on it, the queen excluder had so few bees above it that I presumed that the, (fewer than 20 bees) were petulant teenage type bees that thought that the queen was "so unfair" and had gone above the excluder to listen to their favorite boy-band and talk about boys.
I hope that all of the local problems are because the bees have not had a whole winter and did not have the spring to build up and be ready for the honey-flow. I suspect that the long dry winter and long wet spring/summer has caused the problems.
Last night we stripped out the frames, moved the crown-board under it, removed the queen excluder and added two liters of heavy syrup. I have recommended continued feeding and hope that with more bees staying home they will draw out some of the frames in the brood super and the colony will strengthen for the winter.
So why should we avoid the local bee-keeping association? Because just six miles down the valley there are hives that have been infected. I have not had enough days without rain to get all of the chores done and go down and inspect, but what ever the problem is we want to avoid it. I have not called in the bee inspector, but had I found foul brood down there I obviously would have had no choice, (it is a legal requirement in the UK.)
