Observant Beekeeping

[NigelP]

Okay my two pennorth on hive insulation. Location location location. I only use poly hives, Abelo . I have no problems. with them,but 30 miles down the road keepers are reporting water ingress and condensation inside the same hives, a problem I can only reconcile with their microclimates being different from mine. The store usage in most (note most) of my overwinter poly hives is negliglable compared to what I observed in the old days of wooden hives. My biggest problem come spring is removing all the full frames to give my queens room to lay in.

"Superiority of local bees"......location location location. Even the rather biased viewpoint of Beowulf Cooper in his book on bees in the British Isles noted trends of increased aggressiveness as you travelled West to East. Something I can well attest to. When I kept local bees they were very poor. Queens were poor layers, 6 frames of 1/2 brood was the norm and aggressive as hell. As you can imagine honey yields were poor, less than 40lbs per hive. Whereas my Prolific Buckfast on average 14-18 frames of wall to wall brood were bringing in 140-240lbs in the same apairy.
Now Mick who writes on this forum lives 30 miles North of me and his local bees are calm, prolific and easy to work with and bring in similar yields. If mine were like his I would not be buying expensive Buckfast Breeder queens.
So "Superiority of local bees".....location location location.
You simply cannot assume what you see and observe in your local bees applies across the whole country. We are all beekeeping in small microclimates where even 30 miles makes a huge difference to the fecundity and temperament of the local bee population. Yours may be superior, but superior to what? Or perhaps more pertinantly where?

[AdamD]

Reduced winter fuel consumption has been reported by others; it makes sense if you have a better insulated home to live in.

A few years ago I wrote to the BBKA magazine suggesting that the winter loss survey might include questions on hive type/overwintering methods. The answer came back, yes thats a good idea. However the questionairre for the following year was muddled and we never did get an answer as to whether insulated or poly hives were better for overwintering that the 'traditional matchstick' method of gapping up the crownboard; it would have answered the argument over whether the practice was adviseable or not.

[NigelP]

Well that seems to have killed any debate on the subjects Beeblebrox mentioned.
Shame.

[MickBBKA]

Well that seems to have killed any debate on the subjects Beeblebrox mentioned.
Shame.

Hang on I haven't had my say....LOL

There is a huge amount going on at the moment. The massive colony losses around the world make me wonder if treatment free has given varroa a free hand thus allowing viral mutations which have impacted survival rates, just think covid ?

A treatment free study I read on isolated island colonies going back quite a few years in Scandinavia reported something like 90% losses in the first few years and took over 10 years to develop anything like a natural behaviour to deal with varroa, then all a virus has to do is change and it all goes back to square one almost.

Location location.............. Well its a massive factor in the UK. We have such a huge range of local conditions. As I have said in the past I have had a 9C difference in ambient temperature in apiaries less than 1 mile apart. This week I will be feeding pollen sub to my bees, hazel is finished, snow drops just hanging on, daffs out before crocus, blackthorn, willow and flowering ribes all came out this week. My bees have not and pretty much will not get any of this local spring forage so I have to mitigate the local weather impact on them if I want a good honey crop later. Last year my bees were having brood breaks in May, lots didn't produce drones until end of June and some colonies swarmed in August. Added to that failed queen mating's and multiple supersedure's during the Summer was a nightmare.

My bees are lovely to work with, some are very productive and some are not but I expect most to hit 16-20 frames of brood although some just seem to raise bees and not honey. I think Nigel's island mated queens are much more consistent and probably more productive overall as with my open mated queens its a lottery. I usually have about 2/3 of my crop by the end of June and last year I didn't have a single jar of honey by mid June and some colonies never had a single cell of wet stores. By the end of September I had over 3,500 lb of honey from about 25 colonies which as I said had been through all sorts of disasters. Some made near 200lb and some made nothing.

Hives, I am sticking with wood. I still have my poly hives but I mix them in with the wood as its the only way to get the bees to propilise the joints and keep the water out, in the past I have had to throw away the outer 4 frames in each box as they are flooded, fermenting and black rotten. I have no concern about use of stores over Winter as I can just feed more if req. What is more important is Spring build up and because of the thermal insulation of poly hives they just don't warm up in Spring sunshine, they are last out and first back compared to colonies 5 yards away and the wooden colonies are massively ahead of them come the warmer weather.

So, in a nut shell, the UK has to be the most difficult place in the world to understand beekeeping. The variables from N to S and E to W are huge without local conditions, micro climates, bee strains, hive types, pest control and dare I say it.............beekeepers ability ( my bees produce about 20x more honey now than my first 2 years did )

Sorry for all that, you asked Nigel..........

[NigelP]

Nope Mick, excellent post. Wish more would contribute with their views or experience. We can all learn something. Just wish I had your gentle productive local bees, would save me a fortune.
p.s. Bet you find they have a lot of Buckfast genes from someone elses drones

[JoJo36]

I love to read all the posts on here and generally the advice is spot-on and I have personally learned loads with respect to swarming methods etc.,

Nobody has to agree with everything but it's good to hear two sides to every argument and then form your own opinion!

Always interesting to hear from Nigel, Mick and Adam with the occasional from Alfred who I guess may be retired now??!!:)

Keep the posts coming as they are interesting for sure........

[AdamD]

Well that seems to have killed any debate on the subjects Beeblebrox mentioned.
Shame.

Hang on I haven't had my say....LOL

Hives, I am sticking with wood. I still have my poly hives but I mix them in with the wood as its the only way to get the bees to propilise the joints and keep the water out, in the past I have had to throw away the outer 4 frames in each box as they are flooded, fermenting and black rotten. I have no concern about use of stores over Winter as I can just feed more if req. What is more important is Spring build up and because of the thermal insulation of poly hives they just don't warm up in Spring sunshine, they are last out and first back compared to colonies 5 yards away and the wooden colonies are massively ahead of them come the warmer weather.

Spring warmth:-
I had wondered whether it would be worth fixing a sheet of glass in a little wooden frame on othe south side of a hive - with Nationals, it could go on the outside in the recess at the frame ends and could be taken out to lift the brood box or when the weather gets warmer and is no longer needed. Maybe I'll have a go when I have some spare time or I can distract myself from other jobs.`

[NigelP]

Wooden hives may warm up quicker than poly and your bees might fly a bit earlier in the day, but what virtue does that do for them this time of the year?
By the same token they cool down faster as well. With current day time temps in the teens and night temps below freezing (Last night we were down to -3.5 and a predicted 15C this afternoon) The bees in wooden hives must be in a right tizz dealing with these huge temperature swings.
That is one of the many virtues of poly hives is that they are well insulated which easily allows the bees to maintain a fairly constant temperature day and night throughout the winter.
When I ran a mixture of wood and poly it was noticeable that bees in wooden hives clustered more frequently and at higher temperatures than the ones I had in poly, which would still be strolling around inside the hives at 3-4C. It's also noticeable that there are "usually" more stores left after winter, suggesting they are not having to work as hard as the bees in wooden hives to maintain hive temps. It was also quite apparent to me, where I live, that bees in poly were miles ahead of those in wood, come spring. I have the figures tucked away somewhere, but IIRC by early April I would have, on average, 6-7 frames of brood in the poly hives vs 3-4 frames of brood in the wooden hives. It was then I decided to ditch the wooden hives and go all poly.

[MickBBKA]

p.s. Bet you find they have a lot of Buckfast genes from someone elses drones

You could be right. My queens were always long, thin and jet black and often passed through a queen excluder. About 4 years ago it was very noticeable that almost all my new queens raised were big, fat and amber or brown colour.

[Spike]

Italians ?