Cheshire Honey

Many beekeepers start keeping bees in-order to have their own honey, not me! I didn't really eat much honey before I kept bees, I still don't. It is embarrassing though when you talk to people about your beekeeping hobby and they ask, as invariably they do, if you have any honey and you tell them no!

Cheshire honey 

My main interest in beekeeping is queen breeding so honey production isn't high on my list of priorities. However, there wouldn't be much interest from other beekeepers in the bees that I breed if they weren't productive. Also the rearing of queens requires strong colonies, these by their very nature produce a surplus of the sticky stuff. It therefore is a fortunate/unfortunate fact that I have had to deal with this by product.

The process of honey removal, I found daunting. My apiaries are not ideal for honey production, they are not accessible by road, I have to carry or barrow supers over uneven ground. I can't do this alone and so have to rely on my not too enthusiastic sons for help.

Then follows the extraction process, what a job this is! I get the stuff everywhere, on the floor, on the work surfaces, up my arms and on my clothes. I currently use a simple two frame tangential extractor, cranked by hand. On one occasion I have almost taken someones head off using this, I was enthusiastically spinning the contraption when my hand slipped from the handle which flew off across the room at a considerable speed. Luckily it missed and no one was harmed.

So, having extracted and filtered this 'liquid gold', what was I to do with it? I could, and did, feed some back to nucleus colonies. Other than that, I was at a loss as to what to do. I bought some jars and gave a few away to family and friends. This was where I was really surprised, a few recipients of my honey disposal/give-away came back and asked for more, for themselves and others too! "It tastes so much better than the stuff we get from the supermarket" they told me. One chap from the allotment site asked "Have you got any of that bl**dy honey left? My wife keeps on at me to get some more".

It's strange but my dislike for the stuff has changed, I have a certain pride and satisfaction that my bees create this wonderful food that is so appreciated by others. I am careful to ensure that what I pass on to others is the best that I can produce, I don't want to undo all of the hard work that my bees have invested by presenting their honey in anything other than the best possible manner that I can. I use settling tanks after filtering so ensuring that fine pieces of wax are not introduced to the jars and that small bubbles settle in the tank, this way there is no foam or scum in the top of the jar. I use 3/4 lb hexagonal jars and attach a label proudly stating that the contents are Cheshire Honey.

I managed to acquire a honey warming cabinet this year. This has really enabled me to make huge steps forward in my presentation. I can now safely liquify crystallised honey. This lead to me thinking that I could, or should, expand my range by making some soft set honey. This has a longer shelf life in that it won't set hard after jarring and therefore won't need to be re-warmed before giving it away or selling it: Yes selling! I have found that there is a demand for this stuff and people are willing to pay for it, fancy that!

I researched soft set honey on the web and decided to follow the instructions given on the site The Apiarist. The process basically involves warming crystallised honey to 50°C over 24 to 36 hours when it will have fully melted to clear honey. It's best not to use honey that is very dark, this will give a muddy brown product that isn't very attractive. A seed stock (5% of the total weight) of soft set honey can be added and mixed into the batch of honey after filtering and allowing to cool to about 35°C. At this temperature the seed crystals will not dissolve and the mix will be mobile enough to thoroughly mix.
I bought some local soft set honey to use as an initial seed stock rather than grinding down crystallised honey in a pestle and mortar, much easier! I save three jars worth of each batch to use in subsequent batches.
I use a cordless drill to gently do the mixing, this saves a lot of effort too. The bucket of honey is then allowed to cool to below 12°C (easy in the colder months of the year) and stirred at 12 hour intervals. this produces soft set honey. Re-warming the bucket of honey to 35ºC to reduces the viscosity and enables it to be bottled relatively it easily, relatively!
Full and very clear instructions are available at the above link.

Soft set honey

The resulting product is rather nice, smooth on the palate, with all of the taste and aroma of untreated natural honey with the bonus of being easy to spoon out of the jar and not liable to set hard, lovely.

The queen that refused to go

I had a lovely new queen mated in a five frame nuc on my main apiary last year. She wintered well and despite the poor spring of 2018 she developed well. I placed another 5 frame brood box below the colony containing drawn comb containing a little honey and they took off! In what seemed like no time at all, they had expanded to two brood boxes and two supers. I was really pleased with their progress until one inspection day. Upon opening the hive I was greeted by a mob (30-40) very angry bees, they flew straight for my leg, abdomens bent over, intent on stinging me. This is something that I'm not used to, all of my colonies to date have been reasonably docile. Thats not to say that I don't get an odd sting or two of course. I can usually put any stings down to my own fault rather than that of the bees. Copious amounts of smoke to my leg area and an assertive attitude to the inspection resulted in the job being completed without further incident.

This colony continued to expand and I added a further 2 supers and then another one, at each inspection, although I wasn't always stung, it seemed like it was in a battle of wills. At this time my back was playing up, I had injured it the previous year and so lifting heavy supers became a bit of a chore, I needed help! My less than enthusiastic youngest son reluctantly agreed to give me a hand with 'my number one colony'. I had warned him that these bees were a little on the tetchy side, he wasn't deterred by my warning. "They don't bother me!" was his macho response.
We removed the top two supers together, then the next two and the final one, queen excluder removed and we were into the brood nest. With double brood colonies I tend to take the top one off, briefly look at the base of the combs before placing this aside in an upturned roof. This way I can get in indication of whether or not the bees are preparing to swarm, usually swarm cells in such a colony are built between the brood boxes. There were sealed queen cells! This, according to the books means that, almost certainly, the colony has swarmed. I needed to try to find the queen, in the vain hope that she was still there and I could salvage the situation. I proceeded to remove each frame from the lower brood box, shaking bees off after determining that the queen wasn't on the frame. The bees were determined to assert their authority and proceeded to fly up, ping off my veil and bounce off of my hands, I fought back, puffing smoke and shaking frames, moving 'with purpose' but as gently as possible, I read somewhere not to show fear, does that really work? It was then that I heard my son over the loud buzzing say "Dad..........Dad..........Dad, I'm feeling ........er ....... a bit............intimidated!" I told him to move away if he was scared, to which he replied "I'm not scared, I was just letting you know......" I chuckled to myself (he's so macho!) as I carried on.

Both brood boxes inspected, no queen seen and no eggs either, I had always seen this particular queen at every inspection, some queens are elusive and are rarely seen unless you make a conservative effort, so I concluded that she had indeed left. This was not necessarily a negative for me, the colony was still really strong, it was in swarming mode, geared up to make queen cells and I was due to do queen rearing next week, this would be my cell builder! I therefore took down all queen cells and put the hive back together. Seven days later I would inspect again to remove the any emergency queen cells, rearrange the hive and introduce grafted larvae from my selected breeder queen. Happy days.

Seven days later and my son was ........... nowhere to be seen! I managed to take the supers off myself and found the hive to be ......... full of eggs and larvae. Further searching revealed the old queen proudly parading across the comb, I'm sure I heard her laughing as she walked around the side of the frame away from me: Grafting day was postponed. I admit to cursing just a little as I reassembled the hive but not so loud as the bees could hear.

The following week, I confronted my nemesis again. I could not find any eggs, queen or queen cells. What was going on? Had she left after the last inspection? I have, previously, had queens swarm when I have found nearly sealed queen cells, removed the queen cells and on the next inspection found the queen to be gone, having left no queen cells, eggs or larvae. I assume that they had made their mind up to go, thought that everything was in-order in the home hive and hadn't given my late intrusion another thought. This was another case of the same surely? I decided to reinspect the whole hive, nothing in the brood nest, searching further though I found a huge queen sealed queen cell on the outer most honey frame, two frames away from the brood nest. It was of course sealed, was this a supersedure cell? She had certainly gone, swarmed or been dispatched by her daughters that were probably as fed up with her as I was? I took the cell down, I didn't want to propagate from this queen but I did want to use the colony's resources to raise new queens from my selected stock, it was back to plan-A, use it as a cell raiser.

Another seven days later, I was expecting the bees, being queen-less, to be in a bad mood. Not so! They were reasonable well behaved and I soon found out why, there were eggs, larvae and a laughing queen present. I boxed them up and decided to let them get on with it. I didn't do proper hive inspections on this colony for the rest of the season, I would take a look at the supers and split the two brood boxes to look for queen cells in the bottom of the  top box, none were found so I assumed all was well.

I took off three supers of honey from this hive, later than from my other colonies, leaving them with two partially filled supers above a crown board. From the weight of the brood boxes they had plenty of stores to last them through to the ivy flow when I would assess them for feeding requirements. I was really pleased an almost, leave it alone, hive had given me my biggest honey crop of the year and a very nice honey it was too.

After the varroa treatments I did notice the odd wasp or two entering this colony when visiting the apiary but thought that they were strong enough to cope. A few weeks later though I discovered that my lassie faire attitude had been wrong. The hive was completely robbed out, the supers were empty, as were the brood boxes. There was no evidence of any dead brood but just a small cluster of dead bees, about the size of my hand, in the centre of the cluster was my yellow marked queen. She wasn't laughing any more! I lamented over the loss of this queen and her colony, due obviously to the neglect of my duties as a beekeeper and, let's face it, down-right cowardice! I sealed up the hive entrance and made a promise to  myself never to neglect my duties again, however many stings I should receive.

At least ten days later I dismantled the hive and took it home to salvage and sterilise any usable frames and to clean up the boxes. At home I discovered a few live bees walking on the outer-most frames, further investigation  revealed that the dead cluster wasn't dead after all, the queen, although  not laughing anymore, was alive too! What should I do? The colony was clearly too small to make it through winter. I decided to put them into an Apidea that thankfully I had neglected to remove the comb from, I had cleaned out all but this last one. I drizzled some honey into the comb and carefully transferred the queen and her remaining entourage. I took them into my house, sealed up of course, for a day. After a day in the warm and with a source of food they were buzzing to get out. As luck, or maybe bad fortune would have it, I had another colony that had become queen-less after varroa treatment and so decided to introduce this queen under a mesh cage on a frame of emerging brood from another hive to the queen-less one. To my relief and amazement she started to lay again and so the field bees began to bring pollen into the hive. I have fed them and given fondant as the colder weather came in.

They are, in my opinion, the least likely my colonies to make it through to the spring but having said that, would you bet against this particular queen?

I may well be facing my old nemesis again next year and probably without my macho son.

Tip: Have you ever made a nuc up, kept in the same apiary, only to find that most of the bees had returned to their home hive?

Have you ever made up a nuc that was kept in the same apiary, only to find that most of the bees had flown home, leaving your nuc short of nurse bees? I have! I remedied this by setting up a ramp to the front of the nuc, as in a Taranov swarm method. Remove two or three frames (from the same hive from which the nuc was made from) of open brood, these will have a high proportion of nurse bees, shake the bees from these frames onto the ramp that you have set up. The nurse bees, having not flown from their hive, will have no idea of where home is and will move upwards towards the nuc entrance. Field bees however will fly back to their home hive before entering the nuc.

I haven't done this yet but I see no reason why this method could not be used to make drone free nucs up for selective breeding. By placing a queen excluder between the floor and brood box any drones shaken from the frames would be prevented from entering the nuc. Indeed any queen shaken from the frames would also be prevented entry, something that can happen when making up nucleus colonies. Once the nurse bees have settled inside, the floor and queen excluder are removed, cleared of bees and the floor returned to the nuc with the entrance sealed. Poly nucs can have an entrance disc fitted that has a queen excluder function, this should work too but would take longer for the bees to enter, the effective entrance being that much smaller.

Cell builder, grafting larvae

I have read many books, articles, blogs and watched countless internet videos on queen rearing. While this is very worthwhile it can become mind boggling. The different methods become blurred and confused. I think that if you want to rear queens and to develop onto bee breeding, you should choose a method, research that method and give it a try. That is to say a few attempts, rarely does a single attempt produce the results show the true potential that can be attained. Lessons can be learned from failure and successes built upon. Then by all means move onto try another method.

I found a number of videos that I found fascinating and informative, Even before I actually had any bees myself. These were on the National Honey Show's YouTube channel. They had invited Mike Palmer from North America to speak. There are a few videos if his talks on their channel, one of these in particular I have watched over and over, this his talk on Queen Rearing in the Sustainable Apiary, Link I decided to base my queen rearing on the method that Mike describes.

Inorder to raise queen cells the cell raiser needs to be strong in numbers of bees, with a high number of young nurse bees and to be congested, that is packed with bees, so many that it seems that there is hardly enough room in the cell raiser to accommodate them all. The video describes how to prepare a colony to be a cell raiser by adding frames of sealed brood to an already strong colony and then to split what has now become a colony that is ready to swarm into a separate cell raiser and a queen right "half" that can be reunited after queen rearing.
After this manipulation of the colony to produce the hopelessly queenless cell raiser, it should be left for a few hours for the bees to realise that they have no queen or larvae with which to raise another queen.

Hopelessly queenless

Packed with bees

Most recently I have used Cupkit cell cups to graft into. On a sunny day with contact lenses and reading glasses too, I can graft quite quickly in the apiary using a stainless steal grafting tool. This takes practice but it's well worth putting in the time. Use whatever vision aids that you need to be able to see young larvae (<12 hours old). These are smaller than eggs! Again there are many videos available on the internet to guide you but practice and trial and error are essential. Success in takes are variable, I have had from 10 - 80% initial takes but have had cells that were initially started only to be taken down by the bees before being sealed. This can be reduced by removing started cells, transferring them to cell finishers. I have not done this yet but plan to do so next season after watching videos posted by Richard Noel Link who has posted some very informative and entertaining videos.

Ten days after grafting it is time to harvest the ripe queen cells, these can be used in a number of ways. I introduce them into either full size framed nucs or Apideas.

Apideas to be transported to the mating apiary.

These are then taken to the mating apiary, where there are colonies of selected desirable bees producing lots of healthy drones with which my new queens can mate. I want to raise healthy, docile, productive near native (AMM) bees but you decide what qualities that you want from your future queens!

Nucs and Apideas in the mating apiary

Queen cells can be checked for emergence a few days later, the queen cell removed and the colony quickly closed and left for the queen to be mated, the nuc then checked for a mated laying queen. This can take 2-3 weeks in the case of full sized nucs but often the queen in an Apidea will begin to lay after about 12 days usually, much sooner than her sisters mating from a full size nuc or hive.

Virgin queens have emerged from these cells

A new queen!

With luck you will have new queens from your own stock that will go onto hopefully, to reward your efforts with gentle colonies that are a pleasure to work, give a good honey crop and give you a great deal of satisfaction. The queen in the above picture gave me my biggest  honey crop in 2018 but unfortunately wasn't as easy to work as I'd hoped! She did her bit though and although I thank her for that she will not be part of next years breeding programme. 

The first attempt at queen rearing

One of the first methods that we tried was the Haskins board. This method, when used with National hive, requires a special board to accommodate a brood frame above a strong colony. A hive that is rectangular can accommodate a horizontal frame held length-ways, in that case a super or brood box can be used to house the frame used for queen rearing, supporting the frame on pieces of wood or something similar to give enough room between the comb and the top bars below for the bees to draw out queen cells.

Haskins board

Indeed, we didn't use any supports in the centre of the comb, perhaps we should have done. In the photo below you can see that the weight of the comb coupled with the heat from the brood nest below had caused the comb to sag.

Comb is sagging

Despite this we were able to harvest about a dozen queen cells.
Our next session would be grafting into plastic cell cups.