Vita Bee Health Global Honeybee Health Experts
Menu

Blog – bees, beekeeping & other sticky subjects

Busy bees

Here’s a one-minute glimpse of the industry of a nucleus (half-size) colony of honeybees in a village in early May in southern England.

I started to count the number of returning foragers, but quickly gave up as that was hard work!

If you view this in full screen, watch for the tiny mites (probably pollen mites) scurrying back and forth along the grain on the top of the entrance door.

 

Turlough, Vita’s Guest Beekeeper Blogger

 

News of the shrews

shrew

Pygmy shrew – a menace to overwintering colonies in the Martimes, Canada.

Which bee predator has a heartbeat of 800 per minute, consumes more than its own body weight daily and scoops out bees for lunch?

The pigmy shrew, Sorex minutus, is an underestimated, but common threat for over-wintering honeybee colonies in eastern Canada, we are told by Fletcher Colpitts, Chief Apiary Inspector in New Brunswick, Canada.

Weighing just 3 gms and averaging 40mm in length (even with its tail), the shrews feed on insects, arachnids, woodlice, and in cold climates like Canada their diet turns to honey bees during winter.

To feed on bees in winter, they grab a cold sluggish bee from the edge of the cluster and take it to a feeding place either in the back of the hive away from the cluster or in the wrapping material and start munching.

First, they remove the head or enter through the top of the bee by making a large hole in its thorax. They then hollow out the bee leaving what looks like a pile of dirt — actually the wings, legs and a bit of the abdomen.

With such a large appetite for such a small body, the shrews may consume almost 0.5 kg of bees in 120 days of the eastern Canadian winter. As a result lots of colonies are dead by spring through shrew predation.

Fortunately, beekeepers have found that a narrow entrance just 0.25 inches in diameter widening to 0.5 inches in spring, to ensure that any spring pollen is not brushed off, will keep out the menace

 

Hornet media frenzy!

Asian Hornet Head

The Asian Hornet (Vespa velutina) is devastating honeybee colonies across Europe

Oh dear, it looks like the UK newspaper headline writers are getting the Asian hornet threat out of proportion! Rest assured it’s really a threat to honeybee colonies rather than humans. But the headlines tell another story:

Giant Asian Hornet heading for Kent after ‘causing deaths’ of six people in France

Is this the first sighting of a killer Asian Hornet in Plymouth? (the answer incidentally was no)

then some semblance of sense prevailed:

DON’T PANIC! Call for calm over Devon “Asian hornet” sighting

Twitter of course has gone way over the top confusing all sorts of hornets as the Asian hornet. As one Twitter user joked: “Okay, confirmed sighting of an Asian Hornet in Plymouth. I’m not going outside anymore. =)”.

Nonetheless, the Asian hornet may arrive soon in the UK and be a threat to honeybee colonies. Max Watkins of Vita explains the threat here and Vita’s hornet trap here.

Meantime, in conversation with a beekeeper in Greece this morning, I was told: “Ordinary hornets are bad enough here and it is common to lose 50% or more of the stocks. One reason for this is that the colonies become less strong in summer as it is hot, little forage and queen laying is low. The weakened colonies become more susceptible to hornet and was attack.”

Get bee-doodling for World Doodle Day

WDDFriday 25 April 2014 is World Doodle Day and the organisers have decided to link it to a good cause — honeybees. Vita will also give a prize for the best doodle relating to bees.

World Doodle Day marks the launch of the Doodle Mile — anyone can create a segment of the ‘Doodle Mile’. Contact the organisers for details.

World Doodle day is centred in the county of Hampshire where Vita’s HQ is located, so we will post some of the fascinating doodles.

Vita will give a prize to the best bee-related doodle, so get bee-doodling

And here is a peek at some very impressive doodles.

A mitey shock! Updated 4 weeks on.

Too many varroa too early in the season!

Too many varroa too early in the season!

I had an unwelcome shock opening a hive this month to find that there were one or two bees on each frame with symptoms resembling DWV (Deformed Wing Virus). DMV often indicates a varroa infestation. I’ve only ever seen bees with its symptoms on the occasional bee in a hive — and never so early in the season.

So, suspecting varroa even though the colony had been treated the previous autumn, I did a a 24-hour test with Apistan (by inserting two strips for 24 hours and counting the mite fall — Apistan acts very quickly on the varroa not under cappings — which drop later in the treatment).

By the next day, about 200-300 had appeared on the varroa screens, so immediate action was necessary!

Conditions were good, so radical action was feasible. The colony was quite strong, the oil seed rape was beginning to flower and provide pollen and nectar, and the weather forecast was good.  I removed ALL four of the frames with sealed brood (which would contain a lot of varroa) and let the colony start again on foundation and some clean comb with a few stores. The Apistan will be left in until the colony needs supering.

With luck, the DMV symptoms will disappear along with the varroa and who knows I might have a very healthy invigorated colony quite soon. We’ll see!

Uncapping seals revealed even more varroa mites

Uncapping cells revealed even more varroa mites

Meantime I have inspected the other colony in the apiary and colonies in my other apiary. Fortunately they all seem fairly clean of varroa — in fact sampled colonies show only a mite drop of one or two after the Apistan 24 hour test.

Why this single colony was so badly infested is a mystery. Perhaps for some reason the treatment was misapplied or perhaps the colony was invaded by another varroa-infested colony after the treatment. In any event the mild winter has probably helped the varroa to breed.

UPDATE on 12 May 2014

Four weeks on, the once varroa-ridden colony is thriving and even outpacing an adjacent hive despite having to start brood-rearing from scratch.

After the removal of the sealed brood and the first 24 hours of the Apistan treatment there has hardly been any further drop of varroa mites. The first of the new generation of honeybees are now emerging and all signs of bees with Deformed Wing Virus seem to have disappeared. The colony looks healthy.

I have now removed the Apistan strips (which didn’t have to remain the usual six weeks because the sealed brood had been removed) and put on the first super.

Turlough, Vita’s guest beekeeper blogger

 

 

X

Forgot Password?

Join Us