Taken from a chapter in Steve Donohoe's book, Interviews With Beekeepers, this covers a conversation between Steve, Jolanta, and Murray McGregor in 2017. Jolanta is the head of the queen rearing unit at Denrosa Apiaries, and she explains how she makes her queens. Denrosa is the largest commercial beekeeping operation in the UK.
Interview With Jolanta
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Imogen: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Walrus and the Honey Bee Podcast. My name is Imogen, and I help Steve Donohoe to pass on some of his beekeeping knowledge. He doesn't like the limelight, whereas I am delighted to have all the lights on me, as long as you get my good side. Oh wait, both of my sides are good. Anyway, Steve is a UK based bee farmer who has written two populat beekeeping books, and he's also the current editor of Bee Farmer magazine.
In this episode I shall be presenting a chapter from Steve's book called Interviews With Beekeepers, based on Steve's travels around the world to meet, work with, and chat to some of the bee farmers that he admires. Our subject today will be Denrosa Apiaries, run by Murray McGregor. They are based in Coupar Angus in Perthshire, Scotland, and are the largest commercial beekeeping operation in the UK. When Steve first met him he ran 3,000 colonies, but that number has now risen to about 5,000. It may not [00:01:00] sound much to our friends across the pond, but in the UK that is a very big number. After an introduction, we will move to Steve's interview with the head of Murrays queen production department; a beekeeper called Jolanta, from Poland.
So, here goes. Bear in mind that back in 2017, Steve was still a hobby beekeeper with much to learn, as you can tell from his questions.
I had heard of Murray McGregor long before I met him. When time allows he posts on Twitter and occasionally on the UK beekeeping forum. Such is his in-depth knowledge, based on experience rather than just theory, that most disagreements on the forum end as soon as Murray posts. It still surprises me that the bee farmer with the most hives in the UK comes from Perthshire, Scotland. Denrosa Apiaries, owned by Murray and by his father before him, had about 3,500 colonies at the time of my visit. Despite many happy holidays to Argyle and Bute and a love of the [00:02:00] beautiful Scottish Highlands, I must have a slightly tainted Southern view of our Northern neighbours. How can bees do well up there in the cold and wet? It turns out that the Perthshire climate is perfectly capable of supporting Murray’s operation. It is home to some thriving fruit farms as well as arable crops, but the main goal for Denrosa is to collect as much honey as possible from the prolific heather that covers the hills in late summer.
In common with many of my interviewees, it took a long time to persuade Murray to give up his precious time to speak with me. Eventually, we settled on the last weekend of November 2017. As I crossed the border it began to snow heavily, and I had that sinking, “Oh no, this is never going to happen,” feeling. After a few miles, it cleared up, and by the time I arrived at my hotel in Alyth, the weather was cold but clear. The Lands of Loyal Hotel was gearing up for Christmas; a huge tree had [00:03:00] materialised in the lobby, but the decorating was yet to start.
That evening I dined out with Murray in Blairgowrie and made plans for the following day. He was keen to drive me to several of his apiaries in the area so that I could take photographs and ask questions along the way. We started our meal with a generous bowl of something called Cullen skink, which is a delicious creamy fish soup. I had never heard of it before but will certainly look for it on any menu from now on. I don’t know if the term, “gentle giant,” is quite the correct description of Murray but that was my initial impression. He is an imposing figure with an unexpectedly soft, soothing Perthshire voice. I suspect, however, that if I was an errant employee, I might see a less gentle side to the man; he does possess a piercing gaze.
The next day I was given a tour of some of Murray’s apiaries in his little red Fiat van. These were his over-wintering sites, carefully placed away [00:04:00] from view along the valleys of the Rivers Isla and Tay. One memorable spot was on a fruit farm. Murray had his hives directly beneath an electricity pylon, to show that the old myths about bees hating electric cables are just that. In my interview with him, later on, I asked about choosing apiary sites because I know that it is something of a passion of his.
After a break for a bacon sandwich, we returned to base, and I met Jolanta Modliszewska. She runs the queen rearing side of the business, which is vital in bee farming; good queens are the lifeblood of the whole operation. I interviewed Jolanta in the queen rearing shed in the land outside Murray’s house, and then, later on, I interviewed Murray himself.
Ok, so in the interview that follows, my voice will represent the interviewer, Steve Donohoe.
Nancy: Hi, I'm Nancy, and I will be voicing Jolanta's replies to Steve's questions. So what follows now is the interview with Jolanta, the queen rearing [00:05:00] superstar at Denrosa apiaries.
Imogen: Do you want to sit down?
Nancy: No, it's fine.
Imogen: Murray said that you are an important part of his business.
Nancy: Yes.
Imogen: I’ve been interviewing other bee farmers and its always the queen selection and queen breeding that is the critical part of their business, because that determines their success, doesn’t it? So how did it start for you?
Nancy: Actually, I worked with Murray for a few seasons as a beekeeper. It was getting a bit too hard for me, because I love bees so much and I wanted to expand my knowledge. I thought that queen rearing would be good for me so I pushed Murray, and he said that it had been his goal for many years to do that.
Imogen: Right
Nancy: Four years ago he built this shed and I started off with 150 mating boxes, and was quite successful in the first year. The first year was a trial, then we slowly started to expand each year. We are now up to 900 mating boxes.
Imogen: Do you mind [00:06:00] explaining how you go about it?
Nancy: How the whole system works?
Imogen: Yes.
Nancy: OK. I have forty grafting frames and each frame holds 28 queen cups. My system is that at the beginning of May I ask Murray about bringing here some great colonies from out in the fields. I usually do the first grafts around 10th May. Last year I had four starters, and for each starter I have two finishers, because I can only put a maximum of 15 cells into each, to get nice big queen cells.
I have my best queens in smaller boxes so they don’t lay many eggs and can live quite a long time.
Imogen: How often does a new breeder queen come in?
Nancy: It's hard to say actually.
Imogen: Is it just when you get a good one?
Nancy: Yeah. I’m quite choosy, because we have 3,000 colonies, so it has to really be great. There is a huge European Foul Brood problem in Scotland so I always check for that as well. Mostly, and Murray will tell you this, the black bees are the ones who have this problem. [00:07:00] We don’t really breed from the black bees but if it’s really great it can come here. Of course, some queens come from abroad as well. Murray buys them; I think I have some from Cyprus and Italy. I learned how to do queen rearing in Cyprus.
Imogen: From Roger White?
Nancy: Yes.
Imogen: How was that?
Nancy: Yes, I had a nice time.
Imogen: Did he teach you about grafting?
Nancy: Yes.
Imogen: I’ve only done it once and it wasn’t very successful, but I have something wrong with my eyes.
Nancy: OK
Imogen: I’ve been told that I need to get a jeweller’s loupe, or something?
Nancy: I have something like that – see this one here.
Imogen: Oh, that's great. Where did you get it?
Nancy: From Amazon I think. It was a gift from somebody.
Imogen: It works well?
Nancy: I don’t use it. I still have good eyes so I don’t need it. What I use for grafting is the Chinese tool, but the wooden one. I don’t like the plastic ones; the wooden (bamboo) ones are better, and I use a headlamp. I close the shutter so it’s dark, [00:08:00] and keep a moist towel on the frame so larvae don’t dry out. I keep the frame in the starter for two days. Each day I do four frames, so every day I’m doing grafting.
Imogen: Is the starter just a big colony?
Nancy: Yes. Not all colonies are good starters, so sometimes I change them. If it’s wrong I will send it away.
Imogen: How does it work? Are they queenless?
Nancy: Oh no, all starters have a queen.
Imogen: With a queen excluder?
Nancy: Yes. I keep my good queens on five frames in a nuke, then a queen excluder on top, then another nuke on top of that with five frames. The frame of grafts goes in the top to get started.
Imogen: When you do the graft is it into dry plastic cells or do you put anything in.
Nancy: Sometimes when it is very hot it’s good to put royal jelly in the cups first, mixed with water fifty/fifty. My teacher does that all the time in Cyprus because it’s much hotter there. Here it is not usually necessary; it is quite mild but not hot summers.
Imogen: To make sure that you have larvae of the right age [00:09:00] is there some method for that or do you just find the right frame?
Nancy: No, I just find a frame where the eggs have just become larvae.
Imogen: At this point, Murray McGregor - the boss - chipped in.
Niall: She takes a frame that has been laid up, and she takes the larvae from the transit zone where they are just changing from eggs to larvae.
Imogen: So, you take the really young larvae?
Nancy: Yeah.
Imogen: Did you find that difficult at first?
Nancy: No, not really.
Imogen: You just go under it with the reed?
Nancy: Yes. You go underneath the outside of the “c” not the inside. Never the end or the inside of the “c”.
Imogen: OK. Then you pop them in the cups and put the frame in the starter.
Nancy: Yes, just for two days, then afterwards into the finisher, which also has a queen.
Niall: Everything is queen right. You don’t need to replenish anything when they are kept queen right.
Imogen: I was going to ask about that.
Niall: You don’t need to bring in any fresh bees or fresh brood; they just keep going all season [00:10:00] when they are queen right.
Imogen: They'll happily do that many, will they?
Niall: In the right conditions they’ll do practically the whole lot. It’s very rarely that you get 100% (of queen cells from grafts)
Nancy: Actually, it happened once last year that I lost just one out of the whole frame, but I’ve never had 100%
Niall: More than 50 percent is perfectly good enough
Nancy: When I get a lot of cells I have to split them between two finishers.
Niall: So that they all get well fed
Imogen: Do you feed the finishers with syrup or pollen or anything?
Nancy: If the weather is fine and there is lots of pollen and nectar coming in, that is the best, I think. Natural sources of food are better. When it’s not like that I do feed them, yes.
Niall: But one thing you never have to do here is feed pollen; there are no pollen dearths here. They can always find pollen.
Imogen: So, as far as timing goes…you graft every day, you said?
Nancy: Yes. Every day I do four frames.
Imogen: Then once they [00:11:00] aresealed?
Nancy: Then they go to the incubator.
Imogen: Always?
Nancy: Yes. Then for the first filling of mating boxes I wait for virgins to hatch. I don’t put a queen cell in for the first time.
Imogen: Why is that?
Niall: It’s a far better acceptance rate. If you are starting from scratch there is a far better acceptance rate with virgin queens than queen cells.
Nancy: Yes. Later, when I have taken away the mated queen, from then on I put in a queen cell, not a virgin.
Imogen: How many days do the cells stay in the incubator?
Nancy: I think they go in at eleven days, so they are in there for three or four days.
Imogen: Then you’ve got to make sure that you have somewhere to put them!
Nancy: Yes. I say to Murray, “I have fifty virgins – I need packages!” I do not want to keep virgins for longer than two days maximum. I give them a little syrup in their roller cages.
One day I had 80 virgins that needed bees. We can get about twelve mating boxes populated from one package of bees.
Imogen: Is it those little [00:12:00] tiny mating nukes? What are they called?
Niall: You get micro nukes, apideas…we use the slightly bigger ones called the Kieler, although we do have some apideas. That’s a kieler over there – it’s just a top bar hive; you use top bars, not frames.
Imogen: No drawn comb in there?
Niall: No, foundation is best.
Nancy: Then I put them somewhere cool and dark for two days.
Imogen: OK. Is the mating area around here then?
Nancy: This is one area. The second one is at Coupar Angus. There are 500 mating nukes here and 400 in Coupar Angus. I have a better mating rate at the Coupar Angus site; it’s a more sheltered place.
Niall: It’s an old neglected orchard alongside a walled garden. You’ve got a high wall on one side and then high trees around three sides, so it’s very calm and sheltered. The bees fly there in conditions that they don’t fly here.
Imogen: Is the first time they go out into mating boxes late May/early June?
Nancy: Middle of May, when I start grafting at the beginning of [00:13:00] May.
Imogen: Does it have to be a certain temperature for them to go on a mating flight?
Niall: Theory says 20 Degrees Celsius but many queens in Scotland mate below that temperature.
Imogen: Otherwise they would never mate at all!
Nancy: Yes, I think it's less than 20 Celsius, for sure.
Imogen: Then you've got a mated queen in a little box
Nancy: Yeah
Imogen: Is your part done then? Is that still you or is it passed on to somebody else once she’s mated?
Niall: I think what you were getting at is when does the responsibility transfer from her to the bee team. She has to catch them, mark them, cage them and then a box of cages gets handed over to the next step in the chain. Also, if she’s got time, she’ll take the cages out and put them in the hives as well.
Imogen: Do they always go to nuclei first?
Niall: No. Just as required. They go into nuclei or full hives or they go away in the post to a customer.
Imogen: And you are basically at it for the whole summer?
Nancy: [00:14:00] Yes
Imogen: What's your favourite bit?
Nancy: Catching queens! Definitely. I like to see my babies.
Imogen: When you have caught the queen, what goes in next, another virgin?
Niall: A queen cell wrapped in foil, to stop them attacking it.
Nancy: That’s my system; the second time I always go with a queen cell. If I put a virgin in then it would fail. One year I tried with virgins and had zero success.
Imogen: Do you wrap the whole queen cell in foil?
Nancy: You just leave the tip. Sometimes it doesn’t work but I think it’s 80% acceptance with this method.
Imogen: When you catch the queen do you clip one wing?
Nancy: I don’t clip them. I just mark them.
Niall: We don’t clip queens in the year that they are born. If a customer who lacks confidence asks us to clip them we will do it, but normally we won’t do that until the next spring.
Imogen: And you were saying that with marking you’ve got two dots?
Niall: No, we’ve got parallel colour codes. The 2017 colour is yellow but we use orange. [00:15:00] Next year it’s red but we use pink. That’s just for the queens born in this unit. Any queens raised in the field or bought in from elsewhere all have the international colours.
Imogen: Is that how you know they are yours?
Niall: Yes. We know one of our own queens.
Imogen: How many breeder queens are there in nukes around here?
Niall: Some are in nukes and some are in big boxes but she’ll generally have 25 lines or something, between drone mothers and breeders.
Nancy: I use some just for starters. It’s hard to say how many because it changes from year to year.
Imogen: What about drones? You bring in good colonies but do you do anything special?
Niall: In both mating sites we have apiaries close by, then we put colonies there selected because they are so good. The colonies here, and we’ve got twenty odd lines, also throw off plenty of drones. The chances of inbreeding are low.
Imogen: I’m reading a book about mating where they were saying that the queens fly much further away to mate than her drones do to [00:16:00] prevent inbreeding.
Niall: They also fly at different times of the day in some cases. Also, when you’ve got a lot of virgin queens you get a lot of incoming drones; they are attracted to the pheromones.
Imogen: Do you happen to know where the drone congregation areas are? No. It doesn’t really matter does it?
Nancy: Sometimes you can hear them – a big cloud of drones.
Niall: They go out, they mate, they come back and it doesn’t greatly matter to us where the drone congregation area is”.
Imogen: What percentage get mated?
Nancy: I think 60 to 70 percent maybe, but it depends on the weather.
Imogen: When it fails is the queen just gone?
Nancy: Sometimes, if it’s hot, I have problems with them absconding in apideas. It’s just empty, and there are small swarms hanging around.
Imogen: Otherwise its just a drone layer?
Nancy: Yes, a drone layer, or something wrong with the queen. Maybe she has a bad wing and didn’t get mated because of that. This year I passed over 1,000 queens [00:17:00] mated so we get more and more. I’m happy with this. We have such a short season.
Imogen: How do you keep track of the different lines?
Nancy: I have a numbering system.
Niall: She uses this notepad to record everything.
Nancy: Lots of dates and numbers…date of grafting and number of mating box and queen lines.
Imogen: So, you know them by their numbers?
Nancy: Yes, and I have my favourites. Of course, Murray sees the results of my babies, so he can tell me if a line is not good or if he sees problems.
Niall: If that happens they get put back in a normal hive and sent away to work.
Imogen: How many get sold, about half?
Niall: No, not even that. The main function of the unit is to make queens for ourselves but we are getting more and more orders, and more and more big orders.
Imogen: Would you like to have more sales of queens?
Niall: This is not a unit of finite size. It can grow to fit demand, and Jolanta can have a full time assistant if she needs it. It’s her domain, and she’s becoming well known for the [00:18:00] quality of her work.
Imogen: That's great isn't it, Jolanta?
Nancy: Yeah, thank you.
Niall: The Scottish bee inspector and the woman from the science institute were saying only last week that they think this is a great project.
Imogen: Do you keep in touch with Roger?
Nancy: Yeah, I have his number. I’m on the Buckfast group. I will not say that Buckfast are my favourite but…
Niall: We tend to have something of a favourite here, the Carniolans, because they seem to be a bit more suited to our climate than the Buckfasts. The thing with Buckfast is, there’s no such thing as “a Buckfast”. Every breeder’s Buckfasts are different. Roger’s bees are very nice; they build up and get big strong colonies, but they under-produce in our climate.
Imogen: Well, they are from Cyprus.
Niall: Not really. He breeds them in Cyprus but they are actually northern origin stock. A lot of the queens from Southern Europe and from warmer climates are actually from stock selected in the North, taken to the South to get the early season, but the [00:19:00] genetics are northern. One thing you don’t want is the “Cyprus Bee” [Apis mellifera cypria], because that is an aggressive bee. Roger has to work hard to keep his stock pure by using instrumental insemination and drone flooding for his open mated queens.
Nancy: I think I will cry when breeder queen number seven dies, because she has been with me from the beginning, from my first year of queen rearing. I am getting like an old lady!
Imogen: Can you tell that “it’s going to be a good day today”?
Nancy: I am quite happy when after two days of bad weather the sun comes out so that they can mate. In bad weather I am always worried that they will not be able to mate. It is a relief when we get the sun.
Imogen: How long before it is too late for mating? Is it three weeks?
Nancy: I think three weeks is a bit too long. I wait for two weeks.
Imogen: If they are not mated then you get rid of them?
Nancy: Yes
Niall: Turf them out and start again. Once the bees get too old the only way is to turf them out [00:20:00] and make up new mating nukes.
Imogen: Thanks, both - very interesting.
That interview took place a long time ago, back in 2017, and my own beekeeping and queen rearing abilities have really improved significantly in the eight years since then. I would ask more detailed questions now. In fact, I may just pay the guys another visit one day - I'm sure I'd still learn a lot.
Incidentally, Jolanta's beloved queen J7 did die the following year, in 2018. In the years between then and now the queen unit has expanded; Jolanta has an assistant now. Both of them, and Murrays daughter Helen, had a trip to the USA to learn about instrumentally inseminating queens with Sue Coby. Anyone interested in buying Jolanta queens can find out more at the website, which is www.denrosa.com
We are coming to the end of this podcast. Hopefully you found some of it interesting. It's always good to see how different people go about their beekeeping jobs. [00:21:00] I thought it was interesting that Jolanta's starter and finisher colonies are all queen-right. It works for her.
Please share this podcast with other beekeepers that you think might appreciate it, and have a great day. Bye for now.