Some of the many things that can and do go wrong when beekeeping, and what to do about them
Welcome to another episode of The Walrus and the Honey Bee, a podcast by UK based bee farmer Steve Donohoe, based on his blog, which is also called The Walrus and the Honey Bee. By the way, did you know that honey bee is two words, not one? With insights like that, I'm sure you can see that if you stick around, within weeks you will be a professor of beekeeping, or something beginning with 'B" anyway.
Anyway, my name is Imogen, and Steve has asked me to do this podcast episode for him. He is a walrus, and very good at basking, but not so great at forming sentences, poor thing. So lucky you, I'm doing it. This episode is based on the blog post called "Walrus Wobbles" - basically cock ups. It turns out that Steve makes quite a few of them. Here goes.
📍 📍 📍 It really is quite incredible how a supposedly intelligent creature such as myself, with years of experience – I am in my early sixties after all – can continue to have an endless supply of Walrus wobbles. Yet, this is the case. Some of my calamities stem from idiocy or carelessness, but others appear to be more about the Gods, or perhaps, the Moirai (fates). Here are some of them:
Queen Quandaries
Given the effort and time that I put into making honey bee queens, it always hurts when something doesn’t quite work out the way I’d hoped. What’s worse is that it’s nearly always my fault, but not always.
📍 📍 Marking & Clipping When I started handling queens, I was terrified that I would damage them, so I tried all sorts of devices that would enable me to mark them safely. These devices turned out to be a liability, and once I actually used just my fingers, it got significantly quicker and safer. Numerous people suggest picking a queen up by her wings, which is what I do with workers when loading queen cages, but I found another way that I prefer. I hold her down (gently) against the comb using my forefinger and thumb on her thorax, then I pick her up from there. When I was trying to grab her wings, I would often miss, and she’d go scurrying off or even take flight. If it is a hot day, it is wise to spray the queen with a mist of water before picking her up, as they seem to fly more frequently in higher temperatures.
So, what could possibly go wrong? Well, occasionally the queen may ‘feint’. She goes very still. I thought I had killed her when this happened to me the first time. Later, I read about feinting, and regretted throwing my immobile queen into the hedge in disgust. Whoops.
📍 Then there is dropping the queen. This does happen, at least, it does to me. Not often, but it’s horrible when it happens. Every so often you might actually find her on the grass by your feet, but other times she disappears, never to be seen again. They can crawl back into their hive, which is always a relief – you would discover this at the next hive visit – but often you will find emergency queen cells, to prove that you sent her to her doom. One simple solution, apart from “don’t drop her!” is to carry out the marking and clipping over an upturned lid. That way, if you do drop her, she is easy to see. Moreover, when picking up queens, you need to make sure that your fingers or nitrile/latex gloves are clean, rather than plastered with propolis and honey.
📍 📍 I used to use marking pens, but there were two things I didn’t like about them. One was that the mark seemed to rub off quite often. But far worse; one time a flood of marking paint rushed out of the pen and covered large areas of the queen’s head, thorax, and wings. I put her back in the hive, but she was gone at the next visit. We now use non-toxic acrylic paint and apply it to the thorax with the handle end of a paintbrush (it works better than the brush end). If we leave the paint to dry for a couple of minutes while the queen wanders around a clip cage, the mark seems quite robust, but occasionally, it is nearly gone the following season.
For clipping queens, we use high-quality nail scissors. I have never had this problem, but you do need to be careful; sometimes she sticks up her back leg, and if you were careless, you might cut that accidentally. We clip the queens first, then mark, then leave her in a clip cage for a while before releasing back to her colony. Which brings me to another Walrus wobble; I have, on occasion, reassembled the hive and forgotten to put the queen back! We now leave the cage on top of brood-box frames so that this can’t happen.
📍 📍 Queen Rearing
The most fun you can have in a bee suit? Possibly. Most of my hiccups have come at the queen mating or introduction stages, but not all of them.
I have had most success with a queenless cell starter colony, which I convert to a queen-right finisher a couple of days after adding the grafts. The main problem with cell builders is to avoid a ‘rogue virgin’ queen emerging in the same box as the developing queen cells, as the virgin will kill them all. I had this happen once, so now I am obsessed with making sure that the brood box into which my grafts go has no queen, no open brood, and no cells. I also move cells to the incubator a week after grafting, as they are safe in that controlled environment, in a ‘roller cage’. The incubator is set to 34.5 degrees C and 60-80% humidity. Roller cages can be supported by foam with holes cut in it of the right size (the type for quail eggs work well).
Which reminds me, if you get a good quality incubator, you can have more confidence in it. Once a cheap one cooked a batch of cells, which is far from ideal. However, things can go wrong. You need to keep the water tray wet so that the humidity stays in the right place, and any power cut could ruin your cells. You may not even know that there was a power cut, if your incubator is not at home, and you would only realise something is wrong when none of the cells emerge.
A problem I have sometimes found with raising queens is when the larvae of the right age in the breeder-queen colony are not suitable for grafting. This can happen during a dearth, when the larvae can be a little ‘dry’. A practical solution to this is to pop the frame containing eggs and newly emerged larvae into the cell builder overnight. The next day, the cells will be flooded with jelly and easy to graft. Alternatively, feed syrup and a protein supplement, and return a few days later. Anything that messes up the schedule and timings is quite annoying, though.
📍 I try to transfer queen cells from the incubator to mating nukes the day before the queens are due to emerge. In fact, a newly made up mating nuke with no brood will accept a virgin better than a cell. Once the nuke becomes a mini-colony with brood and stores, the queen cells work better than virgins, I think. Anyway, in the past I have got my calculations wrong and virgins have emerged into their roller cages in the incubator. If you leave them for too long, they will die; you need to give them a little blob of honey straight away, and move them into a colony that day. I have found several emerged and dead, which is very depressing, and completely my fault.
📍 Mating Failures I have seen quite a bit of this, especially in the last couple of years. One might think that a colony of bees, having swarmed, would make a new queen, and she would be mated and laying a few weeks later. Unfortunately, not always. We have found quite a few cases where the virgin disappears, and if we leave it too long, we get laying workers. These get shaken out, as trying to get them to accept a queen is a waste of time and a queen.
There is also that scenario where we find lots of sealed queen cells right on the cusp of emerging. It is great fun releasing the virgins. Our logic is that if we release all virgins and remove all other cells, they will fight it out and eventually one queen will mate and become the new queen of the hive. I reckon it’s worked for us about 50% of the time. The other 50% had no queen of any sort, and either became laying workers, or got rescued with a frame of brood and a new queen. Leaving the sealed cells alone risks losing cast swarms, i.e. swarms with virgins rather than a mated queen.
📍 📍 📍 This season, we started a new apiary with six nucleus colonies, which each got a protected cell from our incubator. Three weeks later, we checked on them; only two had mated queens. The weather was gorgeous, and it made little sense that four out of six were not mated. In fact, we could not see virgin queens in those four either. Once we passed four weeks, we added new mated queens; two of these worked out, but the others became laying workers. So, 33% of the original cells worked out, and only 50% of the introduced mated queens did. What a complete pain! I know people often overestimate predation by swallows, but I think it could have been a factor. Furthermore, the nukes look similar, so returning queens could have entered the wrong one. The two mated queens probably died because those colonies were just becoming laying workers. Or maybe they were poor queens – those particular ones were not from our breeding program, but bought in.
We get a certain portion of failed matings at our mating apiary, which has plenty of colonies, most of them small and existing only to get queens mated. It is unclear to me why it happens, but it does. Maybe 20% or so. We find the emerged cell but no eggs and no queen, and if we leave it too long, laying workers again. Because we use cell protectors, I think the problem is failure to return from mating flights, due to the aforementioned winged predators or stumbling into the wrong hive.
📍 📍 Management Mess-Ups
Gosh, this is turning into a book. Some cretinous cock-ups that we have made are:
Letting the queen get trapped above the queen excluder, probably because she was on the excluder when it was removed, but maybe due to a faulty excluder.
Dropping a frame, most likely after being stung or stabbed by a random sharp bit of nail or wire on the frame. Murphy’s Law requires that the queen will be on the dropped frame.
Dropping a super full of honey frames. This almost always breaks the super, and if it’s polystyrene, it probably won’t be easy to repair.
Accidentally removing the queen on a frame of brood, removed to provide laying space in the brood box. The queen pops up somewhere unexpected, such as a new nuke, and the original colony builds emergency queen cells.
Setting up a hive stand without a firm base. At some point, as the hive gets heavier, it will probably sink into the ground, and maybe the hive will tip over.
Removing the spring honey crop and not leaving enough stores for when the weather turns bad for a few weeks. Leads to starvation. But before they actually starve, the queen slows laying and workers eat eggs and kick out larvae. This is not going to help build a strong colony for the summer flow. Need to take emergency action and feed syrup using frame feeders. Better still, leave enough stores in the first place.
Introducing a queen under a push-in cage and completely forgetting about her. We found her dead under the cage, but the bees had made their own by then anyway.
Leaving space above frames because they are being fed fondant in early spring. If you leave it too long, they will build ‘wild comb’ into the space, making an architecturally attractive ‘mess’ that must be scraped away. When doing this, make sure the queen is not on it, by using plenty of smoke and shaking the lid over the hive.
Not using mouse guards or thin underfloor entrances in autumn/winter. Mice love to spend some time inside a hive, defecating everywhere and eating comb. We mostly use underfloor entrances, which keep mice out. We like the Paynes style of poly nuke because we can slide the entrance reducer around so that the queen excluder part covers the entrance over winter.
Storing wet supers in a storage space that is not bee proof, without wrapping. This will often result in a mass invasion of robber bees and wasps. Much better to stack supers with an upturned roof as the base, wrapped in pallet wrap, with a roof on top – the bees can’t get in, and hopefully won’t be drawn to the area by the smell.
Leaving hive tools, smokers, notebooks, marking kits etc. at the apiary. We have about 20 hive tools, which helps, and several smokers (although we only use smokers when the bees seem twitchy). We have various ‘marking and clipping’ kits made up and kept in the van. I should keep my notebook in a plastic wallet so that it won’t get ruined by the rain if I leave it somewhere. I also transfer my handwritten notes in my notebook onto a spreadsheet at the end of the day, which seems like a lot of work, but I like data, so it’s OK.
Honey Room
I recently covered the various Walrus wobbles that have happened to me in the honey house. The worst one was having to clear up about 60lbs of honey that had overflowed onto the floor. Lovely job.
📍 📍 Conclusion
Whether it is the Moirai, the Gods, or my incompetence, these set-backs occur in beekeeping as in life. I like to think that maybe I have learned from them. I still enjoy keeping bees, even though I’m probably not especially good at it!
Right then, we're done here, thanks so much for listenning. If you enjoyed it, please spread the word, so that others can become Professors of something beginning with B. Have a great week, and I'll see you next time.