July 2024
Relief from the Gap but not from the Weather? - Newsletter from Alan Riach
The June gap is over, and the foragers are in gear again, but the weather is pretty mixed. I expect a few of you will now be patiently waiting for tardy new queens to start laying. As mentioned previously, new queens in very populous colonies can take weeks before they start laying (5 or 6 weeks is not unusual). However, now that the flows have started again, eggs should appear soon. If eggs don’t appear, remember the classic test for queenlessness – From a queenright colony, insert a frame that has eggs or up to two-day-old larvae (just beginning to show segmentation). Remember to shake it free of bees (especially free of the queen).
Reports of swarming this year have been down, albeit some of them tried to make off on bikes – well done Jill for rescuing a challenging one. But keep checking anyway. Time to start thinking about preparing for late summer flows. With luck, the Lime will yield and if yielding strongly is a flow capable of filling a super in 10 days, so make sure you have supers available. Lime honey is high in fructose and stays liquid for a long time, as well as being one of the tastiest honeys, pale green with a gentle taste of the old-fashioned limeade lemonade. However, even if the Lime doesn’t oblige (I usually get good lime flows only about 3 years in 5), then there is sure to be bramble, clover, sweet chestnut and rosebay willowherb (fireweed). The bramble was out during the Highland Show, earlier than last year.
Time to start thinking about preparing for the heather. Normally, the bees would be put to the heather about the end of July. The heather moors require really populous colonies, and the Pagden swarm prevention method ties in well with this requirement. The old queen in the artificial swarm can be removed and the colony united with the new queen colony. New queens are desirable as they continue to lay later on in the season, keeping up numbers on the hard-working heather gatherers.
The bees should be on one brood box and by populous, I mean “boiling over” with bees. Preparing for the heather requires some brood box arrangements outside of the normal rules of colony assembly. If you have deep frames of sealed food, place one at each side of the broodbox. Now place the frames of open brood next to these frames (or if you don’t have frames of sealed food, place the open brood directly against the sides. Now place the frames of sealed brood against the open brood frames and finally the empty frames with laying space, in the centre.
The placement of the young brood towards the sides is to prevent the bees from starting to place heather honey in these outer frames and to encourage them to place it up in the supers.
If you have no brood frames of stores, then place a full sealed super frame in the centre of the first super as an emergency food source, but mark it with a drawing pin, so that you don’t later confuse it with frames of heather honey.
Since Ling Heather honey is thixotropic (jellyish but can be made liquid for a few minutes by needle agitation before returning to the jelly form), it is very difficult to extract without professional agitation equipment. However, heather honey sells well as cut comb, a 227g carton of cut comb heather often sells for approximately the same price as a 454g jar of blossom honey. Cut comb feels better in the mouth if you allow the bees to draw the comb as they can leave it with an ultra-thin mid-rib. Place a 2cm strip of thin foundation along the top bar (held in place with the wedge but glued in place with a run of melted wax). Any remnants left after cut combing, or badly formed combs can
be pressed.
