Category: Beekeeping methods

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Beekeeping methods Black bee Queen rearing

The year 2025

This year, I wanted to reduce the number of colonies in my apiary. I had overwintered very well in recent years, which gradually led to too many colonies, partly as a consequence of my making numerous splits as part of my swarm prevention efforts.

Snelgrove

My idea was to revisit Snelgrove’s old method this year (see “Temporary splits“). The advantage seemed to me that the number of colonies would at least not increase further, but would remain at the same level, by reuniting the parent part and the daughter (breeder) part later.

And so, between April 30th and May 2nd, I managed to create queen-right splits from most of the colonies, which, separated by a Snelgrove board, were placed below the breeder part. In three cases where I couldn’t find the queen quickly, I created queenless splits, with two frames of open brood, so that these too could produce a new queen.

Snelgrove in action: high towers…

Now the result: only about 60% of the colonies produced a new laying queen. That is considerably less than what is usual with local fertilisation at The Driest. In those cases where the young queen did start laying, I removed the old queen. Then, in all the colonies, I reunited the two parts.

As a result of the opening and closing of the various wedges on the Snelgrove board, there was a flurry of activity around the tall hive structures, something I don’t particularly appreciate: peace and harmony should reign in an apiary. Even after the reunion of the two parts, bees continued searching for the now-disappeared flight opening for a long time.

But here’s the thing: after the two parts were reunited, eggs were no longer found in about 75% of the reunited colonies after a few days, and queen cells were constructed. And me always thinking that the reunion of the two parts wasn’t a problem at all, because of the “identical colony scent,” whatever that may be. But apparently, they weren’t used to each other at all anymore… I eliminated all but one queen cell in these reunited colonies. Now, in early July, all the young queens are laying eggs, except for one which is a drone-layer, a result of almost 100% mating success, hence partly reached in two stages. These animals will never cease to amaze me…

Queen rearing

This year I wanted to breed black queens again for purebred mating at Neeltje Jans, the Dutch mating station for black bees. However, due to the renewed experiment with the Snelgrove method, I didn’t have any colonies in the right breeding mood. Moreover, the colonies were producing a lot of nectar due to the beautiful spring and summer. In any case, the queen cells constructed by the starter (9 out of 10) were quickly fully surrounded with wax by the finisher colony: breeding failed. The challenge now is to somehow combine Snelgrove’s method with queen rearing. The breeding will have to take place in the breeder part, without weakening this part by excessive transfer of bees to the parent part.

The end result, after many detours, is that now, in mid-July, I still have the same number of colonies I started the season with. Some colonies will have to be merged. Incidentally, I’ve never harvested as much honey as this year. Is this an effect of Snelgrove after all?

Categories
Beekeeping methods Landrace The Driest The Wageningse Eng Varroa mite

The year 2023

Sun and frost on The Driest.

The year 2023 has been a good year for bees and beekeeper alike. All 11 hibernated colonies have survived, but one had been seriously weakened by chalkbrood. Therefore, I had to eliminate this colony.

There was a lot of rain this year. This was not only beneficial for nature, but also for the main honey flows in spring and summer and on the heather. Only a dry period from mid-May to the end of June caused a break in the development of the vegetation.

Due to the warm autumn, the colonies continued to breed for a long time, which resulted in high Varroa pressure, which had to be reduced by using oxalic acid in almost all colonies in December, during one of the rare cold mornings. This year I did not perform three-day mite counts on the Varroa board in autumn, but only monthly counts. This is certainly less accurate and does not allow for the construction of mite drop curves, but it is considerably less work…

All young queens on The Driest were locally mated. I didn’t bring any virgin black queens to the Neeltje Jans mating station this year. This had to do with the fact that I had created a lot of splits to relax the production colonies and thus suppress the swarming fever. As a result I had obtained many small splits. What also plays a role is that I have some doubts about the quality of the breeding material from Texel: the colonies are selected exclusively based on morphological characteristics but not on behavioral characteristics. The result of the local mating was very good: only 1 of the 14 young queens was not fertilised.

I have not made any temporary splits: all young colonies have been made by tapping bees and brood. This resulted in many small splits, but these can easily be united in autumn into colonies that are strong enough to hibernate.

This year we grew summer barley on our plot. The drought in May-June resulted in the crop remaining very low. When it started raining again in July, the weeds quickly started overgrowing the barley. This made it a bit of a challenge whether the quality of the grain would be sufficient, as the barley barely became dry enough. In the end we harvested a mediocre, but qualitatively acceptable harvest.

We sowed winter rye in October. Let’s hope that the heavy rain of winter 2023-24 will not throw a spanner in the works…

Categories
Beekeeping methods Black bee Landrace The Driest The Wageningse Eng

The year 2022

The mild winter of 2021-22 induced the colonies towards an early brood nest formation. However, in March and April the weather was cold and dry. This hampered colony development considerably. Consequently, the honey crop on the spring fruit trees was negligible. Still, it helped colony build-up.

In the late summer and early autumn, there was a severe drought once again. As a result, the heather honey harvest has largely failed. The autumn rains came just too late.

We had sown lupine on our field this year. More information on this crop can be found on the website of the ‘Golden Bean’ (in Dutch). There were many insects to be seen on the flowers, but interestingly enough few honey bees.

The autumn remained warm for a very long time, so the bees continued to breed until very late in the season. Fortunately, there is a lot of ivy around our field, so that pollen supply was not endangered.

However, the Varroa population build-up also continued for a long time, so that Varroa numbers in the colonies are still high at this moment, at the beginning of December. That means I will have to treat most colonies with oxalic acid, unfortunately. The Varroa population is determined by continuous counting of natural mite drop on the bottom board over a period of at least three months. A one-off count, as is often prescribed, is not sufficient, as the natural mite drop fluctuates strongly. By determining the mite drop over a longer period, a growth curve of the mite population can be constructed. The parameters that determine the shape of the curve give an indication of whether treatment is necessary or not.

The fertilisation of the purebred black queens at the Neeltje Jans mating station was disappointing. On average, only 60% of the young queens came back fertilised, but my result was even poorer than that… The first mating period had been called off: it was too cold and there were hardly any drones around. I had not prepared myself well for the second period, so that the selected breeder colony was not strong enough. This has negatively affected the quality of the young virgin queens. The fertilisation of the landrace queens on De Driest, on the other hand, was flawless: 100% fertilised. The difference could be that these virgin queens were not in small mating nuclei, but were obtained with the 2×9 method (see link).

As a result, the majority of the colonies now contain queens of the ‘landrace of the Wageningse Eng’. Only a few (fairly pure-bred) black queens remain.

Categories
Beekeeping methods Black bee Landrace The Driest The Wageningse Eng

The year 2021

Every year is different in beekeeping. This was no different in 2021. Spring started cold and remained cold. Consequently, there was no honey to harvest from the fruit trees. Contrarily to previous years, there were good rains during the summer of 2021. Very good for the Wageningse Eng, which is very drought-prone, as we know from experience.

The summer crop was average. I have to mention, though, that I haven’t migrated the bees to the lime trees this year and no doubt this has had a negative effect on the production.

On the plus side, the heather crop was very favourable this year. Thanks to the good rainfall in July the heather was in great shape. The ancient Dutch skep beekeepers knew that a wet July is a precondition for a good heather honey harvest. Temperatures in August were mild and the weather generally sunny.

Gathering Holland’s finest honey…

The production of a number of colonies headed by a black queen has been a priority this year. I have produced a fair number of pure-bred black queens, that have mated at the breeding station of Neeltje Jans. This mating station on an artificial island in Zeeland is run by De Duurzame Bij (The Sustainable Bee). There are only pure-bred drone-producing colonies on Neeltje Jans, which guarantees racial purity to a high degree (but maybe not completely).

Some 62% of the young queens I produced this year on Neeltje Jans have been fertilised and went into egg-laying, slightly more than the long-term average. A lot of nuclei had to be produced to accommodate all these virgin queens, which required a lot of bees and hence has gone to the cost of the productivity of the colonies.

The black bee is seriously threatened, here as well as in the rest of northern Europe, by continuous hybridisation provoked by introgression of foreign genes. Producing a 100% pure black queen, while at the same time avoiding inbreeding, remains a challenge and will require many more years of arduous selection.