Category: The Wageningse Eng

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Black bee Landrace The Driest The Wageningse Eng Varroa mite

The year 2024

The ‘Optima Rapide’ ground cover in January, no frost damage visible yet.

2024, like 2023, was a very rainy and warm year. There was no fruit honey to harvest, due to a cool and wet period during the fruit bloom, with few flying days. It was striking that in April it was on average one degree colder than in March. In the first half of the month there were two warm periods, but a large part of the second half of the month was cool and wet. With 82 millimeters of rain, double the normal amount fell.

The summer and especially the heather flow – the colonies were located near Vierhouten on the North Veluwe – turned out very well.

Due to a clumsy driver, I broke my arm in mid-May, at a crucial moment in the bee year. Lifting containers was out of the question. Even lifting frames was difficult. To my great fortune, my wife stepped in, which led to some wonderful moments together at De Driest and for her to an express course in practical beekeeping.

All young queens have been locally mated in 2024, either at De Driest or in the Wageningen Binnenveld, where the nucleus colonies were placed for the first time. This latter location may not be so favourable for successful matings. I will investigate this further in 2025. In any case, due to the wet summer, the percentage of fertilised queens was on the low side this year: around 65%, which is less than usual at De Driest.

In 2025, I want to produce a few black P0 queens again at the Neeltje Jans mating station, mainly to contribute to the preservation of this breed, even though the black bee lags behind modern hybrids in terms of productivity and manageability. Who knows what hidden qualities the black bee still possesses, and then I am talking about Varroa resistance in particular.

The Varroa pressure in 2024 varied greatly from colony to colony, as is often the case. Looking back, many colonies have received some form of treatment. This was necessary because the Varroa pressure would otherwise have exceeded the damage threshold. Perhaps the black queens to be produced in 2025 can improve this. In particular, I was able to cut the necessary drone comb in the colonies. Consequently, I could skip the winter treatment in about half of all colonies, because there were only very few mites in them at that time.

In the fall, as in 2023, I did not perform three-day mite counts on the Varroa, but only monthly counts. This is certainly less accurate and does not allow for the construction of mite fall curves, but it is considerably less work.

At the time of writing, January 2025, all colonies are still alive.

The winter rye, sown in the autumn of 2023, only gave a moderate yield. At the time of ripening, there was a very rainy period, which did not do the final quality of the grain any good. Nevertheless, the end result was still within the standards, so that the rye was suitable for baking bread. The straw went, as usual, to the organic farm De Hooilanden.

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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…

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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.

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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.

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The Driest The Wageningse Eng

Cold spell in February 2021

We had almost forgotten about the cold in this country. The cold spell in February has changed the looks of the apiary dramatically. There is no harm for the colonies, provided food stores are sufficient. Because of the increased food uptake stores may become somewhat low in spring, though.

The snow has coaxed some bees outside. That meant sure death for them, and their bodies were lying scattered around in the snow. Were these the old winter bees, which left the hive to die outside? We will see in a month if the colonies have survived winter.

The apiary is getting emptier… The hives are standing outside now.

My new placement of the hives in small, loose groups. No more hives in long rows, in order to minimise drift among hives. In this manner, spread of Varroa is considerably reduced as well.

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The Driest The Wageningse Eng

Spring 2020 at De Driest

We’re experiencing an exceptionally warm spring this year and nature reacts accordingly. The colonies have clearly started breeding and are using up winter stores rapidly now. Therefore, I have given packs of sugar patty to a number of colonies today.

In our field we will be sowing barley this year, to be used for brewing our Wageningen beer.
Also, we will be sowing a flowering border again this year, this time with indigenous species and no longer the Tübinger mixture, as this contains too many cruciferous species to my taste.

Remains of mustard and wild flower border in February.

But first the couch grass must be removed and that’s quite a job for the wild flower border had been overgrown considerably by couch grass in recent years.

Removing couch grass before sowing the wild flower border.