Episode 69: Rain, Queen Rearing and Beekeeping Disasters

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 69 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. What a wet week we’re having, and guess which idiot decided it would be a good idea to move nucs to the mating apiary in preparation for the queen rearing. Stay tuned for my queen rearing update, getting stuck in the mud and other beekeeping disasters!

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Utterly drenched, that was me on Wednesday evening. To be honest, that was also me on Tuesday evening as well. This week has been crazy busy, mainly due to my own procrastination, I’ve been meaning to set up the queen rearing apiary for some time but just not got round to it and with the season racing away from me I just had to get out this week and get it sorted.

The first task was to set up the stands, but let me rewind a little and talk you through what I’m setting up. Here in Norfolk, I’m surrounded by beekeepers and each one of them has a mix of bee types ranging from pure Italian Ligustica, Germanic Carniolan’s, a few near natives but mostly the good old Norfolk Mix. Open mated and a collection of genes from around the world no doubt. Here am I, trying to get back to a near-native or perhaps better described as a locally adapt mix of bees but as you know by now I have a preference for the darker bee so I’m trying to be ruthless this year and move on any stripy or light coloured queens. Some of them perform quite well but my bees are not yet consistent enough and I’d love to be able to share them with other beekeepers but not until I’m sure of what I’m producing.

Anyway, in order to attempt to give myself a fighting chance, I’m moving around a dozen colonies containing dark drones into my mating apiary area at the fishing lakes. The plan is to flood the mating site with as many darker drones as possible to try to edge out any light or stripy drones. I’m also adding a few super frames to the brood boxes of these colonies to encourage the girls to build drone comb from the bottom and produce an excess of drones beyond the more normal levels that you might find in these colonies.

Close by to this apiary I have my mating apiary, it’s just a clearing with a load of nuc boxes filled with nucleus colonies ready to take virgin queens when the time comes, currently they’re all queen right and I’m balancing colonies for strength by shifting a few frames of brood from one to the other and adding a few frames of foundation here and there where needed.

Just switching topic for a moment, I had an email from our National Bee Unit yesterday advising that in this cooler, rainy spell nucleus colonies might be starving, if you’d seen my nucs you’d wonder where they’ve got all their stores from! at least two frames of food each so I’m not worried about the starvation issue at all. Different areas around the UK have struggled so if you have recently made up a nuc or a split it’s worth checking up on them, if they’re low on food give them a bag of fondant and they’ll be fine I’m sure.

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Anyway, back to the queen rearing apiary. I have stands set up to take four nuc boxes, these vary from my own Commercial plywood nucs to the BS Honey 2 in 1 nucs, it’s just what I have available. The stands are a new addition for me, remember I’m fairly useless at woodwork so thei