Episode 79: Microscopes, What3Words and Pizza

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 79 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. I’ve got lots happening this week, wasps robbing, starving bees, an emergency location system and it’s pizza night at the beekeeping group.

I recently posted a 60-second video to my Patreon page showing some wasps raiding a very weak colony, so weak in fact that the bees could do nothing to prevent the robbing. The colony was in fact a drone laying queen colony and was one I had decided to unite but the wasps got in first and fast! Within a week of checking them, they were all but dead and the wasps were on every frame stripping it bare.

The question then comes of what to do with the hive, I think I’ve mentioned before about leaving it, as removing it runs the risk of just having thousands of wasps suddenly finding themselves without a location to rob and moving on to the next unsuspecting colony, so that’s what I’ve done. I had the same situation at another apiary, the wasps do seem to have enjoyed a very good year this year, I suspect it was the very early start that we all benefitted from. Anyway, at this other location, I decided to shut the entrance and was going to remove the hive but at that time was suffering from a rather sore back so left it in place. When I returned a week later, I found that the wasps were able to squeeze through the varroa mesh floor and get inside. They were amazingly small wasps but even so, I was surprised that they were able to get in. I had decided to remove this colony from the apiary instead of leaving it because all of the other colonies were very strong and I don’t think the wasps would have had any chance of getting in at all. And this is a good point to dwell on and mention, particularly for beginner beekeepers, there are lots of books out there giving advice and even more so-called expert beekeepers giving even more advice and sometimes it can be difficult to see the wood from the trees, but no two situations will be exactly the same, or at least very rarely the same, and making a decision as to what to do can seem quite confusing. The advice I would give is to do nothing, well, at least to start with. If you’re unsure as to what you should do just pause and grab a drink, have a sit down and think about what you’re actually seeing, take on board all the words of wisdom you’ve read and advice you’ve been given and set it against what you actually have in your apiary and then make a choice about the course of action you what to take and the reasons why you’re doing what your doing.

You won’t always get it right but at least you will have had a good think about it and arrived at a reasoned decision. If it doesn’t go to plan, add it to the growing list of things you’ve tried, save the experience for the next time you’re confronted with a similar situation and give something else a go.

Still, on the subject of wasps, I’ve decided I’m not going to use any wasp traps anymore, of any sort, in fact, I don’t think I’ll use any traps of any sort, I’m thinking here of Asian Hornet traps as well.

I did put out a couple of wasp traps this year but they seem to gather in a wide range of insects other than the targeted wasps, it appears I’m killing a whole range of insects that really don’t deserve to be killed and as I’ve mentioned before, strong colonies don’t suffer from wasp problems. The reason for not using hornet traps is the same, and I’m not able to visit my apiaries on a daily basis to check them so it makes the exercise pointless really. I think I have more chance of spotting an Asian hornet hawking in front of the hives than catching one in a trap. It’s just my decision but I would say that most beekeepers would probably do better concentrating on making their colonies stronger than setting out traps to catch the Autumn wasp population along with a myriad of other innocent bystanders!

All the colonies that needed treatments now have the Apivar strips in them, I