81%... but where to next?

There are some wonderful macro-photographers posting pics
to the internet, so (with permission) I will use this one of a
worker by Tim Hill to head up this post. Thanks Tim.  

Our little group of 7 candidates for the Intermediate Level Beekeeping "written practical" exam taken back in March in Longford all passed. I got 81%, so I was delighted personally but pleased too for the group and especially pleased that we did well for our group leader, the Longford BKA 'Sec', Elspeth, who worked so hard preparing notes and hand outs for our study sessions. We are all very pleased with ourselves. This post will mainly be based around this process, so if you are not interested in beekeeping then you might like to click on by.

L'Aimant (The Lover) 

These 'courses' and exams are an important part of what the Federation of Irish Beekeeper Associations (FIBKA) does and there are plenty of them. If studying and exams are your thing you can progress through the baby-slopes of the half hour, 20 questions 'Preliminary' paper, through three 'Intermediate' exams, up to three 'Senior' exams after which you can call yourself a 'Bee Master'. Onwards and upwards there are then routes into 'proper' academia, with degrees in apiculture and equally high flying qualifications in honey production and so on. No doubt this is all important if you fancy a career in the commercial beekeeping world and these FIBKA certificates would be recognised internationally as proof of competence. Most people seem to do the exams for fun or just to prove they can.

Most of these exams have to be 'sat' in the FIBKA home-base at Gormanston, near Drogheda just north of Dublin, but if your County BKA can field a minimum number of candidates, FIBKA allow you to run the exams locally and appoint proper invigilators and send the papers out in sealed envelopes not to be opened before the exam time and in the exam hall. Hence our 'Magnificent Seven' in Longford. So, we did our study-group evenings and we took our exam and now we are all passed, proud owners of Intermediate Certs in "written practical" (hive and colony management). The obvious next step would be for us all to sit the Intermediate level "scientific" paper (bee biology and anatomy, honey chemistry, bee pheromones etc) followed by undergoing an apiary practical test where FIBKA examiners meet you at your own hives and test your competence at any number of manipulations and tasks - finding the queen, identifying types of queen cell, splitting colonies to produce 2nd hives or colonies and so on.

'Rhapsody in Blue'

Instead, I find myself at a bit of a crossroads and if you will bear with me, I will now ramble on in a rather disjointed, philosophical manner whilst I try to get my head round the problem. As I said - feel free to click on by. There are bee keepers and there are bee keepers - we range from the almost obsessive keeper who, like a golfing nut, spends all his time and money on the hobby, buying all the latest gadgets and gizmos, different types of hives, expensive honey extraction equipment, fancy suits, hive tools and smokers, fancy fuel for the smoker, chemicals and medication.

'Joseph's Coat'

These keepers are into the hives at every opportunity cracking the hive apart to inspect the colony condition, tweaking, manipulating, killing baby queens if they do not want them, trying out all the techniques they have learned, attempting to prevent any swarming, squeezing every ounce of honey production they can get out of the bees. They frequently extract so much honey that their bees would not have enough resources to see them through the winter, so these keepers have to feed back sugar syrup or fondant to replace the 'stolen' reserves. The bees must get no peace but these techniques work at the required level, so they have gone into the canon and are accepted practice among the FIBKA experts. These are the skills at which you must show competence in order to progress through the exam-machine and to be recognised by FIBKA as an expert and 'Bee Master'. These are also the things you are told you "must do" at BKA meetings. Going to meetings and getting involved in clubs are right up there with all the practical stuff you are obliged to learn to get on in the beekeeper world.

Red campion

At the other end of the scale are a much more laisséz faire bunch, some of whom are content to have bought their hive and their bees to look pretty in the garden and they are happy to sit back in the sun-lounger, watching the bees fly to and fro, happily buzzing round the flowers. They don't need the honey, so they don't even extract it. Down towards that end are a more recent group calling themselves 'Natural Beekeepers', who are not quite so laid back, but are mainly driven by the need to be green and ecological. They have bees to support the local population of pollinators but they do not fuss and interfere with the colonies, they try never to use chemicals on their bees (varroa mite pesticides for example) - you will just end up with a colony of bees which needs man and chemicals to survive, they argue. Far better to let the bees 'learn' over time to groom off the mites.

Fruit scones from the baker's assistant.

These guys tend to be viewed sceptically by the 'experts' - weirdo hippies and eco-warriors. There is no real place for them in FIBKA although, to be fair, they do get a slot in the FIBKA magazine and the 'Natural' way does get air-time in the FIBKA conferences. Also I do not think they would meet the exam standards, so they are never going to make 'Bee Master' unless they can talk a good game on the day.

My 'crossroads' is because I am starting to baulk at the demands and advice to constantly interfere, examine, poke and prod, and I am much more inclined to watch them from outside the hive and, if they look healthy to me, leave them be. I know I 'should' be checking for varroa mites, for example, and treating with the latest 'drug' recommended by the experts, but plenty of feedback has come down to say that these chemicals can kill or damage the queen, make the bees abscond or, just as bad, not work anyway. The one we used last year, called MAQS is basically a formic acid fumigant which is so honkingly strong that you choke when you are out in the open air peeling open the packaging - you then stick the strips into an 18 inch cube enclosed box  (the hive) with little ventilation and expect it to diffuse right down into the capped larval cells to kill the mites without harming the bees. Hmmm. No wonder we beginners are confused and start to doubt the official view.

Mum turkey starts a new secret egg stash
down between the poly tunnel and the
caravan

I find myself not at all sure I want to be that kind of expert. My current tendency is to go with the Natural Beekeepers and minimise my interference and poking, and possibly to withdraw from the exam-taking path. One strong factor tries to draw me in again. Our 'leader' Elspeth, mentioned in the first paragraph is a Scot and comes from that generation of Scottish girls who were, rather appallingly, never allowed to do science at school. Girls would not need science, it was decided by the Scottish education authorities, so they were not let do it and Elspeth, at this later stage finds herself protesting this by her determination to learn the stuff and sit the exam just to show them. She was so good to us last time round that I expect there is not one among the other 6 of us who do not feel that if she can do it, then we all ought to damned well stand by her and support her through it. Come September, when we have to sign up or not, it will be interesting to see how many of we science-trained blokes are on the list.

I am sorry if that was a bit long winded, but it is a post that has been building up in the back-burners of my brain and needed unloading, venting onto this blog. Blogging as catharsis, if you like. One wise 'old timer' in our club, a beekeeper of 50+ years experience who has never taken one of these exams in his life, just smiles and says "It doesn't matter what you do in the end; the bees will do their own thing anyway!"

New garden strip all dug over. 

The main news to tag onto the end is that we have finished digging the new garden strip out front, so that can now get its membrane, fancy gravel and plants. We are also going to move the roses from the 'Rose Walk' into here. They do OK in there but suffer from the thug-weed 'creeping buttercup' getting in amongst them, so we have fun times ahead lifting them, root-washing them to get out all traces of the buttercup and then dropping them into the new site where, we hope, the weed cannot jump into bed with them.

Then today, on a run down to Roscommon town the car went sick on us again, which is a bit of a nuisance. It made some odd noises, ran hot for a while but then cooled down again, seemed to lose power so that we stopped to take a look under the bonnet (and turned the engine off, obviously) to find it smelling of very hot oil and smoking off some the oil that inevitably builds up on old engines. We had to get it recovered back to our garage in Lough Glynn where our excellent 'man who can' is now looking at it. We suspect head gasket or some other serious problem but of course (wouldn't you know it) when the guy fired it up after its nice cooling period in Roscommon and on the lorry, it fired up beautifully and ran as smoothly as you'd like. More on this story when we know what's what.

Reinforcements

The 'new' hive in place by 9pm. Note gaffer-tape and straps.

You'll probably have read of our recent bee hive disaster and you may have picked up on the fact that I was delighted to be offered help by a fellow member of our Longford Beekeepers Assoc'n (BKA). I was anxiously awaiting her call. Bees and equipment do not come cheap so I could hardly believe that this lovely and very generous lady was offering me a whole colony. Fair play to her, she had been "gifted" a colony back when she started up and feels that if she then gifts a colony on when she is established and asks that person to do the same, then the world of bee keeping will be a far better place. We'll call her BO'D on here (No, not Brian O'Driscoll!) and she happened to be inspecting her 6 hives with our good friend Elspeth (who showed us our first active colony last year as part of our initiation) when I phoned the latter in my distress at finding our hive failure. She volunteered the colony without hesitation. Thank you so much BO'D. We definitely owe you.

10,000 passengers in the co-pilot's seat? Blocks of wood to
hold the hive up off the seat, pallet straps and rubber
bungees to keep it in place.

It won't surprise you to know that there is a whole art and complex M.O. around moving bees about. I won't bore you with it all here but the main pointers are that you have to do it late evening after all the flying worker bees have come home, you have to seal up the hive to stop any escapes in the vehicle and you have to be so, so gentle. When I say seal it up, you have to, of course, keep it ventilated as there is a risk that the bees get angry, the colony starts to 'roar' and the heat cooks the bees. You can arrive at your destination with a sticky mess of dead bees and melted wax and honey.

One of three dogs badly in need of a haircut.  Poppy. All three
 got it today - so much dog hair!

So you keep the mesh floor and the standard roof, windows open in the car if need be, no heater running and your ear attuned to the slightest change of noise from the colony. The 'gently' thing is because a lot of the bees world is all about the delicate and calm vibrations of 'waggle dances' and quiet communication. They do not cope at all well with thumps, lurches or vibrations such as you might find, for example, on a car journey and it is the angry bees, leaping to the defence of their colony, which do the heating up.

Plum blossom starting so the bees' arrival was timely.

Frames of foundation hang in the hive rather like filing cabinet files and, if you are not careful they can "flap" from the top lugs, so you load the hive into the car with the frames aligned N/S so that braking and acceleration will not flap them, and then take all the bends and roundabouts and changes of camber really gently. If they flap there is a risk of bees (and the queen of course) getting squashed and squashed bees give off 'attack' pheromones. It all has to be nice and quiet and calm. Of course the commercial boys move hives around all the time, migrating from fruit trees to citrus to almonds or oil seed rape to heather, sometimes on 1000-hive loads on HGVs stacked on pallets, but they also have an army of jobbing beekeepers to keep it all under control. I just had BO'D to help me load and then me and the little Fiat for our journey home in the dark and a wheelbarrow to get me from car to apiary.

The piggies are settling in well and have even had a few
visitors tempting them with apples. 

It went OK as far as I know. There was no 'roar'. The bees stayed quiet and were quiet when I gently laid the hive on its stand next to my existing stand. I un gaffer-taped the floor/brood join and pulled the piece of foam rubber out of the entrance. The theory is that they will calm down and recover from the trauma of the journey over night, wake up and start sending out scouts who will quickly spot that they are in new surroundings. Roscommon, not Longford! They will therefore start the day doing 'orientation flights' (which young new bees would be doing anyway) and re-write their visual maps of how to get back to the hive as well as sussing out all the local resources (gorse, pussy willow, orchard trees, dandelions, etc).

These brasses were a gift from Diamond
just before she died and have now been
mounted in this lovely moose-skin leather
"frame" created by the superbly 'crafty'
Carolyn.

They have been set down right next to the old hive to rest the night. The plan is, within a few days, to move the frames and bees into the old hive; any of the 'old' bees still using it will hopefully be merged into the new colony to see out their final days. This will free up BO'D's boxes, floor, crown board and roof which I can then populate with brand new frames and wax "foundation" and give back to her to put back into her apiary to take one of her 2015 hive 'splits' or swarms.

Sophie Grigson brine.

So that is that, so far. We are back in the bee game.What else have I done today? Tomorrow is my birthday and though any celebrations will get postponed till Liz returns from the latest mission of mercy, one traditional mid-April event DID take place, the end-of-winter clip of the three dogs who were, by then, seriously shaggy. I do this myself. It's not beautiful or very highly skilled - I'd never be able to set up in business as a dog groomer, but I do relieve them of enough fur between the three, to make a fourth dog and this goes out onto the compost for the nesting birds to make use of. When we were cleaning out nest boxes in September in Kent we could easily tell whose fur had been used - the texture of Megan's coat was so hard compared to Haggis's fly-away wisps.

I also decided to convert some of last year's Tamworth pork into bacon/gammon (as in 'bacon and cabbage', not rashers). For this I was disappointed by the lack of recipes for brine in my two best pork books, and turned to the Gubbeen cheese-farm book given to us by Mazy. The Gubbeen people use a Sophie Grigson recipe for their brine and I was quickly able to track it down. As you'd expect this had the salt and sugar (plus salt petre if you are concerned that the bacon is not pink enough au naturel (we aren't)) but also, being Sophie Grigson, has me lashing in juniper berries, grated nutmeg, bay leaves, thyme, black peppercorns and cloves. She also says to add anything else that "goes with pork". It can only improve the shining hour.

Ah well, enough from me. I'll be the one anxiously checking that there are bees coming and going from that new hive tomorrow morning. Happy Birthday, me.

Bee-ing Practical

Ireland's Royal Canal

Easter Saturday and we wake up to lovely weather and a few bits of good poultry news. While I'm still doing my 'feed and release' walk about, Black Feather hops off the eggs and goes for a walk allowing me in, at last, to gather the extra eggs again. She had gone from an unconvincing broody who we had thought would fail this time, to sticking like glue. I don't like to chase her off, so I was waiting for a chance to gather up the more recent, undated eggs to bring her back to the 12 we want her to incubate. Blondie, our new Guinea Fowl survives the night and in fact wakes us up with her strident calling from first glimmer of dawn - her temporary hutch is just below our window and we sleep with the window a-jar (not for long!). On that first walk about I also find Henry and Min at her run talking to her through the wire, the first sign that they want to know her. Later we discover a stash of 10 chicken eggs in the woods, all different as if 10 different chooks have all contributed one.

Fetching attire.....

So far so good, but today is really all about bees. We must visit our friend Elspeth in her gorgeous lock-keeper's cottage for our first practical training session around her hives. We had been a bit nervous of this. We have read and heard that you can be an expert bee-keeper "in theory", reading all the books and scoring top marks in the written exams, but that you might then still freak out when faced with a buzzing 35,000 bee hive and surrounded by potential stingers. A small proportion of people also show a bad allergic reaction to bee stings, which can lead to anaphylactic shock and be life threatening.

Liz examines a brood frame.

We 'book experts' were therefore keen to get hands-on and see if we could cope. Not quite so keen to get stung and see if we react, but that'll no doubt come. Thanks then to Elspeth who is on the Committee of the Longford Bee Keepers Association and volunteered to do us in her own home apiary. There is a club apiary but it has had some health problems and they are trying to keep visitors out while they isolate and sort it. She is a wonderful person and a good friend so we were treated to excellent hospitality too - coffees, cakes, sandwiches etc, as well as being loaded down with helpful literature, back copies of the Federation magazine "An beachaire" (The bee keeper), as well as being able to enjoy her perfect, bee-friendly cottage garden (along with attached farm, chickens, ewes and lambs etc).

We got togged up in our shiny new suits, gloves and (not so shiny) wellies, Elspeth lit the bee-smoker and off we went to find her three hives. This is the start of swarming season and we needed to check every frame in every brood chamber for sneaky queen cells, so we had real work to do while we were getting trained; plenty of practise at all the moves. It was very enjoyable and fascinating. We learned to crack apart the hive boxes which get glued up by the bees (the glue is called 'propolis') and then to prise apart the frames of brood and honey.

More importantly, maybe, we learned to reassemble the boxes without crushing any bees between the parts - bees getting squashed upsets all the workers and you can fast have a problem of angry bees on your hands. Some boxes are heavy but you must learn to be gentle, controlled and slow. Clonking about knocking bits together upsets the bees. You also need to be aware of where on your hands or body there might be bees. No good squatting and squashing a bee between thigh and calf, or leaning on a fence with a bee on the palm of your hand.

We also had to learn to tell the types of comb apart - are those storage cells for honey or pollen, are the brood cells for workers, drones or are they 'queen cups', do they have new eggs in or healthy white larvae, curled cosily round into their 'C' shapes. We had to become adept at spotting the drone bees and finding the queen bee in each hive. Your health checks now are all about is the queen there and laying eggs, and has anyone started trying to build queen cells -  a sign that half your hive may be about to depart in a swarm. More amusingly, I was also trying to suss out how to take pictures with gloved hands and with my face covered by the 'sword fencing' mesh visor.

As I said, though, it all went well and we are very grateful to Elspeth and her husband for entertaining us and for laying on this training for us. We were both delighted that we didn't 'freak out' and we feel like we may be able to cope with our own bees when they arrive (June?). All in all a brilliant day. Lovely too just to be near canals again and to see the picture postcard, beautifully maintained lock with its lovely flower beds and spruce black and white gloss paint.

Back home then to the continuing drama of the Guinea Fowl 'integration' if you can call it that. With the rabbit run doors open we sat back at a distance to watch Blondie's "escape". She was very reluctant to come out but eventually started to move about and soon came across Henry and Min. They seemed to get on OK with H accepting the new girl and even trying to mount her. We relaxed. I took the dogs for a walk leaving Liz well able to cope. Unfortunately, no sooner had I gone than Blondie suddenly took it on herself to make a drive east, a meandering path through various bits of garden and hedge, field and so on. Liz tracked her and called me over when I got back with dogs, by which time B was 2 fields away and almost at Una's. We rounded her up and sent her back home. She is a good flyer and whirrs over hedges with ease and can run like 'Road Runner'. There is no catching her but you can shepherd and marshal her. We then had an afternoon where she headed east several times and had to be rounded up but by roosting time she seemed to be hovering around the pop hole door with the rest of the gang. At that point Henry decided to have another go at her and she exploded into flight and whirred away across the east field, disappearing into the hedge. We went out with binoculars and walked the hedgerows but as we go to roost ourselves tonight we can honestly not say where she is or whether or not we'll see her again in the morning. She has a night outside to cope with. We are wishing her all the best, but we have to admit we have singularly failed to look after her as you should.