Tag: supers

The Five Hour Beekeeper

The Five Hour Beekeeper

Traditional Approach To Beekeeping

To date I have basically been following what I shall call the “traditional approach to beekeeping”.  This is detailed in My Beekeeping Calendar and involves a lot of activity and time.  It can be summarised as:

  1. Inspections every 9 days from May-August to reduce swarms
  2. Integrated approach to varroa management, including swarm culling and use of chemicals
  3. Production of liquid honey requiring a day of extraction
July 2015 - Middle Hive - Brood Frame
July 2015 – Middle Hive – Brood Frame

I have found myself too busy to do any of this particularly well resulting in what I call the “Low Intervention Approach”.

Low Intervention Approach To Beekeeping

  1. No swarm inspections – just catch the swarms as they happen.  This has been 80% successful (I caught 4 out of 5 swarms in 2016).
  2. Same integrated approach to varroa management as previous
  3. Move towards section honey
Eight Ross Rounds Sections (the 2016 haul)
Eight Ross Rounds Sections (the 2016 haul)

The Five Hour Beekeeper

In my desire to reduce the chemicals, reduce the effort further and spend more time observing the bees, my approach for 2017 is described below.  This has been massively helped by the Thermosolar Hive team providing me with two of their hives.  As a reminder, this hive allows increases in the temperature in the hive to kill 100% of varroa. (links below)

Thermosolar Hive - Ceiling & Sensors
Thermosolar Hive – Ceiling & Sensors

The Thermosolar hives I am receiving will have a 14×12 National brood body (this is where I will insert 4 drone frames), 1 super that I will put below the brood body (to create more worker bees) and two Ross Round supers to go above the brood box.

The approach can be summarised as follows (and their are relevant links at the end of this post):

  1. Anti-swarm approach to reduce swarming
  2. Thermosolar hive to eliminate varroa and improve bee health
  3. 100% section honey using Ross Rounds
  4. Observing the bees to determine if they have a queen, any disease
  5. Open a hive only when I need to

My first year will be a bit different as I move over to the Themosolar hive but generally the interventions will be:

  • Intervention 1: The first day it is 15C in Feb/Mar: inspect for disease, add 2 new drone comb frames to hives and remove mouseguards
  • Interventions 2 and 3 (optional if we get an early 20C day in the year): Complete a solar treatment and again a week later.  Note: the important solar treatment is in August.
  • Intervention 4: April: Add Two Ross Round Supers
  • Intervention 5: End July: Remove Ross Round Supers and remove drone comb to ends of hive
  • Interventions 6 and 7: August: Complete a solar treatment and again a week later
  • Intervention 8: September: Feed if required (I am aiming to not have to do this by removing supers early and having healthy bees)
  • Intervention 9: October/November: Add mouseguards

And generally observe the bees and take action if problems are evident.

In theory, each hive will take about 5 hours of effort per year, including harvesting, and allow more time to observe.  Let’s see what happens in practice.

Any thoughts at this stage to make my 2017 beekeeping, using the above approach, more likely to be successful?

Postscript

I have received comments on beekeeping forum and I wanted to capture my further thoughts and actions:

1. Thermosolar Hive – I am going to contact my local government bee inspector, to see if they want to get involved in order to work out how to best test the thermosolar hive and to give independent results.  I want results to show impact on varroa and on the brood (and on drone sperm if possible).

2. Anti-swarm method – I’ll keep count of the swarms over the years using this method.  Results will somewhat speak for themselves, though it will also depend on how well I time insertion of drone comb, weather conditions, etc.

3. Ross Rounds – Richard Taylor (author) had a few approaches to developing section honey, two of these were about using shook swarms and regular swarms and one of them was about swarm management and taking the approach we generally take to make regular supers of honey.  I am going for the low intervention, latter, approach.  However, if I do catch any swarms (mine or someone else’s) I will be putting them into a super with QE above and flat comb throughout.  The results will speak for themselves (kind of, as my honey production has not been great yet in recent years)

More Information:

Ross Rounds (Honey Sections) – Assembly & Harvesting

Ross Rounds (Honey Sections) – Assembly & Harvesting

Firstly – I hope your beekeeping season is going well.  I’ve got some healthy hives at present and the nectar flow is definitely on, as is the swarmy season.

Section Honey Comb

I am very excited.  I mentioned earlier this year I had bought three racks of Ross Rounds sections to make comb honey (link to this post at bottom of page). The boxes have sat unopened at the back of the garage but have very much been at the front of my mind.  I had little niggles about whether I would be able to assemble the racks and would it work, will they make honey?

I managed to get a couple of hours to myself on the late May Bank Holiday Monday to crack on with it and banish some of the worry.

It took me about 60 minutes to read the literature, open the box, have a play, go on youtube and then finish the job. I took my own video, further down.  It’s really easy.  It takes about 20 mins to assemble a rack and if all goes well I’ll be popping out sections over the next few months rather than putting aside a day for extraction.

Section Honey Assembly
Section Honey Assembly – May 2016

I’m smiling now … will I be smiling in August?

The idea is that the bees come into the sections which contain a thin foundation, lay down honey and cap it.  Then you take off the rack pop out the sections, put in a round container that neatly fits the section and hey presto … gourmet honey.  The best.  The Holy Grail of honey.  The bees knees.  That’s the idea. The next few months will reveal the truth.

Busy Beekeeper

Having assembled the sections and with a flush of newness and excitement, I am now starting to think that honey sections is definitely the way for me.  I say this because my free time is so limited with work, 2 young kids and the regular admin and jobs that need doing.  At my current stage in life I would actually prefer to make no honey than spend a day extracting.  Hence, sections.  Either (A) I get nothing; or (B) I get gourmet honey.  Either way, I save myself a day of extraction.  If I don’t get anything for a couple of years, hopefully I’ll find myself with more time and go back to spinning the honey.

Ross Rounds Assembly - May 2016
Ross Rounds Assembly – May 2016

Ross Rounds Assembly

Here is a 2 minute video of me assembling Ross Rounds. It’s very home made with the little man making an appearance (so to speak) and the mother-in-law not realising I am in the process of making serious beekeeping videos!

Ross Rounds Assembly – My Top Tips

  1. Don’t panic (like me when faced with anything vaguely practical) – it’s quite easy and fast.  A lot faster than assembling a super
  2. Place the white plastic rings in the brown plastic section racks.  The smooth bit goes on top and the shaped bit is the side you push in.  You need to line this up as you push it in.  If you’re still not getting them in because the ridges do not quite line up (I had this problem in year 1 and year 2, hopefully I’ll remember in year 3), then try rotating the white ring 90 degrees.  You’ll get it
  3. There is a piece of wood and 3 springs to push the racks close together. I basically squeezed the spring in between this piece of wood and the side of the wooden rack (I’ll take a photo soon and add to this post)
  4. You are good to go

Ross Rounds – On The Hive

You want to avoid oil seed rape nectar in the honey sections as it granulates very hard and it will be inedible. Hence, my plan:

  1. Place a regular super with frames on each hive that needs one during oil seed rape season, i.e. approx. mid-April to end May
  2. After oil seed rape nectar flow, put honey sections on top of brood box and then if the super contains any nectar, place that on top of the honey section rack, otherwise remove that super.  (The idea is that the nectar from the oil seed rape can be used to draw out the wax in the honey sections and when blended with other nectars, will not set too hard)
  3. Let the bees draw out the frames and lay down the nectar
  4. When capped – remove, take home, pop out sections and if there is time left in the honey season, assemble sections again and add to hive.  Any uncapped sections can either be jiggled around whilst on the hive, or put back on for finishing off when you have popped out the other sections
  5. At end of season, I plan to dissemble racks and start with fresh foundation in the following year

Ross Rounds – Harvesting

I haven’t done this yet, but as soon as I have, I’ll update this blog. Basically:

  1. Split the two halves of the plastic frames
  2. Push out the sections, cutting off spare foundation between the round sections
  3. Put the 32 sections into 32 containers
  4. Freeze it to kill off any possible wax moth spores
  5. Take out of freezer 24 hours later, or when you want

The sections are 1lb each (454g).  You could put in two layers of thin foundation per plastic rack and then create two 1/2lb sections (227g).  But I figure this will increase the ratio of wax to honey a bit too much and also, create more work.

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Photos Added At Later Date

Ross Rounds - Placing Foundation In Frames
Ross Rounds – Placing Foundation In Frames

The individual brown plastic frames are known as “Visicheck” frames.

Ross Rounds - How I Put Springs To Push Wood Into Plastic Racks
Ross Rounds – How I Put Springs To Push Wood Into Plastic Racks

Supering Up & Supering Down

Supering-Up & Supering-Down

Supering-Up – What Is It?

Supering, or supering-up, is when beekeepers add supers (the small boxes for honey) on top of the brood box.  This is where the worker bees store the honey that we can then harvest and extract.

How Many Supers Do I Need?

Beehive packages usually come with 2 supers. An average honey yield in the UK for a hobby beekeeper is the equivalent of 1 super, so in theory 2 supers would be enough most of the time.

However, in a good season you might have 3, or even 4 supers, on a hive (though probably not every hive). You could manage on less if you harvested and extracted during the season.

I now have 4 supers per hive.  This is based on the advice of Ian McLean (National Diploma In Beekeeping), 40 years experience and who has written for the “in the apiary” section of the BBKA news.  In turn, his advice is based on his experience and research by “Rinderer & Baxter” who gained 30% more honey with the practice described below as compared with the 2 supers approach.

His advice also appeals to the optimist in me.

Bee Hives - Mid July
Bee Hives – Mid July

When Do I Add Supers?

In advance of the Spring nectar flow – which is approximately mid-April in the UK.

The standard advice is to add another super when 7 of the 10 frames in the super below are covered in bees.

Ian’s advice is to add 3 supers at the start of the Spring nectar flow. The theory is that the bees use all the space in the 3 supers like a drying room, allowing the water to evaporate off the nectar and thus produce more honey.

What If I Have Flat (Not Drawn) Foundation?

  • If all your supers are flat foundation – use 2 supers. This will encourage them to draw them out
  • If you have one super that is drawn and one super that is flat – put the super with flat foundation on top

When Do I Remove Supers?

You can remove supers and extract them at any time so long as the comb is capped.

In areas of oil seed rape, it’s pretty much essential to do an extraction after the first nectar flow before it granulates in the comb – about the end of May.

Many beekeepers do one extraction at the end of the Summer nectar flow – about the first week in August in the UK. I aim to remove the supers in the last week of July so that the bees still have surplus nectar to forage whilst I add Apiguard and then they forage on ivy in September/October.

The 4th super is used when you remove the 3 supers for harvesting,  You put this super on the hive to give the 60,000 bees the space they need rather than squashing them into a brood box. The foundation can be flat, you are just making space for all the bees. They are unlikely to draw the comb at this time of year.

Variation – Just Using 3 Supers

I think you could try a variation to the method described above. You could put the 3 supers on at the start of the Spring flow, but at the end of Summer you could make up 2 supers of capped honey and leave a super of uncapped or partially capped honey on the hive. I have been advised to place this super below the brood box at the end of the flow so that (a) you can place the Apiguard on top of the brood box and (b) as the bees go into Autumn and Winter the cluster will start at the bottom of the hive and then make their way up giving more stores and better ventilation (see post link below).

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The Super Results Are In

Forget that EU vote, don’t worry about the Scottish Referendum and stop dialling the Big Brother voting line (somehow I doubt any beekeeping types would) … it’s time for the results you’ve been waiting for. Yes, in my completely non-scientific poll you guys have said I probably need less than 8 supers for my 4 hives.

This seems reasonable but I must admit I’m getting a bit greedy with my appetite for supers. It’s the place where bees store their honey after all and I don’t want to restrict their ability when there’s all this glorious nectar about. Obviously I will abide by the results but there’s a Maisemore sale on Saturday which makes it very hard!!  I’ll let you know if I resist the temptation…

In the meantime, here is a photo of my 4 hives with 5 supers.

4 Hives With 5 Supers - June 2014
4 Hives With 5 Supers – June 2014

Hive Update

Some strange goings on in Hive Two. One swarm cell in centre of hive and one swarm cell at the bottom of a frame. She’s a new Queen and laying well.  If they were planning to swarm there would normally be about 10 swarm cells. Are they thinking of supercedure? I moved the frames around and I’ll see what’s happened at the weekend.

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