Lifting gear trial fit into warre bee house

I did a trial fit of the lifting gear in the warre bee house. I used ten huge eye bolts screwed into the cross bars at all five hive stations. The lifting winch simply clicks onto the eye bolts at the required station. I used a brick to simulate some weight on the hook. So far so good.

Click on any image to enlarge.

Finished the warre bee house today, well it still needs a coat of paint but all the structure is there. Fitted the runners for the rear sliding doors. There are two wide doors at the top and three sliding doors at the bottom. The bottom doors are to allow access to slide in a warre section underneath. The top doors are to allow access to fit the lifting gear onto each station. Now the whole thing is pretty bee tight so I will drill a small hole at the top under the roof overhang at each hive station to allow trapped bees out when I have done a manipulation. Here are a couple of photos which show rear doors and one of the front with the first 'porch' in place. The warre hive to the left of this will be transferred to this station in the near future.

Warre Bee House Entrances

These are the front porches I will screw over the slots on the front of the bee house. Each one will be a different colour to prevent drifting on so closely positioned entrances. This first one is white. This first photo shows the entrance reducer fitted allowing only one bee space utilized in a robbing scenario.



This next shot shows the metal piece turned around and allowing a gap of 7.5mm x 70mm which acts as a mouse guard.



Here the metal piece is removed and the entrance slot is fully open and will exactly correspond with the slot on the bee house front wall.

Warre Bee House Takes Shape

The first photo shows the eye screws set at each corner to enable connection of a 4 arm lifting sling.



This next shot shows the Bee House in position sat on 4x4 skids and concrete blocks. It had to be positioned in it's spot in the apiary as it was getting too heavy to move.



This photo shows the position of the cross bar over which the lifting sling will be put. It doesn't perhaps look like it but it is positioned exactly so that the sling comes down half way across the warre boxes.



Here you can see the slots cut into the front of the bee house. These slots will correspond to the gap in the warre bottom board.



Each slot will have a front porch type entrance which will be shown in the next post.

Progress on Warre Bee House/Box

I made a little more progress on my warre bee house in the last couple of days. I am sort of designing it on the fly. Basically I want to enclose the warre hives with another box of sorts. The objectives are to 1) provide more shelter from the weather 2) house up to 5 warre hives. 3) provide protection from large animals which may knock over a lone standing warre. 4) house the means for lifting the warre boxes when heavy with bees and honey.

Here is a photo of the bee house in progress (on it's side with the front uppermost). It has a framework of 2x4's and a 1" ply floor. The front and sides will be half inch ply. Slots will be cut into the front to correspond with the warre entrances. I will also be putting the warre slotted metal entrances over each station. The front of the warre boxes will be pressed up against the front of the bee house front wall. The rear will have two large doors for access to the hives. I am inbuilding a bar spanning the bee house over which a lifting strop will attach to each hive. I have bought a manual winch shown in the second photo which can be slid along the bar to each hive as required. I should be able to fit at least 5 warre sections and a quilt in the height available. I am screwing eye bolts into each corner of each warre section and will make up a suitable lifting strop with 4 hooks. The bee house will sit on 4x4 skids which themselves will sit on concrete blocks. So far the bee house has cost about 85 euros including the winch.

Solitary bee house attracts it's first tenants

If you click on the photos to see the full size images, the first photo shows one of the 3mm holes capped. The next shot shows one 10mm hole completely capped and one in progress being filled about a cm back from the edge of the hole. The third shot shows 3 10mm holes completely capped with a grey mud like substance. I assume these are mason bees in the large holes, which type I have no idea as I have not managed to see any activity. Indeed one day there was nothing apparent then the next I noticed these. This from wikipedia on the Mason bee lifecycle:-

The bees emerge from their cocoons in the spring, with males the first to come out. They remain near the nests waiting for the females. When the females emerge, the first thing they do is mate. The males die and the females begin provisioning their nests.

Osmia females like to nest in narrow holes or tubes, typically naturally occurring tubular cavities. Most commonly this means hollow twigs, but sometimes other similar spaces are used, including empty snail shells (they do not excavate their own burrows, unlike many bees). A female might inspect several potential nests before settling in.

Females then visit flowers to gather pollen and nectar, and it will take many trips to complete a pollen/nectar provision mass. Once a provision mass is complete, the bee backs into the hole and lays an egg on top of the mass. Then she creates a partition of "mud", which doubles as the back of the next cell. The process continues until she has filled the cavity. Female-destined eggs are laid in the back of the nest, and male eggs towards the front.

Once a bee has finished with a nest, she plugs the entrance to the tube, and then may seek out another nest location.

By the summer, the larva has consumed all of its provisions and begins spinning a cocoon around itself and enters the pupal stage, and the adult matures either in the fall or winter, hibernating inside its insulatory cocoon. Most Osmia species are found in places where the temperature drops below 0°C for long durations, like Canada, and they are well-adapted to cold winters.

Swedish swarm has new home

Yesterday I quickly knocked up a warre box and floor so that I can give my new swarm more room. The Svea bait hive I baited them in neatly fits directly over a warre box with a little overhang one side and a little underhang on the adjacent side. This makes it easy, as I don't now need to make a transfer board to interleave between the two different boxes. I actually used an empty Svea hive, sat it on top of my new warre box and floor next to the swarm and simply lifted the frames from the old svea into the new. The bees were extremely gentle and had built out most of the combs in the Svea. I have not yet made a warre quilt but I will quite soon hopefully and get it on. These Svea hives are meant to have another box around them, similar to a WBC hive so are made from quite thin wood. The hot temps recently has had the bees bearding quite a lot. The setup is only temporary as I intend to make a surround for several warre hives (number yet to be decided). Here in these photos you can see the warre with empty Svea sat on top and when the transfer has just been completed. I will leave the empty box and boards by the entrance for a few hours in order for the stragglers to find their way into their new home. The new combs were full of nectar, it seems her majesty has not yet come back into lay. I am pretty sure this swarm from the size of it was a prime swarm and was not headed by a virgin.

A new swarm arrives in my bait hive.

Whilst working in the garden yesterday, I thought I heard a car coming down the track to our house. I looked around and saw a cloud of bees in swarm transit coming across the front of our house. Satisfyingly, I watched them come down and take over one of my bait hives. Now I knew these were not from my one remaining hive. I only checked them last week and they were not in any position for swarming. On closer inspection, these new bees are much darker than my original bees. I examined the trajectory of the flight path on a map and I am 99% sure they are from a beekeeper known to me about 3 km away. These are the bees I mentioned last year that were reported to have very few mites. I said at the time, it would be great if I could get hold of these genetics. Photos to follow.

Second Inspection.

I did my 2nd inspection of my one remaining Swedish hive this morning since getting back here at the end of April. I believe in leaving them to do their thing and any 'help' we give them actually hinders mostly. So my inspections are few and far between these days. My first inspection showed only one very small patch of brood about the size of my hand and few bees. This now has brood on several bars and very little drone brood. I saw a couple of drones on the combs but have not seen any flying yet. I managed to rid some of the old string that I had tied the combs to the top bars with last autumn. A couple of bars were crossed combed and I had to do some surgery and now have two large pieces of brood sat at the bottom of the hive under empty top bars next to the divider board. Nearly every comb had some side wall attachment which needed cutting too. Not like my Spanish blacks that never attach! I am still learning the Swedish beekeeping calendar and I suppose it will take a season or two more before I can second guess timings. Another reason to leave them to it. They know what they are doing even if I don't. I have been thinking of doing a split on this hive to make up for the one that didn't make it through the winter and to give me the backup I need. Having looked at this one, it doesn't seem a candidate for splitting yet, maybe in a month it may have caught up if we have good weather. The last two weeks have been cold and rainy so little chance for them to get going! Even though I don't inspect them often, I am always watching them at the hive entrance which is through the wall of the barn with the kenyan hive located inside the barn.

Bee Shed & Solitary Bees

Well after too good and too bad weather for working, I finally managed to finish the bee shed. Only I have now decided that perhaps this is going to be my new workshop and the beeshed will be a leanto at the back of it. I have made the door but have yet to hang it. Here is the finished shed which I think turned out OK.

After finishing the shed, I had lots of little off cuts of wood and I made something I have been meaning to make for a long time out of them. A solitary bee house. Simply 4 pieces of wood screwed together for the outside frame with some attachment brackets to hold it onto the side of the shed under the eaves. Then filled with pieces of framing timber drilled with various size holes. I drilled 10mm at the bottom, then 8,6,4 & 3 on subsequent levels upwards. I have seen mason bees here and I wondering what else may take up residence. Chance to use my new cheapo macro lens maybe!

The dandelions are now mostly just clocks whereas just a couple of weeks ago they were a sea of yellow. Now given way to buttercups and lupins just starting in the hedgerows. The apple blossom now all but gone, together with the heg (Bird Cherry) given way to the Rowan. Not seen any drones yet this year but have put out two bait hives here anyway with some old comb in. These are old Swedish Svea hives with only 8 frames in each. If I catch a swarm in them, I will be able to put them directly on top of a warre box.