Synopsis: It may be irritating when issues go improper, or your finest efforts are thwarted. I’ve been protecting bees lengthy sufficient that I’ve bought a protracted checklist of pet peeves. Listed here are just a few.

Introduction

I care about my bees and my beekeeping. It’s a giant a part of my life. Though it’s not mirrored in these posts I do produce other pursuits, but it surely’s truthful to say that beekeeping takes up a major proportion of my waking hours from April to, er, March.

And, like anything, “if it’s price doing, it’s price doing it nicely”.

You won’t all the time obtain this – and there are some notable days once I don’t even get shut – but it surely’s most likely extra rewarding if you happen to do.

For instance …

• understanding the drivers of swarming,
• figuring out the indicators of swarm preparations within the colony (similar to charged queen cells),
• performing promptly by making use of acceptable swarm management,
• and, a number of weeks later, re-uniting the colonies headed by the brand new queen in time for the summer time nectar move

… is significantly better than panicking when, throughout considered one of your shamefully sporadic inspections (as a result of it’s a busy time on the allotment/golf membership/marina), you uncover serried rows of sealed queen cells and a puzzling scarcity of staff.

Oops … they’ve gone.

Undeterred, you scrabble by the field in a useless try to search out the queen , fail, ponder what to do with the queen cells so crush them ‘simply to be on the secure aspect’ and reassemble the hive with the nagging feeling that you just don’t fairly perceive what’s occurred.

Recognizing the telltale indicators and stopping swarming is an instance of doing one thing nicely.

It’s doubly rewarding; firstly as a result of you realize what’s occurring and what to do – you, not the bees, are in management – and secondly since you’ll get a bigger crop of honey on the finish of the season.

However, don’t suppose I’m arguing for perfectionism …

What’s improper with the world

In G.Ok. Chesterton’s 1910 guide What’s improper with the world he makes the oft-abused quote:

If a factor is price doing, it’s price doing badly

Which additionally has quite a bit to commend it.

Chesterton was making an argument in favour of the generalist, the newbie or the non-professional.

You don’t should do one thing completely for it to be worthwhile. Errors are allowed and cock-ups are to be anticipated, significantly when studying.

Arguably, it’s the monstrous trumpeting snafus which might be the most instructive.

Much better you examine the colony, realise one thing is amiss and attempt and do one thing about it, than simply ignore it, cross your fingers and hope issues work out OK.

And much better you attempt and handle your bees than slouch on the couch watching daytime TV … or [insert undesirable activity here].

However, in case you have realized – from errors or in any other case – to do one thing nicely, or you’re attempting to be taught to do one thing higher, issues that do go improper will be irritating.

And, at occasions, infuriating.

Often these irritations are self-inflicted. My lack of attentiveness, or understanding, or endurance, or funding, or intelligence usually comes again to chunk me.

However typically – like the primary merchandise on the checklist beneath (which was the germ of the concept for this submit) – they’re not my duty in any respect.

A peeve is ‘a supply of irritation or annoyance’. It’s typically prefixed with ‘pet’ to – satirically – point out a ‘beloved’ irritation.

Not all these peeves are issues that go improper, some are issues that are improper.

You should have your personal … these are a few of mine.

Mishandling honey

I’ve been making the pre-Christmas honey deliveries. It appears to be a preferred present. Or, extra prosaically, maybe it’s getting used to organize honey glazed parsnips, carrots or gammon.

No matter … Kerching! … a sale is a sale.

I produce three foremost sorts of honey; heather, delicate set (normally a blended spring honey) and summer time blossom honey. The primary two are set or semi-set, the final is a beautiful golden clear runny honey.

Honey

No matter the kind of honey, I take care when jarring it on the market. In spite of everything, it could be a present. Apart from doing the plain issues like excluding bubbles (and legs or wings) I’m additionally cautious to keep away from getting honey on the neck or thread of the jar. It’s unpleasant and, with a drip free honey valve in your tank, simple to keep away from.

Due to this fact, having ready and delivered a field of superbly jarred clear honey to 1 outlet, I used to be aghast that they carried it on its aspect (!) to their storeroom. Inevitably the neck of the jars and the within of the lids could be coated in honey.

Clearly, they purchased it, they will do what they need with it. However my title is on the jar and I don’t need clients to be delay from shopping for my honey sooner or later.

I identified the results of tipping the boxed honey however they appeared unconcerned. This outlet sells plenty of my honey so maybe I shouldn’t be irritated … I’ll try to avert my gaze subsequent time.

Blown frames

Whereas I’m with reference to honey, I get unreasonably irritated by frames that collapse (‘blow’) within the extractor.

After a number of hours of extracting my endurance is already carrying a bit skinny. By then I’ve processed all the total supers and am now shuffling part-filled frames from half-full supers, trying to effectively extract the final of the honey with the fewest runs of the extractor.

With these totally different weight frames my 9 body extractor will get tougher to steadiness. At sluggish speeds all appears OK, however because the velocity will increase a mild oscillation begins because the machine rocks on its castors.

A steadying hand may even be wanted.

Typically you may speed up by the wobble. Sometimes that is when the elevated velocity spins out the honey from among the heavier frames, so rebalancing the rotor.

However at different occasions the wobble will get worse … and, with a little bit extra velocity, worse nonetheless.

Below these circumstances the proper plan of action is to cease the extractor, rebalance the rotor (maybe even eradicating three of the over/underweight frames) and spin once more.

However I’ve been extracting for hours … so, is that what I do?

Nope. Captain Smart has left the constructing. Main Accident now has his hand on the throttle and is in ‘pedal to the metallic’ mode whereas concurrently holding down the wibbly-wobbly extractor.

Inevitably, a body blows.

Blown body …

Nearly instantly the wobbling will get quite a bit worse … or miraculously disappears altogether.

A run or two later and the damaged chunks of comb begin blocking the honey gate, then – launched from the gate – they begin blocking the coarse filter.

Grrrr.

I’m sufficiently old to have used the Mosaic browser again within the 1990’s. Net searches took quite a bit much less time as there was no Fb, YouTube or Twitter.

You needed to be there

There most likely weren’t plenty of beekeeping blogs.

How issues have modified.

Now while you seek for ‘simple queen rearing’ or ‘swarm management’ and even ‘winter inspections’ you’re provided 1,678,563 pages with variously related content material.

A lot of that is extremely visible – YouTube, Vimeo or TikTok movies. Some is great high quality and informative however there’s extra that’s shaky, shonky and shockingly ill-informed.

To cite from that halcyon Mosaic period (Farber, 1994):

Naive customers are unaware of the shortage of high quality management on the knowledge, a reality that may simply flip the ‘Web’ right into a jungle of roads with no indicators resulting in items of doubtful worth.

So what? Dangerous data and misinformation are all a part of the new regular.

What number of helpful insights or helpful colony manipulation strategies are you actually going to search out in a 3 minute wobbly video titled ‘My fisrt ever hive inspection!!’ ?

However, worse, a few of these movies present some very shoddy beekeeping:

• one-handed body dealing with with bees clearly being crushed by a welders glove’d hand
• frames being wrenched out and dropped again into the brood field
• hives opened, and left open, in hostile situations
• clumps of bees falling or being shaken onto the bottom
• supers or brood containers being added with no try to keep away from obliterating bees on the interface

Clickbait corpses

Bees will not be sentient – although that’s debatable (Gibbons et al., 2022) – however that doesn’t excuse dealing with them in a method that’s clearly more likely to stress, injure or kill them. To take action provides a poor impression of what beekeeping ought to be like.

Unsurprisingly, there are some who think about beekeeping in its entirety – or specific practices used when beekeeping – as merciless and barbaric. The worst of those movies might be used as supporting proof.

I’m not going to call names however the truth that they periodically seem in my searches (once I have a tendency to not watch a lot YouTube content material) suggests they’re extra frequent than they need to be.

I’ve no thought of the promoting income returned by YouTube or TikTok. No matter it’s, I don’t suppose it excuses the awful impression it provides of beekeeping … and the wrong impression of the care most beekeepers lavish on their bees.

After which there are the technically poor movies which might be excruciating to look at due to the one-handed digital camera work, the wildly fluctuating focus, the inaudible or inane commentary or the truth that the movie doesn’t truly present what it claims to be about .

However that’s a totally different pet peeve.

Missed queen cells

OK, maybe I’m getting unseasonally severe … right here’s an irritation that I expertise periodically and which is fully my fault.

I’m fairly good at recognizing queen cells. After I examine a colony I believe could also be making swarm preparations I do know to look rigorously on the edges of the frames, and in all of the little undulations and wrinkles in imperfectly drawn comb.

I’m affected person. I gently blow bees away from these possible spots … both the exhaled CO₂ or halitosis opens a short portal by the densely overlaying staff to the comb beneath . If I’ve remembered my studying glasses I’m assured I can discover most sneakily hidden queen cells.

And, if I’ve forgotten my glasses I shake all of the bees off the frames which I then maintain at arms size to get an in focus, bee-free view. Absolutely I can’t miss any cells now?

However it solely takes one …

She’s gone …

Which is why I clip my queens. If I do miss a charged cell and the colony swarms within the 7 days earlier than my subsequent go to, the queen may be misplaced however 99.995% of the bees will return to the hive and I’ll be capable to rescue the state of affairs in the end .

‘Rescuing the state of affairs’ entails additionally concurrently berating myself for lacking the cell.

An irritation definitely however, within the total scheme of issues, a minor one.

‘Tremendous’ queens

Not tremendous high quality queens, however as a substitute queens that have gotten above the excluder into the tremendous.

Throughout a routine inspection you fail to notice the queen however word that the colony is clearly queenright as there are eggs and larvae on brood frames. You come the final body to the hive – the ‘make house’ body you’d eliminated originally – add again the excluder and the supers.

All accomplished.

However on the subsequent inspection you discover the brood field solely accommodates sealed brood. There aren’t any queen cells and it feels queenright (you realize what I imply).

Puzzling Captain .

Both then, or per week later, you ultimately get spherical to burrowing by the supers and uncover body after body of brood in all levels.

Slap brow time.

An irritation, however not a catastrophe.

I get a queen within the supers as soon as each three or 4 seasons. Sufficiently occasionally that the necessity to rigorously examine for the queen on the excluder isn’t strengthened earlier than I put it apart throughout an inspection.

Dodgy?

Extra not often it’s as a consequence of a defective excluder. I’ve bought one which’s even labelled ‘Dodgy’ which has been current on a few events with a queen within the supers. Though the wires look completely straight I don’t actually belief it and solely use it once I’ve run out of every little thing else (see subsequent matter).

The ‘no excluder’ excluder

If I want to tremendous a colony however don’t have a spare excluder at hand I’ve efficiently used a Correx Varroa tray laid on prime of the brood bars. This leaves a ~2 cm hole across the periphery. Because the queen not often ventures to the extremities of the brood frames this normally does the trick till my subsequent go to.

Makeshift queen excluder

Dave Cushman describes an analogous idea made from plywood. Apparently he claimed that this is not going to cease a queen venturing upstairs if the supers are full of drone comb. This isn’t one thing I’ve seen and I exploit plenty of drone comb in my supers.

It additionally suggests to me that – if there’s drawn drone comb within the tremendous – both the employees entice her up or she goes up anyway to examine … and stays.

Attention-grabbing.

Not sufficient [insert item name here]

For 3-4 weeks of the season the swarming interval places a pressure on the supply of kit for swarm management. For the remaining 11 months of the 12 months that very same tools places a pressure on the house in your storage services.

One nook of 1 shed … there are extra

I’ve bought a ridiculous quantity of beekeeping ‘stuff’, gathered through the years as my colony numbers fluctuated or I largely switched from cedar to poly, or I misplaced endurance with a poor design of field or roof or flooring.

Or, heaven forfend, truly believed some promoting codswallop.

So, with cubic metres of kit stacked up within the sheds (sure, plural) it’s irritating once I run out of one thing.

Even worse, I’ve typically not run out, it’s simply that it’s in a shed on the opposite aspect of the nation.

For containers, nucs, break up boards, roofs, flooring and many others. that is the one most compelling argument for tools compatibility. If push involves shove, any flooring and not using a daft rebate or lip that’s of the proper dimensions will do.

Duplication and apiary hygiene

For people who smoke, hive instruments, clearers, break up boards and different peripherals we rely upon throughout apiary visits this argues for duplication the place attainable and/or higher organisation than I can handle.

Truly, for the a few of these – e.g. smoker and hive instruments – good apiary hygiene argues that they ought to be duplicated. If you happen to change your gloves between apiaries, a devoted smoker and a hive device in a bucket of soda, will considerably cut back inter-apiary pathogen transmission.

Bait hive with planter roof

Lastly, it’s all the time price do not forget that “the bees don’t care”. They’ll cope completely nicely with a mismatched flooring, or a Varroa tray as a queen excluder, or a backyard plant tray as a roof … so long as the hive is watertight, comparatively draft free and defendable they’ll be OK.

Printed magazines and newsletters

That is the 21^st Century. We now have self-driving automobiles, web banking and Bluetooth-enabled toasters .

Why on earth do among the beekeeping associations I belong to insist on sending me a shiny month-to-month printed journal?

I acquire a pile of those yearly, shift them from my workplace to shelving in a distant nook of the home when spring cleansing, after which chuck them into the recycling a 12 months or two later.

Between my workplace and the recycling bin they don’t seem to be learn once more.

Not learn, however they may have been regarded by as I attempt in useless to search out an article I vaguely remembered. The trying by is important because the indexing is nearly all the time execrable.

This isn’t a beekeeping-specific drawback. Wildlife Trusts do it, as do the RSPB, the BTO, SOC and the Wild Trout Belief … all ‘environmental’ charities that ought to absolutely purpose to fell much less timber when speaking their good deeds to members.

Archived till I bin them

We should have reached a stage when these publications might be a) primarily distributed digitally, b) correctly listed, however c) nonetheless out there in a printed type for many who need to learn them within the tub.

[Climbs down off soapbox]

11.4% (by weight) of Api-Bioxal

88.6% of Api-Bioxal is oxalic acid dihydrate. The rest – the 11.4% that peeves me – is sugar along with some kind of powdered silica (or related) to maintain it free-running.

So far as I can inform these components – that I’ve beforehand disparagingly described as ‘reducing brokers‘ – are of no profit to the bees. Maybe it’s unfair to name these components lacing or reducing brokers, that are normally added to extend the profitability of unlawful medication.

Or then once more, maybe not.

The components make a wonderful miticide (pure, natural, no identified resistance, comparatively cheap, nicely tolerated by the bees) a lot tougher to manage by vaporisation because the sugar caramelises and makes an unholy mess of the vaporiser tray.

Sure, there are different ways in which it may be administered and it’s good to see a liquid, glycerol-based resolution with a protracted shelf-life out there this 12 months. Nevertheless, I don’t see the sense in taking one thing, making it worse after which licensing it …

I’m going to write down much more about Api-Bioxal subsequent 12 months. Within the US – the place it’s a unique product with the identical lively ingredient (!) – it’s about to be accepted to be used when there are supers on the hive .

Overly lengthy weblog articles

These are the primary 8 of the 97 beekeeping objects (and counting) that irritate me.

I might go on, however I received’t.

However, by no means concern, I’ll return to this topic in 14 extra rambling posts over the approaching weeks.

Get pleasure from!

References

Farber, M. (1994) The standard of data on web. Pc Networks and ISDN Techniques 26: S75–S78 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0169755294900752.

Gibbons, M., Versace, E., Crump, A., Baran, B., and Chittka, L. (2022) Motivational trade-offs and modulation of nociception in bumblebees. Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences 119: e2205821119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2205821119.