Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.
13th August 2010
During my recent visit to Llandigige, I had the chance to do some beekeeping. I helped out last year when the farm acquired two beehives and one very weak colony of honeybees. Since then, the colony has become stronger but it was believed to have swarmed recently.
First indications, on approaching the hives, weren’t good as very few bees were flying. However, an inspection showed that the original colony was reasonably strong but was quiet because it had thrown out at least one swarm. When a swarm leaves a hive, it is the older bees which go with the swarm and these are the ones which normally leave the hive during warm weather to forage for nectar and pollen.
We found a small swarm occupying the second hive and we found new, unmarked queens in each hive. As we found the queens, we marked each of them with a spot of white paint to make them easier to locate in the future.
As a small swarm would struggle to build up sufficiently before the autumn to be able to survive the winter, we gave it some help by giving it some eggs and brood from the stronger colony.
What beekeepers always like to see is a healthy ‘brood pattern’. This pattern forms as the queen lays eggs in an oval area in the middle of a comb. The bees seal the cells with brown caps as the grubs grow and begin to pupate. Later, cells in the middle of the patch emerge first and, after the cells have been cleaned by the bees, the queen lays more eggs, so that a patch of eggs and grubs can be seen, surrounded by the brown caps of unemerged cells.
Bees find it hard to control temperature in the corners of the hives, so they like
to store pollen there rather than trying to rear larvae in that area. The pollen
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When I kept bees of my own, I was always keen to see the colour of pollen being brought
in by bees and I liked to try to work out which plants it was coming from. Some pollen
types were easy to recognise and it was always pleasing to see bees bringing in brick-
I noticed that some of the cells in the combs at Llandigie contained green pollen. The hives are in an area in which there is lots of purple loosestrife and this plant, if my memory is correct, produces green pollen. Although the loosestrife is a good candidate for the green pollen, there are other possible sources. I suspect that a microscope would be needed to confirm the origin.
