Quiz answers

1. In a bee’s life cycle, each caste spends a different amount of time as unsealed and sealed brood. How long? Open queen 8, worker 9, Drone10, sealed 8,12,14.

2. How often should you do routine inspections? The queen cell is closed sometime between the eighth and ninth day. These timings are guides only; in reality, there is some variability. The queen could swarm on the 9th. So inspections could be done on the 8th. 7th is safer and fits many people’s lifestyles.

3. If you moved the queen to a new position in a Nuc, what aged bees must she have with her? Mostly sealed or open brood? How can you prevent all the fliers from returning to their previous hive site?

   She needs young bees to look after her; these will not fly back to the home hive. Sealed brood is best; otherwise, there may be insufficient workers to care for open brood. New bees will soon bolster the colony. Stuffing the entrance with grass, shutting them in for a few days (poly nuc in the shade), pointing their entrance in a different direction, and putting a leafy branch over the entrance may help. If you like, move the nuc away from your apiary for three weeks,

4. What is the earliest week in the year that you are confident that a virgin queen will get mated (in the South of England)? It depends on when there are sufficient drones and the weather. Drones are not a priority in March when the winter bees are using the last of their energy. The days are lengthening, so the colony is expanding rapidly. Some drone brood will arise in March, especially if a frame of Drone foundation is inserted in early March, For example if the queen lays on March 8, the drones will be mature (3 + 10 +14 + 14 days maturing, including 3+ days orientating), so about 37 to 41 days. Some drones will be ready to mate on April 18. Hopefully, your neighbours’ bees will have done the same thing. If a queen takes 16+6 = 22 days until she is ready to mate, then 22 before April 18 = March 27. So a queen who is conceived in early April may manage to mate okay. Mid-April is safer. If possible, postpone them until May! It all depends on the weather.

5. If you find queen cells, what things can you change in the balance in the hive to stop swarming? How would you do this?

   • Have a cup of tea and cake. Don’t panic,

   • Calmly inspect the colony using a checklist. In particular, look for a cut-off in larval age (which is difficult), the number, and age of QC and the queen.

   • Separate one of these from the rest - brood, foragers, queen, for example:

     • A split, remove the queen elsewhere in a Nuc that contains plenty of young bees and mostly sealed brood. Reducing the residual QCs to one in the home colony.

     • A popular method is an artificial swarm; remove the brood frames plus bees into a new hive situated at least one metre from the home position and reduce the QC to one. The queen goes to the home position, and the flyers automatically join her. The home position gets the supers. The queen must have comb to lay in as foragers can barely draw comb let alone feed brood.

     • A Taranov board or vertical Artificial Swarm are other options.

6. What should a beekeeper look for during each inspection? When you write your notes, what should you record? Chiefly eggs or young larvae, whether the queen was seen, amount of brood, absence/presence of QC, stores, space and any signs of disease.

7. If the colony is building up, what sort of ratio between unsealed and sealed brood will there be? Worker brood consists of 9 days as open and 12 days as sealed brood. So when there is no expansion, the ratio will be 3:4. So a ratio of 4:4 would suggest the queen’s rate of lay has increased. Sealed brood stands out much more than unsealed, so the apparent ratio can be poorly representative unless you have eagle eyes.

8. Yes or no!

9. How can you check whether a colony with no young larvae is queen-less? Use a “test frame”, a frame containing eggs. Inspect after four days; if charged cups develop, the colony is queenless. If QC do not develop, there is a high probability that the colony is queen-right.

10. How can you stop casts? Destroy all the QC except one. Manipulate the colony so they destroy the QC. So if you move the hive such that all the foragers are lost the excess QC should be broken down. Unfortunately, they don’t always do so with an Artificial swarm, whereas with a Modified Snelgrove 2, they do.

11. If a queen died four days ago, how long does it take before a new Q starts laying? Three days as open cell, eight days as closed, 9 - 10 mating and preparing to lay. So around 21 days. But occasionally a couple of days sooner, rarely weeks later.

12. After a colony swarms, how long will it take before the home colony contains eggs? Seventeen days, more or less.

13. When might a colony run out of stores?

    Anytime, but particularly in the spring when colonies rapidly expand, in the June gap, especially if a spring harvest was removed.

14. What things can start the bees robbing or make it more likely? Leaving any syrup, comb or honey exposed, leaving a gap between boxes, opening a hive, and having hives close to one another, a dearth very much increases the risk.

15. Why is it helpful to put a spot of paint on the queen? All the better to see her with. The disadvantage is that there is a tendency not to look for queens but just the dot.

16. How long does it take from when a drone egg is laid to him emerging? Why is this significant?

    24 days. Varroa preferentially enter drone brood as they can produce one more mature varroa compared with worker brood per cycle. Using two frames of drone comb can reduce mite load by 50% which helps a colony with a low varroa level. Once the drone comb is sealed, the comb is put in the freezer overnight and then returned to the hive. The bees empty the dead pupae ready for the queen to lay and have a great protein and viral meal.

17. When a queen has been introduced in a cage, when is it sensible to inspect it? Why / why not? After 2 - 7 days, opening the tab on the travel cage enables the bees to eat through the candy. 48 hours later, check that she has left the cage. After this, some beekeepers say you should delay inspecting beyond ten days to reduce the chance of rejection. Others say to check for signs of supersedure. I reckon you an inspection after five. Seven would be a compromise. 

18. What could you do to encourage supersedure? Put a guarded QC in a queen-right colony. Clip one of the queen’s legs. Run two queen colones - mother and daughter together (after a vertical split).

19. How will it affect the colony If there is a 3-week period of cold weather starting on April 1? Foragers will be unable to fly and may pooh in the hive. The queen will probably reduce her laying, and consequently, there will be fewer bees to take advantage of the spring honey flow in May. Due to congestion in the brood area, the queen moves around less. Hence, the apparent queen mandibular pheromone levels fall. This may prompt the bees to make swarm preparations.

20. If you clip the wings of a queen, how often do you need to inspect the colony? Inspection can be deferred for 14 days. If the queen is lost in an attempted swarm, virgins will emerge eight days later.

21. What are the main approaches to managing varroa? When can they be given/used? What is the treatment period? and wash out, period? There are soft and hard chemicals. Apivar/Amitraz constitutes a “hard” artificial compound which requires a 6 to 10-week treatment period and is not temperature dependent. The treatment period is ten weeks if there is plenty of brood. It must not be used if there are supers on the hive. It is minimally soluble in wax, so the washout period is zero days. Softer thyme-based compounds are non-toxic and require warm weather to be effective. they could taint honey, so in temperate regions, they are only suitable to be given after the main flow. The naturally occurring chemical, Formic acid, the active agent in Formic Pro can be used at any time of year when the temperature exceeds 10 degrees Celsius. In the UK, supers must be removed for the duration of treatment, eleven days. Oxalic acid is effective when trickled or sublimated in a broodless period when no supers are in place. Oxalic acid can be given via vaporisation at any time of year. Biological methods include performing a shook swarm, drone brood destruction, queen caging, and sugar dusting.

22. What four ways can you think of to get the bees on to fresh frames and foundation? 1. Shook swarm. 2. Bailey comb change. 3. Demaree. 4. Move old frames out of the brood nest to the edge and then replace them.

23. Three components of a colony’s structure need to be present for a colony to swarm. What are they? Queen, flying bees, and brood.

24. How does an artificial swarm (AS) prevent swarming? How far apart do the hives need to be? The new hive should be at least one meter, with the entrance facing away from the other. Diehards move the hive with brood from one side of the hive to the other after a week to shoot more foragers to the home hive. An AS prevents swarming by separating the brood from the queen.

25. Why should Apiguard only be used when the temperature is 15 degrees C or higher? The bees have to be active to spread the thymol around the hive.

26. Why is it important to see eggs? On appreciating this, how could you manage a colony that has queen cells, but you cannot find the queen? The queen may or may not be present, but if there are eggs, she was present three days ago. If there are less than 4 QC, this suggests supersedure.

    Should the colony be swarming and you cannot find the queen, do a manipulation that does not require you to find the queen, at least to begin with, like a Modified Snelgrove 2. If you are an ace, split the hive into two equal parts. Destroy all the QC in both colonies. Return after 76 hours and inspect. The portion with the queen contains eggs. Check both parts for eggs. There may be two queens.

27. When it comes to feeding bees, what forms can it take? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each one? Sugar and fondant. Sugar from the supermarket is cheap; it is easily made into a solution. After a while, it develops a scum on the top and ferments. Alcohol gives bees dysentery. Contrast this with Special inverted bee syrup, e.g. Apipasta, which takes ages to develop a scum.

    When syrup is first used, the bees can become excited, and this may start robbing in a dearth. So it is best to commence it in the evening. Sugar syrup can be given in small feeders or purpose-made rapid feeders. Special inverted bee fondant preparations are more expensive than Bakers fondant. Bakers is stiffer and more prone to dry out than special fondant. Feeding fondant requires an eke; alternatively, use the PHH rapid feeder. Special sugar preparations are expensive. Dilute Honey soon goes off.

28. One of a beekeeper’s chief objectives is to maximise bee forager numbers for the summer honey flow. When must these bees be conceived? The main honey flow is usually mid-June to the end of July. It takes 21 days for a bee to emerge and then 21 days on household duties. So, between early May and mid-June.

    The colony’s readiness is reflected in the queen’s rate of lay. Sealed brood peaks in mid-June and then falls off. If her rate of lay falls off before mid-May, then the colony is planning to swarm rather than maximise honey production. Spring feeding may stimulate colony growth or precipitate swarming. The queenright portion of an Artificial Swarm recovers slowly, so encourage it with some sugar syrup.

29. What should you do if you find QC and one or more of Q have emerged? It would be handy if you could work out what sort of queen cells they are and whether the queen is in residence; if they are emergency or supersedure cells, then no problem! If they have swarmed, and only one Q has emerged, release one queen and destroy all the others. This should prevent casting. If there are multiple empty QC, release all the mature queens and destroy all the other QC. If the colony has not swarmed, perform a manipulation.

30. A hive with an overflow of bees into the top brood box could be managed with a vertical split to pre-empt swarming. How would you do this? 

    You could make a division board. A board that is a bit more complicated than a Bailey board. It has a 10 cm upper rear and side entrance, which has a 10cm2 hole covered with mesh and a 10cm2 area of QE that can be occluded by a bit of wood or metal sheet.

    A Demaree does not require a manipulation board. The queen and the frame she is on go at the home site in a box of comb. Since it is not a swarming situation (although they may be thinking about it), you can, if you are brave, leave her with several frames of sealed brood. The rest of the brood is placed above two supers and a second queen excluder.

31. Preparing for winter:

    • First, the colony should be strong enough with a brood box full of bees and, About six good frames of brood in mid-August. These may become the first winter bees. The bees must be healthy, so smash varroa before this. Preferably with a treatment that can be given in conjunction with feed. API life Var may reduce the bees’ appetite if it is placed in proximity to the feeder. Formic Pro may kill the Q and uncapped brood. Apiguard may be effective if the weather is hot, but it reduces the queen’s rate of lay. Whatever the potential adverse effects of these treatments, the harm caused by using them will be less than being laissez-faire. If you have varroa-tolerant bees, watch them carefully. They are unlikely to be immortal, but survive longer than a susceptible strain.

    • Before winter, the colony must have adequate stores, enough so that lifting an edge of the hive is very difficult. Give strong sugar syrup or fondant. When syrup is first given, it can cause excitement and precipitate robbing. So start it in the evening and never let the feeder run dry. However, if you start feeding in the daytime, it should be okay unless the syrup is mixed with honey. If the syrup becomes covered with scum, the feeder must be cleaned. The advantage of syrup is that they may draw some comb.

    • Fondant will dry out unless you are careful.

    • Woodpecker damage is rare; they have to learn to do it. Once they start, their offspring do it too. In these circumstances, protection is essential. Protection ranges from chicken wire to old fertiliser bags or hessian (which hang down to stop the woodpecker from getting a grip). Wire mashes up poly hives, and sacks do not protect the roof.

    • The hive must be sound with no cracks and securely strapped down to a sturdy stand.

    • Prevent the entry of mice. Wooden hives have a special entrance reducer.

32. How could you monitor varroa levels?

    Natural varroa drop through the OMF (screened floor) can give a rough indication, but is more subjective than objective. Drone sampling is unreliable. Ether rolls are quick and deadly. Whilst a sugar roll is safe for the bees in the short term, it requires more faffing around compared with killing the bees. With a roll method, the threshold is exceeded if there are two or more varroa per 100 bee sample. Most people use the varroa / screened board to monitor the infestation; it is easy and convenient, In a large colony it is particularly unreliable.

33. If some brood in worker cells develops a domed top, what should you do?

    Action! The queen is running out of sperm and becoming a drone layer, so she needs to be replaced.

34. Looking for disease in a colony is such a priority that it is good practice to do at least two inspections each year when you are solely looking for disease. Shake the bees off every frame. Signs of disease.