Norfolk Honey - sponsor a queen bee
Sponsor a hive and help the honeybees
I never kill a queen bee. Many beekeepers kill their queens
when their queens get old or if their bees don't seem to be productive enough.
Or, of course, when their bees are too difficult for them to handle.
I don't kill mine. I prefer to 'retire' my queens and let the bees replace
them in their own way and in their own good time.
This may mean that several of my hives are not as productive in terms of
making honey as they could be. But productivity isn't everything and anyway
sometimes a 'retired' queen turns out to be a late developer and has a much
better second and third year than expected and then her bees do make honey.
In the spring and early summer I collect swarms. I like to keep the swarms
to see what kind of bees they are. Swarms can have 'old' queens that have left
the hive in order to make room for a younger queen.
Sometimes swarms have a young queen. This happens when more than one new queen
has been produced in a large colony after the old queen has left. In this
case the bees keep the two new young queens apart from each other and one of
the two has to leave the hive with half the bees in the hive. If this process
happens more than once then the swarms start to get quite small.
The swarms I collect early in the year are often the largest and they can
build up big colonies of bees by the time the summer arrives and produce a
fair amount of honey.
Swarms collected later in the year don't make much honey
until their second year. Again many bee keepers wouldn't keep the queens in
these swarms and would unite the bees with another established colony. I keep
them all - that is if they will stay. I have to say that some do leave of their
own accord.
Smaller swarms are often what we call 'casts' and these have new queens some
of which are unmated. Sometimes they mate successfully and sometimes they don't.
I keep them for a while and let them settle down before I check for eggs. If
after a few weeks there are no eggs I then either give them a queen cell so
that they can hatch out a new queen or I unite the bees with a small colony
that needs more bees.
I find the whole process fascinating, but, a little time consuming, and therefore
a little expensive. So this is where you come in. You can help me by sponsoring
an old queen so that I can help her to survive for as long as she can. Or a
swarm queen to see what her bees are like. Or a good old queen to see just
how many more young queens she could still produce.
A sponsored queen will have her own blog where every inspection will be carefully
recorded so that you can follow her progress. As she is old she will probably
already be named - but if not we will give her a name. The same with swarm
queens.
As we go through the year we will watch carefully to see how the queen's bees
are behaving. We will record when her bees first make queen cups for her to
lay
eggs in and when the worker bees feed the lava in those cups with royal jelly
and the cups are turned into queen cells. One 'old' queen may produce several
new queens. If we are lucky enough to catch the queen making process at just
the right time the old queen can be removed with a few frames of bees and the
hive left to make a new queen. The bees won't replace the old queen (who is
now in a different box ) until we can build the number of bees in the colony
up again by feeding the bees. All
of this will be described as it happens and the actions we take explained in
your sponsored queens blog.
If the bees don't make queen cells in the first year we will see how much honey they can make with an old queen. Maybe we can disprove the received wisdom that colonies with old queens don't make so much honey.
It's not only 'old' queens that are available for sponsorship. You could choose a young queen that has been chosen to breed from and follow her progress through the years as we count how many successful new queens her bees can produce.
The queens I have are:
Queens from swarms collected
As
I collect swarms each year I keep track of each queen that came with the swarm
in order to assess the bees. On some occasions the queen is already marked.
Sometimes I am able keep a swarm for several seasons whilst they build up
their numbers.
Queens that are more than three years old
Queens that are more than three years old are generally my good queens that
I
have bred from and intend to keep breeding from for as long as I can. The
bees produced by these queens stand a good chance of being good themselves.
Queens that have not performed well enough to be sold
Some queens don't perform well enough in their first season to be sold. These
are queens that most bee keepers would kill and replace with another queen.
But because I think that all queens are precious and because I want to see
what happens to them if they are kept and in some instances see what kind
of queens
they
can
breed
if given
the chance - I keep them.
Queens that have been earmarked as exceptional in the previous
year
I keep a few colonies every year because they seem particular good at building
up their numbers and making honey in their first year. These are bees that
I may well breed from in order that I can supply colonies
to other beekeepers.
Click here to go to sponsor a hive
LINKS : to other sites of interest.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8467746.stm