I've said before how differently I feel about winter since seeing our sites through the full cycle of seasons. When life goes back into the ground, everything takes an essential break to recuperate and replenish, readying for the kick-off again in the new breeding season. That gives us humans the time to restock, set out new goals, complete heavy-duty habitat works, tidy the piles of brash, clean out nest boxes, repair equipment and, of course, consume a copious amount of coffee and biscuits on the sites without too much disturbance to the wildlife.
Here are a few shots of our biodiversity sites on the coldest and most peaceful days.
Grassland in the North West Zone
Wetland plants, North West Zone
Spring is just around the corner in the North of Brockley Wood
While I waited for the bees to go to bed in the mildest winter for years, our local hedgehog, which had clearly been living here for much longer than me, finally made itself known in mid December. By the way, I’m not feeding it baked beans, the tin is my measuring stick so I can judge their size...
and a couple of weeks later her friend came along. How exciting; hedgehogs!
The fox left a gift in their feeding bowl to show it’s appreciation of our efforts.
I was surprised to see honey bees collecting pollen from Viburnum tinus in my garden in January. They rarely do, so maybe they are planted in too much shade for the nectar to flow.
We finally had a flurry of snow, but unfortunately it didn’t stay long enough for me to get to the apiary in Ashley's Field to photograph the hives looking wintery. Sorry!
Hurray! Clear skies at night and freezing cold mornings. The bees have gone to bed at last!
Snowdrops – an early supply of pollen and nectar
On the last check before the bees go to bed, we carefully lift the hive on the two sides, one at a time, to feel the weight of it. This is called hefting and we generally do that once a month to make sure they have enough stores of honey. If it’s getting light, we put some fondant under the roof in direct contact with the bees.
On a warm, sunny afternoon in February, the bees flew out to defecate away from their hive, and clearly one of them got caught short (bottom left hand side). We will have to look out for colonies which have persistant diarrhea as they may have a fungal disease of the gut called Nosema apis.
They also forage for food whenever possible and those running up the front of the hive seem to want to gain some height for take off.
A queen wasp hibernating in the log pile.
Not quite in the ‘other visitors to the hive’ category, but a ground beetle (Pterostichus sp.) living under a piece of wood under one of the hives.
March. ‘ Hurry up, out of my way, pollen to unload, places to go…………’
Blackbirds singing, bees buzzing, spring has arrived and very soon, we’ll be looking to see what the girls have been doing all this winter. We will keep you posted.
With a mild beginning to October, we were able to make a final check of a couple of the colonies
and found a nuc (nucleus), which was queenless. It should have been strong enough to survive the winter, even though it was half the size of a full colony...
but the queen had died and in the centre of the comb the bees had constructed a queen cell, far too late for the production of a new one.
This is a butler cage, designed to introduce a new queen into a queenless colony and minimising the chance of them killing her. (The 50p is to give you an idea of the size, not how much they cost!)
She is placed into the cage and a piece of newspaper is wrapped around the open end and secured with an elastic band to give her somewhere to hide while they get used to her and feed her.
We then put it into the hive between the frames of brood, where the bees would expect to find her. At this time of year there will be no issues about them accepting her as they know they won’t survive without one!
Ilex aquifolium
The Holly and...
Hedera helix
the Ivy. A fantastic winter plant for bees with irresistible flowers for bumbles, honeybees, wasps and hoverflies, and also juicy berries for the birds.
The next problem was in the hive on the right, also a small colony of 7 frames, where the queen was poor at egg laying and putting the colony at risk, so I took her out.
We opened up the bigger colony in the hive on the left and put a large sheet of newspaper over the frames of bees, covered by a wire queen excluder to stop it blowing away.
After dark, when all the bees were at home and clustered together, we lifted the whole hive, excluding the floor onto the main colony.
Over the next week, the bees in both hives chewed their way through the paper, gradually integrating smells and feeding each other...
Happy bees!
This visitor to the hive is a harmless Havestman (or Harvest-person?). Rachel says it is a type of arachnid, but not a spider.
(Leiobunum rotundum) female
All this mixing up of colonies causes a few battles on the landing board but the bees, which look like they are being attacked, will survive by being submissive by putting their heads between their legs and sweeping the floor with their tongues.
27th October; pollen still coming in by the leg load, but I'm not sure from which flower.
I’ve left enough honey (I hope) for the winter, but gave some back on the wax cappings from honey extraction, for the bees to clean up and store.
Ah, yes, honey. Extracting honey is my least favourite job, but I will get round to explaining its finer details one of these days…..
And so they close up any gaps which they don’t want with wax or propolis and go to bed. Although it’s now December, there are still stragglers finding traces of honey in my bee shed (where I thought it would be safe by now).
Can you spot the queen?
A really tricky ‘spot the queen’ photo last time but they do like to make it difficult; she was just disappearing round the top side of the frame with just her long abdomen showing.
If then, you think you may enjoy the ‘gentle’ art of beekeeping, you can join your local Association for theory courses, which usually begin in January. Get in touch with theBritish Beekeepers Association on the net for your nearest contact and they will be delighted to hear from you.
Local associations generally run practical sessions in an apiary from around April to September, so would be happy to let you hang around and practice all summer if you don’t feel confident, or if your garden isn’t suitable for you to keep bees there.
If still not for you, then perhaps you could grow plants with single flowers in your garden or in pots next year, which are easier for the bees to work. They don’t have to be native like this Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens), but there’s always a corner for something insect friendly, whatever the growing conditions and whatever the time of year.
Robin (Erithacus rubecula)
So, that’s it for this extraordinary year; many thanks for your time and comments, it has been a pleasure sharing the girls with you all, amazing creatures that they are. Big hug and a special thank you to Rachel and Tom too.
September brought cold nights and tiny, immaculate spider’s webs in the grass
and warm sunshine in the day to release nectar from the Sedum, much to the delight of the bees.
They are still throwing out unwelcome visiting wasps...
and are bringing in nectar and pollen from Himalyan balsam, Impatiens glandulifera. It begins to flower in July, is highly invasive, and is the tallest annual plant
with seed pods which burst, spreading them far and wide.
The bees carry a distinctive white patch of pollen on their thorax from the balsam and bring back loaded pollen baskets and nectar for weeks. Both bees are also collecting water; the bee’s tongue in the centre is just visible sucking up the dew on the leaf. Honest guv’na!
Beekeepers have a system for marking queens on their thorax with a coloured pen to denote which year they were born,
A small pink dot remain's from last year's marking
but generally I prefer to leave them unmarked so that I look for more than just a queen with a dot on her head. How influential are those that impress us first with their teaching!
Contain her, don't squash her!
The queen cage is pushed gently onto the queen to keep her still and she is marked on her thorax through the wire with one of the coloured pens.
It’s been good practice too for Tom and Rachel to find unmarked queens and now they are good queen spotters, it’s useful to mark one or two in the larger colonies. Job done!
Can you spot the queen? Answer next month...
It’s not easy to see queens amongst the 50,000 workers in summer...
unless she’s a big 1st or 2nd generation of commercially produced stock. As they interbreed with local drones, the queens get smaller. I look for a bee with long legs and a spidery walk, especially in the brood area where I’d expect to find her. Hope, not expect.
You may see her long abdomen, even though her head is in a cell checking it out for laying an egg and
a retinue of worker bees surrounding her, exchanging food and pheromones with the queen, which over 24 hours, informs all the workers that the queen is still there.
Trophallaxis
They in turn pass on the pheromones to each other, called trophallaxis.
Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)
Blackening Waxcap (Hygrocybe conica)
There are fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Fuchsia
They fill every nook and cranny with comb in a nectar flow in the summer
so there was a bit of housekeeping to do where the girls had built comb in an area of the hive without a frame.
They were quite calm while we cut it out
but there was surprisingly little food in it due to the wet and cold August, so we’ll have to make sure they have enough stores for the winter.
