May news
The Kings Orchard Honey May blog
A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon;
but a swarm of bees in July is not worth a fly
So the children’s nursery rhyme goes, dating from a time when the cottager would have had a skep of bees in their garden, at a time when sugar was a luxury much as a jar of our best Cornish Black Bee Honey is today!
Skeppists are a rare breed today as most modern beekeepers keep their bees in hives with moveable frames and try as they can to prevent their bees natural instinct to swarm.
The Skeppist relied on swarming to repopulate his skeps with new stocks of bees, so a swarm caught in the month of May, was probably most valuable as the bees would have time enough through the summer months to produce a good crop of honey from summer flowers giving up their nectar in exchange for pollination. The June swarm less so and a swarm in July would not be productive at all. Skep bee keeping methodology surely relied on the bees instinctive drive of swarming.
The modern beekeeper is offered all sorts of devices and methods to try to trick the bees into not swarming….. however it is written into the bees genetic code to swarm and if the beekeeper is not on his toes he may possibly loose a good colony of bees and its propensity to provide a crop of honey.
I have noticed over the years that some, particularly the exotic sub species of non native honeybees from the Mediterranean region have a tendency to be much more “swarmy “ than our own native bees, that have adapted to our Cornish climatic conditions since the last ice ended ( although some say we are still in it!!)
Swarmy bees beget swarmy bees as many beekeepers eventually find out. I requeen any swarms that I collect with stock from a proven source that I have reared myself over the past decade that do not show this swarmy tendency… also I quarantine any collected swarms for at least two brood cycles to check for any disease…
European and American foul brood are two “notifiable” honey bee diseases that can run riot through a population much as foot and mouth disease in cattle.
Last year I undertook my DASH accreditation ( DASH.. Disease Assurance Scheme for Honeybees) which is a professional qualification run by Defra/APHA at the National Bee Unit at Sand Hutton in Yorkshire in conjunction with the Beefarmers’ Association.
Our Seasonal Bee Inspector ( who is a fully trained professional on the Defra payroll) had to inspect every one of our 200 colonies to provide a baseline report, and I also had to be able to recognise and deal with all of the bee diseases and pests, plus complete the paperwork involved… I am not allowed to inspect other people’s bees and when asked I pass their details onto the Regional Bee Inspector who in turn will send one of the SBIs around to help. I strongly advise any hobbyist to register their colonies on BEEBASE so that they can access this free service.
What should you do if you have a swarm arrive … if it is trying to get into your chimney or into your eaves they can certainly be a problem….
Hopefully the bees will simply swarm into a tree or onto a wall.
If you do not know a time served and competent beekeeper local to you the BBKA run a list of “Swarm Collectors” on their website, most will gladly pick up and rehome the swarm for free.
Ladder work, chimneys and other inaccessible places need a specialist swarm collector who has the insurance to cover the risks involved in working at heights and building work… for Cornwall and Devon I recommend Molly from BeesOff who is based in St Austell 07743921425. There will be a fee involved, but you may be able to recover this from your house insurer.
As I write this I have already collected a number of swarms… we even had one turn up yesterday at the Devon County Show in West Point Exeter…. Swarming onto a vintage tractor. Fortunately the heroic amateur beekeepers in the Devon BKA tent managed to muster up a box big enough to coax the swarm into… and then had the usual argument who should have the bees! Beekeepers never agree… in fact it is said if you ask five beekeepers the same question you will get six different answers!
We had a wonderful three days selling our delicious honey in the Food and Farming Marquee… and won GOLD for the best exhibit in show!
Next weekend is the Green Man event at Mount Edgecumb and then the Royal Cornwall Show…. Come and say hello!
