Shepherds of the Bees – Part 2

The Shepherds of the Bees – Part 2 Splitting ‘flocks’ and making nucs

David Wainwright, Tropical Forest Products Ltd, Aberystwyth, UK

This is the second article in which David Wainwright discusses his approach to making good business from beekeeping. A commercial beekeeper with over 1,500 colonies across 100 apiaries in the UK, David runs a highly successful business, marketing his own honey and hundreds of tonnes of honey and beeswax imported every year from Africa, which he supplies to major retailers in the UK.

My beekeeping has evolved over the years: complicated methods which do not produce reliable results or are not cost effective (time is money!) have been abandoned and methods which work well have been expanded. I now find that a lot of my time is spent on splitting colonies to make nuclei (nucs) (a few thousand bees and a queen bee) and then caring for these nucs as they expand in bee numbers. If this is all done correctly these young colonies will produce a good crop of honey for three or four years with little attention.

I split my ‘flock’ of hives into four groups: nucs, second years, third years, and ‘oldies’ ready for retirement. Due to attrition from losses of about 20% a year the younger groups are larger in number and produce the bulk of the honey. Every year I make plenty of nucs, so that by the autumn in the UK about 40% of the hives are nucs from that year. I reduce the number of old hives by uniting them together. On average I look in a hive three times in a season: early spring to check all is OK, mid spring to make a nuc, and autumn to check all is OK for overwintering. It is a bit like the old British tradition of skep beekeeping but instead of encouraging my hives to swarm I make nucs. These nucs must be nurtured so that they are not stunted by lack of food or other stress and development is unchecked and keeps them healthy and strong. They do not produce much honey in their first year as they put all their vigour into raising brood to expand their population. In the following two years they will produce a good crop. In their third or fourth year they usually start to have problems and are approaching their allotted span, so they are moved out to our retirement sites.

The empty sites created are filled up with 24 nucs from our nursery sites. The hives in each site are a group, with sister queens started on the same day. I try to track the life history of each group and compare groups of different ages and origins etc. One lesson I have learned from these life histories is that early months of colony development are crucial to the entire life history of the colony. If a developing young colony is subjected to stress and their development is checked then they will never come right in the years to come.

A good example of the effects of stress in the early months is the life history of a number of colonies on Oakwell Farm. These were sister colonies to three other groups at Atcham, Cross and Haughmond Houses, all started in 2018 with sister queens. I neglected the Oakwell bees and they became hungry in September 2018, meanwhile their sisters were well cared for and had good forage throughout. I fed the Oakwell bees when I found they had become hungry, all looked well going into winter and I thought that all would be ok in the coming years, but I was mistaken. By September 2020 only 15% of the Oakwell hives were alive compared with 70% of their sisters at the other farms. The life expectancy of the neglected colonies was 0.7 years compared to 2.8 years for the cared for groups. The average honey production was 13kg for the Oakwell bees and 72kg for their sisters. This effect was not due to the location, another set at Oakwell was one of the highest producers.

The first months are crucial for a colony’s future performance

The two groups below were all sister colonies, started in May 2018 from the same batch of sister queen cells. The only difference is that in September 2018 one group was neglected and ran out of food, while the cared for group had plenty of nutritious forage. The after effects of this stress affected the neglected group for the rest of their lifespan.

The lesson I have learned over the years is that a colony will carry the after effects of stress throughout its lifespan, it will be more liable to disease, will swarm more and will not gather the same crop as its well cared for sisters. I put a lot of effort into caring for my developing colonies in their early months, to make sure they have everything that they need. Opening hives creates stress and is only done when there is a clear purpose. We do not do swarm control as this creates stress which further encourages bees to swarm. I do not find swarm control to be cost effective in the long run, I try to provide my bees with all that they want so they do not feel the need to swarm. Swarming is usually around 15% per annum.

In the UK we spend the winter months preparing and renovating a lot of hives for the young colonies we will begin to produce in the next season. This minimises disease transmission opportunities as colonies are always started in a clean hive. Many colonies are in the expansion phase and have the energy of a new swarm.

[The full pdf version of this article includes a table reporting on production from 30 apiaries on Salisbury Plain, 2020 and 2019 season. This demonstrates the variation from site to site, in many cases due to past stress events in the life history of these groups of hives. The table has been omitted from this mobile friendly version of the article.]

Over the years the ‘flock’ develops its own character, vigour and health (if things are done right) a swarm or nuc from a healthy calm hive will have the best start in life and will in turn produce another healthy swarm or nuc. By contrast a colony started from purchased bees which have been subject to stress in transit will struggle to feed the next generation adequately so a level of malnutrition will be passed from generation to generation. The colony will lack the resilience and vigour of a well raised nuc that has been given everything it needs for its start in life. How this ‘trauma’ is passed down the generations through the years of the colonies’ lifespan I am not sure. It is not a genetic effect originating with the queen. It could be that the queen herself has been harmed in the traumatic event, but I doubt this as the colony always makes sure the queen gets the best food. I suspect that the trauma is somehow transmitted by the workers themselves down the generations.

Pitmead Apiary. This group of colonies have produced good crops in 2019 and 2020. All colonies are very similar: strong and healthy with very little swarming. The group was started as nucs in 2018, they were well cared for and grew fast, and they went on to become strong, stress free, top honey producers.

There is a lot of variation in my hives, some yards of old hives produce a poor crop, in the summer the hives are all different heights, a few are piled with boxes, but most have only one or two. I also have yards of hives which are evenly piled high, like Pitmead in the photo. Some of the best yards are old groups, they just keep producing a good crop year after year. If all the yards were as good as the best, then the crop would be a lot higher. But every year there are various problems, some affect all the colonies, some affect only certain yards. It is my job as a bee farmer to try to eliminate problems where they are under my control, although in some years there are problems beyond that: freezing storms, droughts or excessive rainfall which affect all the colonies in an area and lower production.

In the table I have listed the crop records for my apiaries in Salisbury Plain to illustrate the problems and successes which occur every year in honey production. This chart shows that 2020 could have been a very good year as the best yards produced excellent crops of 70kg or above. The worst yards produced poor crops of 20kg or lower. 2019 was a more even year with not so much variation from yard to yard, they produced a higher average crop, even though 2020 was potentially the better year. To improve my beekeeping, I need to look into these figures and work out what went wrong with the unproductive yards and try to make sure that we do not repeat these mistakes the next year. Also bearing in mind the lesson learned in Oakwell that problems created by neglect will be a burden on these colonies for the rest of their lives.

This alone is a new way of working for many of us. Then you start discussing your bee operation in detail, not just the bits you are proud of but also the bits that have gone wrong. You learn that everyone makes mistakes, but also everyone has some parts of their business that have done well. As David Rowse used to say: ‘Things in beekeeping are seldom as bad or as good as you think they are’.

The main factor lowering average production in 2020 is that the second-year colonies produced only 29kg compared with the second years in 2019 which produced 55kg. 2020 second year colonies started off too weak and could not grow strong enough to produce much when the honey flow came in July. If they had done as well as the 2019 second year the average crop would have exceeded 2019. For this problem we only have ourselves to blame as we made various mistakes in caring for the nucs in their first year of life in 2019. These sets of bees can be expected to perform poorly now throughout the rest of their lifespan. I now make sure that all the team are very aware of a precise recipe for nuc making that has to be followed to the letter.

Another problem that stunted some colonies in 2020 was the high levels of Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) seen in 6 yards in autumn 2019. Four of these yards were amongst the lowest producing groups. The DWV problem was no longer visible in these yards during 2020 but the after effects still persisted and reduced the honey crop.

Coming along behind these groups which have ongoing problems is a new cohort of young vigorous stock that we started in 2020. These are looking very prosperous and should produce well in 2021. Meanwhile we have started to clear some sites of old unproductive bees in order to make space for the new generation. The old stocks are taken to ‘retirement’ sites like Pewsey where they are united together to reduce their numbers.

In these articles I have referred a lot to production figures that I have recorded from my hives as well as what I know about the operation of the bee farms run by colleagues in the UK. All of this information has come from a programme of Knowledge Exchange Groups that we have set up amongst ourselves in the UK Bee Farmers Association. These groups consist of about six members who agree to share all the information about the operation of their bee businesses. It is a very stimulating experience to be part of one of these groups. Firstly, you are required to measure the performance of your hives and record the data so that discussions can be on a factual basis.