2021 Autumn Ne Ws L E Tte R - Suffolkbeekeepers.co.uk

cover the lessons. If you have passed the BBKAbasic exam, been beekeeping long enough thatyou should have(!), or have currently offered yourservices as a mentor, then we'd like you toconsider offering to help with the occasionalbeginners’ hive inspections. With enough peopleoffering it would only amount to one or twoSunday afternoons per season.for feeding larvae. They can eat or storeconcentrated invert syrup with no extraprocessing. In practice both seem to work equallywell.2 StorageSucrose solution tends to grow black mould whenkept in a container or feeder. This can beprevented by adding Manley solution (see below).Some people add citric acid, lemon juice or cidervinegar which work by inverting the sucrose.Concentrated invert syrup doesn’t grow mouldand will remain in good condition for manymonths.The intermediate lessons could cover things suchas: Queen rearingRequeening nasty hivesUsing nucsMaximising your honey crop3 Water contentAmbrosia and InvertBee are approximately 73%sugar:27% water by weight. This is close to thenatural composition of honey. It’s moreconcentrated than the traditional recipe for thicksyrup (2lbs sugar dissolved in 1 pint of water,62% sugar:38% water). Some beekeepers feedthin syrup at certain times of year (1lb sugar to 1pint of water, 44% sugar:56% water). Simplearithmetic will give you the metric equivalents.I don’t bother with thick or thin mixtures. I feedconcentrated invert syrup at all times of yearexcept winter and the bees always take it down. Ifthey want more water, the flying bees can go andfetch it.It’s a great opportunity to help build up the skilllevels in our community. While the thought isfresh, email Jeremy now to offer your services(jeremyq@tiscali.co.uk)Sugar is just sugar – or is it?Beekeepers use many forms of sugar to feed theirhoneybees. Here’s a quick guide to feeding sugar.First, a bit of chemistry:The most common form is liquid feed, eithermade up with granulated sugar dissolved in wateror bought as invert syrup (sold under trade namessuch as Ambrosia and InvertBee). Granulatedwhite sugar is pure sucrose, a complex moleculeextracted and refined from sugar cane or sugarbeet. The sucrose molecule can be split into twosimpler sugar molecules, glucose and fructose.This splitting process is known as inversion andcan be done in many ways. Wikipedia has a verygood article on “Inverted sugar syrup”. All otherforms of granulated sugar (raw, natural, brown,demerara, muscovado etc) contain compoundswhich are harmful to bees, so never use them tomake liquid feed.4 Price and convenienceThis year’s price for SBKA bulk invert syrup is71p/kg. Granulated sugar prices have beenreported as low as 57p/kg at some supermarkets.But to quote one of our members, “life is too shortto faff about with packets of granulated sugar!” - asentiment with which I agree wholeheartedly.Manley solutionNamed after the famous beekeeper R.O.B.Manley, this consists of thymol crystals diluted inalcohol. It is very effective at preventing mouldand fermentation in sucrose syrup; it also helps tocombat nosema.Practical differences between sucrose and invertsyrup for feeding beesThymol crystals can be bought from the usualbeekeeping suppliers. Thymol doesn’t dissolve inwater, so it can’t be added directly to syrup butmust first be dissolved in alcohol. You can useconcentrated ethyl alcohol (sold in shops asvodka) but the best solvent is isopropyl alcohol orIPA (NOT the stuff in beer cans). This is alsoknown as isopropanol and is widely availableonline for a few per litre. But whatever you do,1 DigestibilityBees naturally store and eat honey which ismostly glucose fructose. If they are fed asucrose solution they have to add an enzyme,invertase, which is produced in theirhypopharyngeal gland and inverts the sucrose toglucose fructose. This takes time & energy andmay reduce their ability to produce “bee bread”6

please don’t use Methylated or Surgical Spirit they have extra stuff added which can be harmfulto bees. My Manley recipe: dissolve 10g thymolcrystals in 100ml IPA. Add 5ml of the solution to5 litres of sucrose syrup and shake well.This book was first published in 1981 and thereviewed copy is a reprint of the 2008 edition.The Northern Bee Books website blurb says “Thegarden plants selected for inclusion are not onlyvaluable for bees but worth growing in their ownright. Each plant is given with a Latin name, acommon name, its flowering season, its heightand some general notes regarding optimumlocations. An essential guide for allenvironmentally interested gardeners.”FondantBeekeeping fondant is just powdered sugar withinvert syrup added to soften it. Baker’s fondant isa similar product. You can find recipes online formaking your own, but don’t be tempted to usedomestic icing sugar which contains chemicalssuch as anti-caking agents. Posh fondantcontaining pollen is much more expensive.Suppliers claim that it gives colonies a boost inearly spring when supplies of stored pollen maybe running low. It’s a mystery how the bees havemanaged for thousands of years without it!Overall it does what it says on the tin. No bookcan be expected to contain every insect friendlyplant and this book naturally, given the authors,has a honey bee focus, although the preface refersto it being “a book of plants for bees.” It is goodto see plants particularly visited by bumble beesare indicated, but there is no mention of solitarybees which are such important pollinators andvital within the ecosystem.If you haven’t any fondant, an easy alternative isto dunk an unopened 1kg paper packet ofgranulated sugar in water for a short while andleave it to dry overnight. The outer layer of sugarwill set hard, then you can cut a hole in the sideand put the bag over the crown-board hole. Therest of the sugar will set as the bees eat into it.Happy feeding!Chris StephensThere is some useful advice such therecommendation to choose single rather thandouble flowered cultivars which often lack nectarand pollen having been bred for showy extrapetals rather than the reproductive flower parts.The lists of plants “exclude most crop plants, mostfruits and all very invasive plants that are difficultto control. I was surprised to see Pentaglottissempervirens (green Alkanet) included as,although I have a big enough garden and alongwith many insects I love the blue flowers, it is athug which self-seeds freely so can take over ifyou turn your back on it“Garden Plants Valuable to Bees”Jointly published by International Bee ResearchAssociation and Northern Bee Books.ISBN 978-0-86098-287-6Price 9.95 plus p&pA review, and reflections on insect friendlygardening.By Rasbak - Own work, CC BY-SA d 172033The thug that is Green AlkanetConversely there is no mention of the wildLamium album which is very popular with thebumbles in my garden as evidenced by the insectcounts I do for the National Pollinator Monitoring7

Scheme. I don’t have a problem controlling it, butI do understand not everyone wants an untamedstyle of garden!Initially I was somewhat confused by my copy ofthe book (what no Lamium purpureum in the wildflowers section?) until I realised half the pageswere missing! Northern Bee Books have kindlysent a replacement with the full 52 pages whichdoes indeed include the missing red dead-nettle!(And sections on climbers, trees and shrubs and areading list.) Oddly the font in the replacementbook was different and looked a little datedcompared with the first copy.Maybe it’s just as well that the non-nativecommon garden plant Lamium galeobdolonsubsp. argentatum is not included. I inherited thisplant in my garden and although it is also verypopular with the bumbles, as the charity Plantlifepoints out “Once this species gets into the wild, itrapidly spreads and carpets the floor to theexclusion of other plants. The smallest stolonfragment with just one pair of leaves can growinto a new colony, and stolons break readily if theplant is pulled up. It’s usually found in shadyhabitats such as woodland edges, hedgerows,roadside banks and stream sides. It is increasingrapidly in the wild and beginning to impact sitesat which species of conservation interest grow; ina recent survey it was found at the majority ofSpreading Bellflower Campanula patula sitesvisited. This species is listed on Schedule 9 of theWildlife and Countryside Act in England andWales therefore it is also an offence to plant orotherwise cause to grow these species in thewild.” So be warned, don’t let it escape and wieldthe garden fork when necessary! We gardenersneed to be aware of such risks to our native plants.I found the sideways layout rather awkward. Theformat is a set of tables of plant names in sectionsincluding a good range of plant types such asherbaceous, herbs and bulbs, corms and tubers,with brief descriptions and cultivationrequirements so if you are looking for thisinformation it would be a useful addition to yourlibrary. Free and perhaps more up to dateresources can be found on websites such as theRoyal Horticultural Society (Plants forpollinators), The Bumblebee Conservation Trustand of course the BBKA.Marian StephensHead gardener, chief insect recorder and deputybeekeeper in Trimley St Mary500 stings and counting There’s been a revelation! I really don’t knowwhy it took so long but it’s finally happened. Thatmassive piece of the beekeeping jigsaw justslotted into place.Last year was all about keeping to regular 7 dayinspections and dealing with queen cellsimmediately rather than knocking them back inthe hope of dissuading the colony from swarming.Thanks to assiduously requeening all my grumpycolonies last year, this year's inspections havebeen a delight and makes beekeeping the pleasureit ought to be.By Teun Spaans - Self made picture, CC BY d 3983064Keep a close eye on this Lamium galeobdolonIn my view no excuse is needed to encouragegardeners to grow a few more wild flowers even ifthey are “weeds” to some! I quote, “Most entrieshere would be regarded as weeds outside the wildgarden”. Maybe it reflects the attitudes ofgardeners around the time of writing, but I wouldargue that perhaps the term weeds leads to anegative view beekeepers should try to challenge,given the decline of all pollinators and recentrewilding ideas such as “no mow”.Most beekeepers will have found that it was avery swarmy season and my bees were noexception. Thankfully regular inspections andplenty of spare nuc boxes kept everything undercontrol - for a while anyway. I reckon 30 of the 34colonies that came through the winter attemptedto swarm.Over the winter we had Jamie Ellis give a talk onusing nucs in beekeeping operations. I’ve used8

them for the last few years, but this talk made itclear I’d been ignoring a golden opportunity.Having a nuc or two building up in each apiaryoffered so many opportunities - taking out framesof sealed brood out to build up growing colonies;using the nuc ‘en bloc’ to replace the queen in aswarming colony; using bees from the nuc tomake up mating nucs. It all made for the honeyproduction colonies to do well. I’m up about 50%on honey yield this year compared to last.“The past week saw a continuation ofprevious weeks’ weather with lowpressure systems coming in off theAtlantic – more akin to what would beexpected in late autumn. Coldtemperatures and unfavourable winddirections continued to keep migration ata trickle with no big arrivals of migrantspecies noted. The BirdTrack reportingrates for both House Martin and Swallowtook a dip last week with the reportingrate for Swift also below average,possibly due to some birds having notarrived but also due to continentalbreeding birds not passing through Britainand Ireland as a result of the lack of southor south easterly winds. “There’s hope for me yet.Barry CrabtreeMusings on a funny old year‘Tits and other topics’There were BTO Garden Birdwatch reports ofearly nesting attempts by Robin, Blackbird andCollared Dove in February and early March. Earlyattempts may fail because of a change in theweather with chicks getting chilled or parentsbeing unable to bring in enough invertebrate prey.It is a traditional ritual that UK beekeepers andgardeners remark “it’s been a funny old year” –this year more than most. Never mind Covid,what has been happening with our weather, floraand fauna? A late spring - the usual vagaries ofBritish weather or more extreme because ofclimate change?When successful, early breeding can bringbenefits for the fledglings, but this year manyobservers reported the failure in particular of Blueand Great Tit nests, at the chick stage. This isoften caused by starvation rather than predation.The Met Office reported March was slightlywarmer than the long-term average, but UKtemperatures in April and May were belownormal.Blue, Great, Long Tailed and Coal Tit usually layonly one large clutch of at least 8 -12 eggs,although if they all die they may try again. TheBlue Tit female doesn’t brood the eggs till thewhole clutch is laid, so the chicks will all be thesame age, unlike birds such as Jackdaw whichbrood from the first egg so chicks are of differentages enabling the survival of at least the eldest inhungry years. If food is in short supply for BlueTit chicks they may all die. Being birds ofdeciduous woodland they time their breeding sothe peak demand for food for growing chickscoincides with the peak in moth caterpillars whichwill have emerged to take advantage of the newflush of leaf growth. Such caterpillars are lessabundant in gardens than woodland and this coldwet spring it is likely there were fewer than usualoverall. With a better year next year Blue Titnumbers should recover because of their largebrood size, but disruption for successive yearscould threaten their status as common birds. TheBTO will be studying the nesting bird data hopingto understand the longer term implications ofMay’s average maximum temperatures wereamong their lowest ever recorded until the lastweek of the month when the warm bank holidayweekend shifted May’s average figures away fromhistorically low figures (don’t we know it - cueswarms!) The average maximum temperaturereported in the month for the UK was around1.5 C lower than the long-term average and bothminimum and mean temperatures were wellbelow normal, with some unusually late frosts.April was the fourth driest on record, but rainfallwas well above the long-term averages for themonth in May, even in notoriously dry Trimley StMary, thanks largely to the southern-shifted jetstream inviting prolonged periods of low pressure.Compare and contrast spring 2020 when the UKrecorded its sunniest spring ever and we hadendless sunny summer days.How did all this affect nature? The British Trustfor Ornithology (BTO) for whom I record weekly,reported on 21st May:9

climate change (there is already evidence of manyspecies laying eggs a week earlier than in the1960s), and increasing urbanisation.and will take only a summer harvest this year – orwas it the lack of local rape seed fields? I hopeyou have fared better.From my own observations it would be unwise toread too much into the numbers and timings of thebirds, insects, mammals and amphibians I havebeen recording weekly for the BTO since 1995.Scientific conclusions demand computing powerand large numbers of records over time frommany sources. However, anecdotally myimpression was that some species were later thisyear. For example I saw the Orange Tip butterflyin mid April last year and not till nearly a monthlater this year.Some species seem to be in much lower numbers,for example I saw 10 Azure Damselflies at onetime in our pond in May 2019 and 11 last year, butonly 3 in June this year.Marian Stephens16.08.21Addendum: as I sat eating lunch today there was alarge flock of tits in the garden, mostly impossibleto identify as they raced from distant tree to treehiding in the foliage, but there were at least 9 BlueTits and a Great Tit so either in denial of my lowsummer counts they managed to succeed in spiteof the poor spring or maybe they had a secondbrood. Nature is resilient, but who knows howlong it and particularly niche specialists, willsurvive climate change?Flowers feel when bees are near andemit more scentThis year the Buff-tailed bumblebee numbersstayed low at around 2 or 3 at one time till lateJuly when I saw 10, whereas in previous years Iwas seeing numbers over 50 by then. I wasrelieved to count 73 in the garden this morning(plus a Carder, two Red-tails and 3 EarlyBumbles) with the insect favourite lavender stillproviding its slightly late bounty. (Also aBee-wolf hawking successfully for one of ourgirls – fair enough, it was an impressive strike andonly one. We must respect and protect our insectbiodiversity, except perhaps wasps when it gets tolate summer!) So it seems the Buffs have caughtup. I had been concerned that overwinteringqueens in their burrows may not have survived therain and later spring temperatures. Notsurprisingly this year I have also seen far fewerSouthern Cuckoo bumblebees which parasitiseBuff-tail nests, but maybe they will catch up tooas Buffs can have more than one brood, if theydon’t run out of summer time.Flowers can sense when a bumblebee is nearbyand release a burst of perfume to attract moreinsects, scientists have found.Bees release a tiny electrical charge when theycome into contact with petals. Dr ClaraMontgomery, of Bristol University, found thatshortly after contact was initiated, the plantactually expelled more perfume than normal.“Flowers have a limited supply of these scents, soit makes sense they only release them when theirpollinators are around” Dr Montgomery said.“Essentially, it is only worth advertising when youknow you have an audience. Other cues theymight use, such as daylight or temperature, can beunreliable.”The electrical charge on a bumblebee is 130picocoulombs (pC) and in expericents it took 600pC, or five visits, for a violet petunia to betriggered into emitting an extra dose.Ah, the traps of drawing conclusions aboutcorrelation and causation maybe the figureswere skewed by me being away and not recordingduring a crucial week, or maybe it really was theunforgiving weather. We’ll see, but maybe latesummer 2020 will turn out to have lower countsthan this year as it was so very hot and dry with asubsequent reduction in nectar as we know to ourcost in honey production. It was particularly poorhere on the coast where we often miss the showersenjoyed by those further inland. The late springcertainly reduced our 2021 spring honey cropsuch that we left them what they had slaved o

The Ipswich & East Suffolk Beekeepers’ Association First Founded 1880; Charitable Incorporated Organisation 1183025 2021 Autumn Ne ws l e tte r H on Se c re tar y, I&E SB K A: Ri c har d Al l e n, 11 Jupi te r Road, Ipswi c h IP 4 4NT. 07889 028573; se c re tar y.i e sbka@suffol kbe e ke e