ANARCHY IN THE APIARY

..Or what happens when chaos is introduced into the bee world

JUST recently hubby and I went to Lincoln to pick up three beehives after their keeper was forced to sell following a life-threatening encounter with the occupants.

TROUBLE at large in little white hive

second from the right

 He was literally nearly stung to death after accidentally knocking over a couple of the hives and hasn't been near them since. So quite what to expect on making our first inspection of our new acquisition when we got back to the Borders was anyone's guess.  Thankfully my mentor, Alex Turnbull, a beekeeper of 35 years experience, came along with his kit and we set about inspecting all three hives. We went through the National hives with relative ease until we tried to lift off the lid of the smallest. We actually thought it would be a doddle since the outward signs showed lots of healthy activity and there was just a brood box to check. But come hell and high water, we simply could not remove the top despite trying to chisel away from inside the lip of the lid.

 As you can imagine the bees were starting to get a tad irritated and I reminded Alex that the last person to take a peek inside this hive had ended up in Accident and Emergency, but he seemed undeterred. 

 Hubby arrived on the scene just in time and he stepped up to the plate to deploy some Algerian brute force. We held our breath and winced as he huffed, puffed and eventually using a twisting, lifting movement prised off the top ... by this time he was engulfed in a mini tornado of bees but they didn't seem in a mood to sting happily for him. Bearing in mind a bee will die after using its sting, you really have to rile them to invoke an attack so while they seemed angry, they appeared to be all bluff, buzz and bravado. As he slowly began to lift the lid, which he said felt unusually heavy, Alex and I both shouted in tandem: "STOP!"

CHAOS as bees go freestyle without frames to guide them

 So there he was, frozen like a statue being buzzed by a considerable amount of bees, as Alex pondered what to do. He shook his head in dismay and muttered several different scenarios saying how bad this all was. Hubby, who has the patience of a water gnat, began to purse his lips, fidget and perspire. Eventually Alex sighed and declared: "This is chaos, complete chaos. Slowly put the lid back down." We all congregated in a huddle nearby and Alex painted the scenario. Basically there were a couple of frames missing from inside the brood box - that's the chamber where the Queen lays her eggs. Other frames were skew-whiff and if anyone wanted to know what happens when anarchy breaks out in the controlled environment of a bee hive this was it. After the accident the lid must have just been replaced in a hurry and the bees were left to get on with it - and get on with it they did. They tried to bring order by making a wax brood frame without the frame which is a bit like knitting but without the needles! Using the top of the roof right down to the bottom of the hive, these tiny engineers had set about creating a solid wax structure, securely anchored which was used for the brood. It was one big sticky mess! So when hubby lifted the lid he also ripped up six free range combs from their solid anchor on the floor of the hive.

There was no quick fix solution for this so we set about on a damage limitation exercise, under the supervision of our mentor. God only knows what we would have done had Alex not been there but as you can see from the picture above this was a really complicated problem beyond our comprehension. There was nothing in the text books to cover this and certainly no mention of rubber bands, makeshift frames and how to deal with free range combs.

 We didn't even bother looking for the Queen - actually, we didn't have to as the whole heaving mass was full of eggs and larvae; proof positive an extremely fertile, active Queen was in action.  

STRETCHING IT: Six elastic bands restore some order

 Rather than destroy the wayward combs of brood we got three empty frames and somehow rescued part of the Queen's nursery by cutting the egg and larvae-laden wax to fit inside the frames. The whole structure was held in place either side by elastic bands. If you look closely at the picture on the right you can see the tell-tale signs of our DIY using the red elastic bands. The large wavey comb also in the picture is where the bees have constructed freestyle expanding the wax cells to fit the void. After our emergency repairs, and only one bee sting (Alex's head), we closed the hive and will check back in two weeks time. May be then we will look for the Queen. The whole exercise took the best part of two hours but it was an exilarating, if not tense, experience for a couple of rookies like me and my other half. Alex's presence also reinforced the view that all 'learner hivers' need a mentor on hand and he said himself that a bee apprenticeship should take around three years if such a thing existed.
 But whatever we went through with this hive inspection, nothing could prepare any of us for what we found when we inspected the hive which contained our first ever a swarm collected only last month from Ayr. Even now Alex is perplexed and has no answer for our shocking discovery ... but more of that later.
(Part two to follow, soon)