Well it has been a positively 'medieval' year here in this area. If
people were still burnt for being witches a lot of our neighbours would
have been sacrificed by now.
 
Why?
 
Well, we have seen things not seen before - or at least only very
rarely.
It started with a very early spring followed by some truly awful weather
just as the queens would have gotten into full lay. Much too early. It
turned wet and cold, and never improved very much for the rest of the
season.
 
The following things became common experience:
 
•    Firstly beekeepers reported an unthwartable swarming instinct among
the bees this year, which was initially put down to the idea that
following the decimation of wild colonies by varroa, they were trying to
fill all the vacant homes out there in trees, etc. This was a very
popular theory.
 
But things got stranger and stranger.
 
•    Queens going out with a swarm without more than the beginnings of a
few queen cells, sometimes with nothing more than an egg in it.
 
•    Swarms that swarmed again within a few weeks of being hived.
 
•    Colonies swarming until there were no queens left in the colonies.
 
•    New queens only three weeks into laying, that are laying full combs
of healthy worker brood and lots of it, being superceded. Which is still
going on now at a time when bees are usually expected to be settling
down for the winter.
 
•    Lots of reports too of queens that did not get mated, not
surprising when there has not been a lot of sun, but this has still been
occurring even during the good spells. Some colonies have spent
considerable time without a queen, taking more than one attempt at
raising a queen that actually got mated.
 
As I say, when you listen to the weekly reports and chit chat from
people down at the local bee club it sounds just like the sort of thing
that went on in the middle ages, the equivalent of people coming in with
tales of cows giving sour milk, pigs giving birth to sheep, and such
weird stories.
 
I can't tell you how many times I have heard my father saying, "Well
I've never had anything like this ever happen before." He's kept bees
some 27 years now.
 
So what is going on?
 
I was interested to hear someone else mention the damage that must be
done to the drones by varroa and this is what my father and I have been
pondering. It may be that the queens have been flying but the drones are
so badly affected by varroa that they are unable to perform a 'fertile'
mating. Queens may be mating but not be fertile, or sufficiently
fertile. Pure conjecture of course. But it would be worrisome if that
were the case. Especially with so many hobbiest beekeepers out there
every weekend ripping the cappings off drone cells as part of the
control of varroa.
 
A second line of thought is what might the effects of varroa be on the
queens. I have heard that they are not affected, but is that a
scientific fact, or just wishful thinking.
 
I would be very interested to hear from other parts of the world that
have lived with varroa for some time to know whether they experienced
these sort of seasons but with good weather. It would also be good to
hear from beekeepers in other parts of the UK as to whether they would
confirm similar findings or not, maybe it has been a relatively local
phenomena. At present it is preferable to blame it all on the 'vagaries
of the weather'.
 
Nonetheless, despite the weather honey yields have been pretty much as
good as other years, unlike the experience of our Irish friends who seem
to have borne the brunt of it all, or at least that is the last thing I
heard from over that way, and little honey has been gathered at all
among some of the beekeepers there.
 
Lastly, may I add my bit on Buckfasts. My father recollects hearing
complaints from many beekeepers for some years now that Buckfasts (and
these are NOT from Weavers or anywhere else in the States) are prone to
aggression once the queens are 2nd/3rd generation. That is to say, the
people who have bought Buckfast queens and have let them naturally
supercede (we don't do much yearly replacement over here) have found
their daughters, one or two down the line to become unworkable. David
Eyre's theory on the dominance of the african gene sounds quite
convincing.
 
Belgium and Germany are still managing to produce some wonderful
Buckfasts and Carniolans, as well as B/C crosses with highly desirable
temperaments.
 
Madeleine