| Apiary Visit to Dennis Chambers 6 June 2010 |
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Seasonal Bee Inspector Stewart Beattie declared them the best tempered bees he had ever encountered. Dennis does not wear gloves and, although he puts a veil on, he usually keeps it rolled up on top of his head. “I can see the bees better” he says!
Dennis says there was a time when bees were bad tempered “...but that got better when the Italian was bred out of them.” After British bees had been decimated by ‘Isle of Wight’ Disease in the first quarter of the 20th century there was widespread re- stocking with Italian bees. Whilst these proved a pleasure to handle at first, their hybrid progeny were often extremely bad tempered, and it took many generations to breed this out.
Historically there have been few beekeepers in Shap and, as Dennis never brings in ‘foreign’ queens, his colonies appear to be pure-bred English black bees. And black is what they truly are – even the queens, which In many stocks are lighter than workers, are almost jet black.
He doesn’t use cover cloths, and his bees stay calmly on the top of the frames whilst he slowly inspects them. It seems certain that Dennis’s smooth, slow movements contribute to keeping the bees calm. Someone commented that seeing him handle his bees was a bit like watching Tai Chi!
He had been feeding his colonies, which were generally weak coming out of winter and were a bit slow building up. He had found some soiling of frames, possibly owing to dysentery induced by Nosema apis, though being unable to go out to void faeces because of enforced confinement to the hive for long periods during the severe winter could also have been the cause. Whatever the reason, the bees are now recovering and Dennis is moving them onto new combs. He is doing this by putting the queens into new brood boxes, above the old brood boxes, separated by a queen excluder. When all the brood have hatched out in the old brood boxes he will remove them and sterilise the frames using acetic acid.
In one hive we removed some drone brood built in brace comb on the bottom of some brood frames. This was removed and examined for varroa mites, but thankfully none were found.
A small colony building up in a nucleus hive provided an opportunity for one of our novice members to get some experience of handling bees, which will come in handy when she gets some bees of her own in the near future.
All in all the meeting provided an object lesson in handling bees, in a non-flashy way, by a quiet, modest master of the craft.
Afterwards we all went into the local pub for refreshments and a good chat. And half an hour later it rained heavily; perfect timing!
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 July 2010 22:08 |
Our last visit was to Liz Skelton, a new beekeeper. Dennis is at the opposite end of the scale, having kept bees for a mere 58 years. His apiary is in the garden of his house at Shap, so temperament is most important. Thankfully his bees are extremely well behaved. Seasonal Bee Inspector Stewart Beattie declared them the best tempered bees he had ever encountered.
