Saturday, October 15, 2005
Enemies of the Honey Bee
Hardy though the honey bee is, she has many enemies. I've spent the day tackling five of them:
Enemy 1: Woodpeckers Requires a giant chicken wire, beehive tea cosy, to keep them from their dastardly pecking.
Enemy 2: Mice Each hive needs a metal strip across the entrance with holes too small for mice, who otherwise can squash their skulls amazingly flat to get in.
Enemy 3: Varroa This is like the bee plague. It's a mite that thrives on bees and their larvae, destroying whole colonies. It merits all manner of expensive treatments. I picked a fairly simple technique, dropping impregnated Apistan strips into each hive.
Enemy 4: Nosema This is more like bee-flu. Each hive got a little winter sugar syrup, to build them up, and it had to have a little fumidil dissolved in it, to keep them safe.
Enemy 5: Wax Moth This is an evil moth that eats the dry combs, when they are off the hive for winter. To keep them out, I filled the empty space between the combs with sulphur dioxide (heavier than air), and then used clingfilm to seal them.
With all this cost and effort, I find it astonishing that pro-beekeepers can put honey on the shelves of Tesco for less than £2/lb. This is the end of my second season, and I'm still running at around £10 a jar.
Hardy though the honey bee is, she has many enemies. I've spent the day tackling five of them:
Enemy 1: Woodpeckers Requires a giant chicken wire, beehive tea cosy, to keep them from their dastardly pecking.
Enemy 2: Mice Each hive needs a metal strip across the entrance with holes too small for mice, who otherwise can squash their skulls amazingly flat to get in.
Enemy 3: Varroa This is like the bee plague. It's a mite that thrives on bees and their larvae, destroying whole colonies. It merits all manner of expensive treatments. I picked a fairly simple technique, dropping impregnated Apistan strips into each hive.
Enemy 4: Nosema This is more like bee-flu. Each hive got a little winter sugar syrup, to build them up, and it had to have a little fumidil dissolved in it, to keep them safe.
Enemy 5: Wax Moth This is an evil moth that eats the dry combs, when they are off the hive for winter. To keep them out, I filled the empty space between the combs with sulphur dioxide (heavier than air), and then used clingfilm to seal them.
With all this cost and effort, I find it astonishing that pro-beekeepers can put honey on the shelves of Tesco for less than £2/lb. This is the end of my second season, and I'm still running at around £10 a jar.
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