Bee buzzing signalise a coming Visitor

Hello fellow beekeepers and sweet honey lovers. 

Bytheway, does anyone have to mention that honey is sweet or honey obviously means sweet? 

Who knows? Me and You!

Beekeeping has been around for centuries, lots of stories told about bees and tons of honey eaten. In our community and Uganda, we have a beliefs associated with bees and we are going to look at one of the commonest.

A bee buzzing around a member of family

This is so common and widely known by people in various communities of Uganda that whenever a bee buzzes around a family member for several minutes usually for 30minutes it indicates that a special visitor is coming to that home for a visit. Often the visitor a long time no see person!

And this sign of a buzzing bee sometimes can last for two days before the visitor come. I cannot verify the validity of this belief though because it is not common and sometimes it is just a coincidence that a bee buzzes and a visitor come after.

Usually bees’ buzzes around people’s fingers while at home and working with water and this indicates that the bees are looking for water. At home when I see bees coming to me while I am washing utensils or washing clothes especially during the dry season, I just know that the trough where I put water for my bees is empty; therefore I just get water and fill it. But when bees are looking for water, they come in numbers of more than two bees at a time. And if it is signaling for a visitor, it is usually one and buzzes around the head and hears!

Bees are indeed wonderful insects – see one come to you to deliver a message that I am coming very soon to visit you.  

Bees keep buzzing.

Crossed Comb building in Topbars

How to avoid crossed comb building in Top bar hives?

Hello beekeepers, thank you very much for preserving bees and helping them to live happily as we enjoy their sweet honey.

Today we are going to solve a common problem to most of the beekeepers that are moving from log hives or fixed comb hives into movable comb hives.

Many beekeepers complain about crossed comb building in Kenyan Top bar Hive being a common problem. Well this is something very simple to manage and control.

Crossed comb building is when bees build combs across the bars instead of building each comb on a separate bar as designed. Usually bees crossed comb building is when bees build one comb on two or more bars.

 The following should be noted;

1. The width of bars.

The bars should strictly 3.2cm or 32mm wide. This was happily measured by our predecessors so; we just have to follow the principle.

2. Regular supervision is also very important whereby a new colony can easily build the combs in a wrong direction. Therefore when you supervise them before they build very many big combs, you can easily break the small white combs and align them correctly.

3. Repair/ clean bars. Whenever you open your beehive, make sure you scrap off all the propolis bees used to glue the bars. This will maintain the width of the bars.

4. Starter strips are also recommended for example you may use propolis or beeswax on the bars following the line you wish the bees to follow while building combs. This can avoid crossed comb in top bars. Take an example when a grooved bar is used, you can melt beeswax and pour it in the groove on the bar and when it cools, it stays there and when bees colonise the hive, they will start building combs following them.

5. Avoid hanging a beehive in a slanting position. The bees always maintain a vertical comb building position. If a beehive is slanting at an angle which is not right, the bees will not adjust to that angle but instead they will build combs following their own directions and angles.

6. Avoid leaving broken and destroyed combs in the hive which will act as barriers when bees are working. This is very common with brown combs are hard and bees cannot easily chew and repair them.

7. Maintain equal sizes of bars. Make sure that the side of bars facing inside the hive is level. This doesn’t matter whether you are using V-shaped, U-shaped, Block- shaped of grooved bars so long the sizes are equal.

Yes, beekeeping is fun, watch your bees build combs and find out why they are building them wrongly from the order you wished them to follow. I recommend breaking the combs when they are still empty, new and soft, and put them in the right position.

Careful breeding programme leads to low rates of absconding and improve gentleness of bees.

Using queen excluder helps to prevent absconding of newly installed bees, and trait selections.

Contributed by Brother williams

If you can keep the bees in a hive long enough for the queen to produce some brood, the bees almost always stay with the
brood - if it is in the larval stage. Larvae produce a pheromone known as
"juvenile pheromone" - sometimes referred to as "hormone"than pheromone. It is this pheromone that causes the colony to stay with the hive. The pheromone is not produced in sufficient amount by bees in the egg stage, and is not produced by bees in the pupal stage, so it is necessary to have
larvae present in the hive to hold the bees there.

When I catch a swarm, I take a piece of equipment called a "queen excluder", and cover the entrance to the hive, making sure the bees cannot leave the hive through other openings. This allows workers to forage freely, but will not let the queen - or drones - leave the hive.

This will keep the queen in the hive long enough to produce brood, which will help in keeping the colony in the hive. With the African bee, there is a characteristic of absconding as a survival mechanism. Although African bees do store surplus honey that may be used by the colony for food during times of drought or when there are no good sources of nectar available, the tendency of the African bee when confronted with a period of dearth is to simply leave the hive and find a more suitable area for foraging.

To ease this tendency would require a careful breeding program selecting stock that has lower absconding rates, then line-breeding these genetic lines for several honeybee-generations. The desired tendency (lower rate of absconding) may prove to be "recessive", and may have to be
continually selected in each breeding-generation.

This is the case with defensive behavior. Gentleness can be achieved through careful breeding programs, but is lost in the very first out-cross using non-selected stock;
it is a very recessive trait. Using a queen excluder is the simplest method
of handling this issue.

Do bees build brown combs?

How do combs become brown and stain honey?
Contributed by Brother Williams.

He says,
Honey will absorb both color and flavor from the comb it is stored in.
Bees that forage on the same blooms, but store the nectar/honey in different comb (light, freshly produced wax versus dark, old comb) will seemingly produce honey from two different sources.

This is not the case, as the honey in the dark comb will become darker by absorbing some of the stain from the old comb. Along with this color change comes a taste change as well. Old, dark colored comb has very little wax in it. It is dark because it has been used as brood-comb for several generations of brood.

When the bee is in the larval stage it goes through 6 stages of molt, where the larval skin is shed. after the new bee emerges following pupation, the nurse bees begin cleaning the now unoccupied cell to prepare it for the queen to use again to lay an egg in. The "cleaner bee" can only remove 3 - 4 of the molted shed-skins, so to keep the diameter of the cell at a size that is usable by the queen, the worker bees remove wax, rather than the molted skins.

This causes the comb to appear a little darker in color with each successive generation of brood that is produced in the comb,eventually becoming almost black. This is one reason for an 'off" taste in the honey. It was stored in cells that were lined with , essentially, dead bee-skins.

Eventually the cells will become unusable due to their ever-decreasing diameter. The cells will lose their shape-definition, and although the outside of the cell will still appear hexagonal, the inside will be round, with no definition to hexagonal angles.

Do bees build brown combs?

How do combs become brown and stain honey?
Contributed by Brother Williams.

He says,
Honey will absorb both color and flavor from the comb it is stored in.
Bees that forage on the same blooms, but store the nectar/honey in different comb (light, freshly produced wax versus dark, old comb) will seemingly produce honey from two different sources.

This is not the case, as the honey in the dark comb will become darker by absorbing some of the stain from the old comb. Along with this color change comes a taste change as well. Old, dark colored comb has very little wax in it. It is dark because it has been used as brood-comb for several generations of brood.

When the bee is in the larval stage it goes through 6 stages of molt, where the larval skin is shed. after the new bee emerges following pupation, the nurse bees begin cleaning the now unoccupied cell to prepare it for the queen to use again to lay an egg in. The "cleaner bee" can only remove 3 - 4 of the molted shed-skins, so to keep the diameter of the cell at a size that is usable by the queen, the worker bees remove wax, rather than the molted skins.

This causes the comb to appear a little darker in color with each successive generation of brood that is produced in the comb,eventually becoming almost black. This is one reason for an 'off" taste in the honey. It was stored in cells that were lined with , essentially, dead bee-skins.

Eventually the cells will become unusable due to their ever-decreasing diameter. The cells will lose their shape-definition, and although the outside of the cell will still appear hexagonal, the inside will be round, with no definition to hexagonal angles.

No more absconding

African bees are known for absconding, this is a very big problem in beekeeping becuase bees need time in a beehive before becoming productive.
Of course there are various causes of absconding such as poor hive condition, poor hive management, limited nectar sources, hash environment conditions, limited space in the hive and many others.

African bees are funny, they don't value the time and care we give them; they just abscond anytime they want.

A few days ago, i captured a big swarm which was desperately hanging on a tree and installed it in a new hive. Immediately i supplied the bees with sugar syrup as first aid relief and to show caring on them.

But just after two days even before eating all the syrup, they absconded and this is one of the reasons why we can't easily buy packed bees in uganda and install them in hives like beekeepers do in USA and Europe: our bees abscond so easily!

Therefore the best way to control absconding after installing the bees is to cage the queen but again it is not easy to see the queen especially in a big swarm. And when you try to turn the bees around in search for a queen, again the queen may escape in the process and fly away causing all bees to follow her leaving the hive empty!

I have got an idea of making a net sack using old mosquito nets. This net will help to wrap around the hive after installing the bees for a period of more than a week or two in order to force the bees to get used to their new home.

I have chosen the net because it will allow good air circulation though the bees will not be able to fly but i will be providing them with sugar syrup which will stimulate their enzymes to produce wax and build combs which will allow the queen lay eggs. I think when these bees have something in place, they will less likely to abscond.

Using a queen excluder could be another solution. With this, the workers can fly out freely in search for nectar and learning about the environment. It's very unfortunate we don't use queen excluders in our KTB hives.

Normally african bees are used to moving themselves into a new hive at their own convinience.

It sucks to find newly installed bees have left the hive...without valueing the effort and care you spent on them.

Manipulate African Successfully

5 steps to manipulate successfully with African bees

African bees are known for their aggressive and defensive characters which make most beekeepers fear and hate them. Of honey they produce is for their babies and food during scarcity yet human being go in to grab it!  Fortunately these creatures were endowed with bullets (stings) which they use to defend their treasures.

Well, African bees are calm and can be manipulated successfully when you follow the following steps.

1.       Smoke yourself

Bees use their antennas to sense and detect everything including their enemies. And bees have the ability of detecting moisture on human body in form of sweat, and eyes drops. Therefore to obstruct bees from feeling our smell/odour and moisture from our bodies, we shouldn't use perfumes while going in bees, shouldn't be sweaty because bees will detect you easily.

When you are ready to work with bees, after lighting your smoker, smoke your whole body with a lot of smoke to cover yourself with smoke than perfume and odour.

2.       Smoke after dressing

After the first step up of smoking yourself, now you can dress your beesuit or jacket and smoke it as you did before dressing. This gives double protection and the bees can't easily detect you even when you don't puff smoke on yourself next time as you manipulate.

3.      Carry the hive

When you approach the hive, smoke around the entrance as usual and cover the entrances. Now carry the hive from it's original location into a new convenient location where there is a good shade and a hide away from the original hive location. Please make sure you replace the old location where you get the hive from which an empty hive box to catch and collect bees that come back from foraging and the bees that fly from the hive you are manipulating for a temporary period of time. After working with the hive, it will be carried back to its original location and smoke bees that have collected in the temporary hive to fly back into their original hive.

4.      Smoke the hive

Smoke calmly on the bees and do allow them to escape and settle and one point normally on one end.

5.       Work gently

Gentleness is very important while working with African bees because African bees are very sensitive to noise, therefore too much hitting on the hive body should be avoid. When working with bees, you should show a highest degree of calmness. Normally when you approach and smoke at the bees for the first time, bees tend to buzz heavy which sometimes force beekeepers to hit the hive in hurry and fear of bees but when you smoke at them and they buzz heavily, please slow down the rate of puffing until they also cool down.

When you follow the steps mentioned about, you will never have trouble working with African bees and this is the practice that we use to make bees become flies…..and we work with light jackets and sometimes without any protective clothes but with smoke.

But African bees are very aggressive and they have ever killed goats and cows and human beings. therefore we can't rule this out.