This week P6/7 were taking their turn to clean the feeder for the bees and to clean the floor of the bee hive.

Next week we will be treating the hive for varroa mites and we need the floor to be perfectly clean so that we can count how many mites fall in a week.

 

 

we fed the bees a sugar solution made of 1kg sugar and 1 litre of water.

 

It has been very wet recently so they will not have had much food from the flowers!

This morning we removed the board from the bottom of the bee hive to inspect for varroa mites.

This is how the board looked!

 

The varroa mites are very small but they have a distinctive shape and little legs which poke out the front.

In total, we counted about 30, which over a week makes for a daily drop of less than 5.

This is okay, however, we will still give them a treatment of “Apiguard” and count the amount of mites that drop then.

This morning we took the bottom of the hive out and cleaned it. We then drew a grid on it and then covered it with a layer of vaseline.

We have put it back into the hive for 24 hours. As the drone bees hatch, the varroa mites which suck their blood will fall to the bottom and stick to the vaseline. We will then count how many there are to find our “daily drop rate”. 

If this goes above a certain amount we then have to treat the bees.

 

The only problem is that the treatment only kills about 97% of varroa mites!

We will have to continually do this forever!

Today P6/7 were cleaning the bee feeder and making food for the bees.

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They mixed together 1kg of sugar with 1 litre of water.

 

The bees will only take about 2 days to eat all of this food and then turn it into wax or a watery honey for them to feed.

In the third video, we open the box called the brood box. This is where the eggs and pollen will be stored and this is where the queen lives. Watch out for Mr McMullan getting stung at the end!

Finally, Mrs Watson is inspecting the brood box.

NOTICE – MRS WATSON DIDN’T ZIP UP HER BEE SUIT – AMATEUR MISTAKE ALARM!

she ended up with bees inside her netting and was lucky not to get stung on the face!

https://vimeo.com/uploadToday after school, Mrs Watson and Mr McMullan inspected the hive and we both got stung!!!

 

The first video shows us smoking the bees to make them eat honey. This means they are less likely to sting you.

The second video shows us inspecting the top box which is called a super. There are no eggs in this box, it is just a place to store honey.

https://vimeo.com/upload

https://vimeo.com/upload

 

Here is also some pictures of larvae – they look like little worms.

 

Welcome to the Buzzing about bees blog! Here you will find all the information we have gathered so far about the bees and how they are progressing.

 

Firstly, here are some links to videos we have made so far about the bees.

 

 

John is our local beekeeping expert and he is guiding us through the process of looking after and growing the bee hive. His advice and expertise are invaluable and he is able to spot the queen among a frame of 1,000 bees!

 

 

Important events so far

• we have found the queen and she is laying eggs! (see picture below)
• the bees have filled up the first box with eggs and honey, so we have added another box called a “super” on top to give them more space.
• Some of the male bees have a disease called “deformed wing virus”! This means that their wings aren’t fully formed and the bees cannot fly. This is caused by a parasite called the varroa mite. Which exists in almost every bee hive in the world. We will monitor this and perform a treatment at some point! (see picture below)
• In September and October we will feed this bees a sugar syrup to get them strong enough to survive the winter.

 

 

the queen is on the right, she is longer and pointier than the other bees.

A male bee with Deformed wing virus.

 

here is a varroa mite feeding on a bee and a microscope picture of one. If a bee was the size of a human, the varroa mite would be the size of a football!

 

If you want to read more about them, here is a wikipedia page with lots of information

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor

 

Over the next few weeks look out for

• Children cleaning the floor of the hive and they performing a varroa mite count to see if treatment is needed.
• John is coming back to help us mark the queen with a white dot so she is easier to find.
• Children making up sugar syrup to feed the bees and cleaning the bee feeder, which is getting sticky and messy!

 

 

 

 

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