Beekeeper’s Notes September 2017: Marauding Wasps, Honey And A Lot Going On

Published on: 1 Sep, 2017
Updated on: 13 Sep, 2017

Hugh Coakley keeps bees in Worplesdon. He talks about why wasps are so intrusive in late summer and why the bees get defensive. And the jobs that need doing ……..

It’s a busy time of year for everybody including the poor old wasp.

Throughout the rest of the year, you hardly notice them. Then suddenly, they’re there at every turn. Buzzing you in the garden if you are eating, sniffing around rotting fruit and hanging around beehive entrances just begging for an opportunity to sneak in and rob the honey.

Wasps hunt ants, caterpillars and so on in the spring and summer to feed the growing larvae in their nest. In return, the larvae excrete a sticky substance to reward the worker wasps.

But at this time of year, the wasp’s nest is changing. The queen has stopped laying, no more larvae and no more lovely sweet rewards from the grateful larvae. So they are desperate and will go for anything sweet to feed themselves. It won’t last long though. Only the hibernating queens will survive through the winter.

The bees themselves look to me to be quite defensive now. I guess that with their winter stores in place, they are nervous of a robbing attack by wasps and even other bees.

Bees interrogating a possible intruder like nervous border guards.

Bees robbing another, generally weaker, hive is a fearsome sight. It happened to me once where I hadn’t noticed a couple of small holes in a box that I had inherited. Once they detect ‘free’ honey, they go into a robbing frenzy. Frightening to see and very difficult to stop once started.

Prevention is very definitely better than the cure of fighting mad bees.

Honey bee queens are still laying, though reduced from its peak. It is great to still see a strongly laid frame full of brood. A sign of a good strong colony with brood laid ‘wall to wall’.

A lovely frame with ‘wall to wall’ brood. You can see the marked queen at the top of the frame and to the right. You can also see my camera strap. I don’t claim to be a David Bailey.

And this is the queen that laid that full frame

Now is the time for varroa mite treatment. A relatively new and popular treatment is a proprietary method called MAQS. Strips of material treated in formic acid which leaches out into the hive over a week.

Bee with deformed wing virus (DWV). See the stunted wings. They tend to have other abnormalities and don’t survive long. The virus is transmitted by the varroa mite and is said to be the “single greatest factor in the decimation of bee colonies worldwide”. No camera strap.

MAQS treatment with formic acid. Applied after honey has been harvested. The treatment claims to kill the varroa mite in the hive including within the capped brood.

On top of all that, there’s the honey extraction. Reasonable crop this year for me which is pleasing. Phew!