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Tag: honey bees

  • Nutripolen beekeepers

    Beehives for raising queens

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    Nutripolen derives from the Spanish words nutritivo meaning nutritious and polen, which means pollen.

    We paid a visit to Laura, Jose Manuel and Jose who willingly showed us their beehives and related activities. First, we were invited to see their pollen, which the honey bees bring back on their bodies to the beehive when they have been pollinating flowers. Looking at the pollen, we could see a collection of mostly yellow and orange grains. Afterwards, they showed us how they sieve the pollen in a machine before they deep-freeze it such that it will preserve its characteristics for a long time. Besides pollen, Nutripolen also sells honey from Robinia pseoudoacacia, Eucalyptus and Erica. Their products are marketed under the name Morga and they sell them directly from their house and in specialised shops.

    Jose Manuel and his wife Laura have been beekeepers for about 30 years, while Laura’s mother started even earlier. Going outside, we were shown their beehives, all of which looked quite small compared to the beehives we were using at the introductory course for beekeepers in Norway. Looking inside the beehives, it seemed that they only consisted of a structure called honey super, that is 10 vertical boards where the worker bees store nectar in honeycombs. Obviously, there are many ways to construct a beehive.

    All of the bees were of the race Apis mellifera iberiensis and they had been actively bred to be be peaceful, produce lots of honey, taking care of larvae and being healthy. In order to demonstrate their peacefulness, Jose put the palm of his hand on top of the bees and my guide did the same without being stung.

    About 10 years ago, a man from Mexico held a course about breeding queen bees in this area, but now only Nutripolen is following what he taught. In addition to the «normal» beehives, they also had beehives where they were breeding queen bees. They were using a structure which resembled a Jenter kit. Here, the queen will lay eggs, but the beekeepers will feed the larvae with royal jelly such that the larvae will be turned into queens. They also told my guide that the larvae always have to face up such that they can breathe. In general, there is a shortage of queen bees, meaning that Nutripolen sells their queen bees to other beekeepers.

    They also showed us tiny boxes having, say, a volume of 1 litre, inside of which they were also raising queen bees. However, they showed us a queen cup, which had certainly been made by the worker bees themselves.

    Unfortunately, the Asian predatory wasp has entered Spain and it is a great threat to both honey bees because they kill them. In order to fight the wasps, Nutripolen uses a solution originating in Korea: catch some of them live, cut off the two rear legs, which the wasps only use for cleaning themselves, put some honey mixed with poison on their bodies and release them. The wasps will return to their nests, bringing the poison back as well.

    The wasps build huge nests, but unfortunately they are located in trees covered by foliage and they also build new nests every year, making it difficult to find them.

    Below the beehives, Nutripolen had planted a small vineyard for making txakoli. Some years from now, maybe they can serve their customers txakoli with honey and pollen.

  • Beekeeping for beginners

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    Having thought some time about learning about beekeeping, I joined a beginners’ course,  run by the beekeepers’ association in Lier, Røyken and Hurum, about 15 minutes drive from where I live.

    The course was mainly hands-on and having arrived at the top of an apple orchard, an old-timer who had been doing beekeeping for ages, wished me welcome. While I and the other “students” used at least some protective clothing, he did so only when the bees were really angry, which fortunately happened seldom.

    The course took  place at an apiary , which consisted of 5 beehives  in a row. Inside the beehives, groups of honeybees were living, consisting of queen bees , worker bees   and drones . While the worker bees, who are all female, really live up to their name, the drones are males and their only purpose is to mate with the queen bee. While our teacher could distinguish between  drones and worker bees at once, I still need some practice before I can do the same. Mostly, we only checked the upper part of each beehive, each of which is called a Langstroth hive  after the inventor. The upper part is called honey super and it consists of 10 vertical boards where the worker bees store nectar in honeycombs. Actually, the frames supported artificial honeycombs on which the honeybees would build cells consisting of beeswax. The colour of the honeycombs varied from light yellow to dark brown and our instructor could see just from the colour what the bees had been eating, e.g. pollen.

    Below the honey super, a queen excluder , consisting of a metal grid, impeded the queen bee from entering because she’s larger than the other bees. Below, the brood box was located. There, the brood, consisting of eggs, larvae and pupae together with the queen who is the mother of all of them and some worker bees, live. Lifting up a frame in the brood, we could sometimes notice eggs inside the hexagonal cells and sometimes larvae. I guess the pupa stage occurs after the worker bees have sealed the cells shut. Then, after about three weeks, a new honey bee will be born. Besides, we could also see worker bees who had lowered most of their upper bodies into the cells, feeding the larvae.

    At the base of the beehives, there was an opening through which the honey bees could enter and exit and our experienced instructor had also placed some kind of fine netting below the opening in order to let the honey bees avoid landing on the ground if they missed it. In nice weather they were very active, exiting the beehives in order to collect pollen and nectar amd we could sometimes see that they had two yellow balls of pollen, one on each side of their body, when they returned. An important subject among the more experienced beekeepers, who were also present at the course, was which type of plant the honey bees were visiting even though they couldn’t do anything about it because the beehives should stay in the same place.

    Since the health of the bees in each beehive was quite variable, we were also shown how to mate strong honey bees with weak ones. If I don’t remember wrongly, the honey super of the weak honey bees was left exposed. Then, a sheet of thin paper was laid on top and perforated with a knife. Finally, the honey super of the strong bees was laid on top of the sheet of paper and various types of lids were laid on the top of the hive in order to protect the honey bees against cold and moisture. Leaving the beehive in peace, the honey bees would start eating the paper at the holes and when we returned one week later, the sheet of paper was in tatters.

    We were also shown how to identify the queen bee by her bigger size, then grabbing her carefully by her wings and putting her into a plastic cylinder with a grid at one end. Then, inserting a piston carefully into the cylinder, the queen bee would be forced towards the grid through which the instructor used a a pen to mark the queen bee with a dot of a bright colour. Each year, the queen bees are marked with different colours such that the beekeepers can identify their age.

    Sometimes, a queen bee was deemed to be unsuitable, she disappeared or she died. Anyway, she had to be replaced by another one. Then, a new queen bee together with a small group of worker bees were put in a small plastic cage with lots of holes and, if applicable, the old queen bee was caught and finished off. Finally, the plastic cage was suspended between two of the frames in the honey super and the beehive was closed. After 3-4 days, the instructor would return and release the new queen bee and the worker bees from the small cage. He told us that the worker bees needed to get to know the smell of the queen bee before they could accept her, else they could kill her.

    In August, it was time to extract honey from the honey super. Then, one frame at a time was lifted out of the beehive and if it weighed, say, more than 2 kilogrammes, the bees were swept carefully away by means of a brush and the empty frame was inserted into an empty honey super. This procedure was repeated until all the frames with honey had been extracted from the beehive.

    In fact, the bees eat honey and in order to let them survive winter, they were given a mixture of sugar and water. Besides, depending on the health of the bees, a number of frames were removed from the honey super and replaced with wooden boxes of the same size. A strong bee colony would be left with, say, 8 frames, while  weak ones were left with 6 or 7.

    The course started in April and the bees were left to hibernate in September. We had weekly meetings all the time and I really liked this course. I’ve still not started beekeeping due mainly to that I live in a block of flats in a town and I don’t know where to place the beehives. In addition, our instructor advised us to read about beekeeping and having a long, and maybe cold winter to look forward to, it should be plenty of time to read about those little guys and how to keep them as domestic animals.

  • Jan-Thore Riseng – beekeeper

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    I went recently to the local farmers’ market in order to buy products directly from the producers where I met Jan-Thore Riseng, a beekeeper who lives a short distance from me. Having presented the purpose of slow pix, he willingly accepted to show me his bee hives and how he’s working with honey bees. Jan-Thore lives in the countryside in Sande south of Drammen, and having arrived at his place, we went to a set of bee hives close to his house. Wearing a jacket with an integrated hood and net to cover the face, he opened his bee hives and inspected them one by one. First, he took off the lid, then he applied a dash of smoke to the honey bees, which he called knocking on the door, but which is used to calm the bees.  Using a tool, he gently lifted the vertical frames in the hive, most of them full of bees. Having a trained gaze, he could immediately recognise the health of the bees, their gender and so on, while I just saw lots of insects crowded together. In fact, beekeeping is a huge subject and all beekeepers need to cooperate with others, learn from experts, and so on. Jan-Thore started beekeeping in 2002 when he was taught by an elderly beekeeper how to do this interesting and useful activity.

    Like all domestic animals, pedigree is extremely important in beekeeping and honey bees are bred in order to obtain the following characteristics:

    • Gentleness
    • Good brood pattern (the honey bees have to take good care of their young)
    • Rapid spring build up (the honey bees should start producing honey when spring arrives)
    • Resistance toward pests and disease
    • Minimal swarming (the bees shall not escape from the hive in order to make a new colony)
    • Good honey production

    The honey bees in the hive are mostly females, who are workers, while the males have only one task: mate with the queen. Jan-Thore showed me some of his queens, being more than twice the size of the workers, and having a bright spot on their heads. The spots were colour-coded such that he could know how old they are at a glance. Since the queens only live 3-4 years, he’s breeding new ones and even has some for sale.

    Looking at the frames, the were almost covered by bees, but the honeycomb base, a plate made of wax in order to give the bees a foundation on which they can build the honeycomb was easily visible. Parts of the honeycomb base were covered with honeycomb, a mass of hexagonal cells built by the honey bees. Some of the cells were covered completely, while other ones were open and it was possible to see tiny larvae inside. Some honey bees had moved head first into the cells, probably to feed the larvae. The colour of the honeycomb varied from yellow to brown and Jan-Thore said it was caused by different types of pollen collected by the honey bees. The pollen is used as food for the larvae, while the nectar is transformed to honey and used as food by the bees.

    Jan-Thore keeps his honey bees near fields in the county of Vestfold where he lives, renting out his hives to local farmers. In autumn, he brings his hives to Nissedal in the county of Telemark in order to let the honey bees pollinate heather and create heather honey, a delicacy in Norway.

    Only a few of us can be beekeepers, but there are many cooperatives who let everyone adopt a bee hive for a small charge. Here is one example where you pay 150 NOK a year. Other possibilities certainly exist.