Management Drawing 8

ZEST has the potential to reduce or eliminate bee disease 

Traditional hive apiary management is much more intensive than for a ZEST. 

It becomes evident that ZEST colonies do not take up much time compared to traditional hives. ZEST’s have plenty of room unrestricted by a queen excluder. They are able to incrementally expand. They tend to build from the top down, starting where it is warmer. They then move sideways in both directions and down. They tend to store honey at each end of the brood nest and below it. The queens had plenty of room to lay eggs and are disinclined to swarm. The (insulated) division boards are supplied and moved to accommodate the size of the colony and to make the colony compact, but not over crowded. The division boards are insulated on the side away from the colony which is especially useful in the winter to contain the colonies heat. Traditional wood hives need weekly split inspections looking for queen cells at the bottom of the frames in the top brood chamber. If none are seen frames of honey from the top brood box can be put above the excluder in the honey supers. (For flexibility only brood size boxes and frames need be deployed, but a strong back is needed. Removing frames that had clearly been designated by the bees for honey and replacing them with a new frame that the queen may get an opportunity to lay in allows brood box congestion to be reduced and with it the tendency to swarm. Replacing the frames also gives an opportunity to put in a drone/ varroa trap used to cull varroa. This is the most effective technical method of reducing the varroa population in a traditional wood hive. It involves the insertion of a frame without any foundation in the top brood box at the third frame position in from one side. Presented with such a blank frame in a traditional hive in which all the foundation is worker, the bees draw down drone comb. This is then cut out when sealed, culling the varroa contained within it. Varroa have 10-12 times greater tendency to lay eggs in drone cells than worker, because the drone has a longer pupation period, which allows the Varroa longer to mature. This varroa/drone trapping could be done several times in a year until the drone cell making season has passed. The additional merit of such a plan is that the bees do not litter drone comb so readily about the hive amongst worker comb on worker foundation. The traditional method of extracting honey at a small scale from standard hives is by radial or tangential spinning of frames after uncapping, which preserves the frame and comb for reuse. The disadvantages of this method of extraction are: 1. It is messy and can lead to a divorce. 2. The frames when reused can transfer disease. 3. The cost of the extractor is high. The local bee keeping association’s extractor is always busy when you need it so the tendency is for everyone to buy one. 4. Unless the frames are carefully and evenly balanced the machine tries to leap about the kitchen, breaking the crockery. 5. Granulated honey is fed back to the bees which may cause robbing and disease transfer. 6. Three site visits are needed, which are to install the Porter bee escapes, to take the honey and finally to return the wet frames to the bees. The advantage of honey extraction from re-usable comb is that the bee’s time and energy is saved by re-using the comb. This allows them to collect more honey, putting it directly into already drawn out honeycomb, but is now frowned upon due to the potential to transmit disease. But this is all history. The ZEST has no such management plan available, because:- 1. They cannot be split inspected. 2. They have not (so far) made queen cells that were not induced by blundering. Taking off a nucleus and accidently bringing away the queen will do it of course. 3. The ZEST bees do what they want and need to in a free and unrestricted manner. This does not seem to include swarming. Why should it. ZEST management does have the merits of:- A. Eliminating chemicals, pathogens, pests and 99% of all known germs such as EFB, AFB and wax moth. It can also drastically reduce varroa beyond the conventional 80% for a shook swarm and cull, but without the cull. These maladies would normally be carried through the winter in the brood, comb, wax, honey, pollen and on the bees. B. Eliminates granulated honey (by melting) and pollen blocks blocking the queen laying eggs in the spring. C. At season middle and end fresh worker comb will be built. This is ready for the queen to lay eggs in the following year after the food has been eaten. D. Each ZEST can have 2 colonies through the winter giving normally unavailable options in the spring. E. Stripping the colony of honey (which may granulate) to be replaced with Ambrosia, which will not. The method is graphically described in Drawing 8 as follows:- 1. At end of July after the honey has been taken close off 6 of the 8 side bee entries. This is a prelude to making an artificial swarm and swarm residue that are orientated away from each other. 2. At the end of July make an artificial swarm formed with the old queen on a frame of eggs. When this frame of eggs is sealed it is culled together with most of the varroa that was on the adult (flying) bees. 3. The artificial swarm residue of brood and nurse bees is positioned at the “other” end of the ZEST (with entry shut right down to prevent robbing) which then has a ripe bred queen cell added for mating (or an already mini-nuke mated and laying queen which has greater success). When the new queen is hatched, mated and starts to lay eggs about 2 weeks later the first sealed brood frame can also be culled together with its varroa, which after a period of no brood will be many. The original brood will by then have hatched so no brood is lost, but used to make another colony with a new queen. 4. Both the new and old colonies are heavily fed with Ambrosia after the honey has been taken at the end of July as usual. Thymol can be added to the feed to further cleanse fungus, mould and adult varroa. 5. The ZEST can then carry 2 colonies throughout the winter. The first with the old queen and the second with the new one. These are each housed on 6 or 7 ZEST frames at each end of the ZEST with a void between them formed by 2 insulated partitions. This gives a “no-mans land” between them which has access to outside, but not to each other. 6. In the spring the old queen can be removed and the two overwintered colonies united around the new queen. This gets off to a good, strong start and be ready to take advantage of an early spring flow. If one queen fails during the winter the two colonies can still be united around the surviving queen. Alternatively the old queen and its colony, if it does not fail, can be used to seed a new ZEST elsewhere. The ZEST seems an entirely appropriate vehicle for an artificial swarm closely followed by shook swarms/varroa traps in which the first frame of eggs in each, when sealed, are culled to eliminate any remaining varroa. The only attention the ZEST hive management system needs is to move the insulated division boards, varroa treatment and the taking of surplus honey at the end of or during the year. It is important that the ZEST volume is sufficient to ensure that the colony is not overcrowded which will cause swarming, but nor is it so roomy that the colony temperature cannot be maintained sufficiently to gain and maintain critical mass. The volume in the winter should be reduced as far as possible and just one access slot be allowed. If the correct volume is maintained in summer and the queen is young then there is little fear of swarming. “Letalone” bee keeping is then an appropriate management system. It is hard for an experienced beekeeper to shake off the tendency to manage weekly, which is often to the detriment of the bees and the harvest. ZEST beekeepers can spend more time on the beach. The biggest test for the ZEST hive concept in practical use is the tidiness of the comb on the frames. The moveable frame concept is not negotiable. However inaccurate the comb is on the frames the bees will always defer to gravity. Gravity frames (that always hang vertically on a point support) will work with the bee natural inclination to build vertically. An appropriate frame design must allow the honeycomb to be:- 1. Drawn down parallel to each other at about 38mm apart and not cross from one frame to the next. 2. Drawn off the lowest point of the diameter of the bamboo frame. 3. Drawn down from the starter strips rather than an edge of the bar for the machined frames. 4. Drawn down in the centre of the bar over its entire length? 5. Connected in some way to another comb or the wall, making removal for management difficult? The ZEST was originally intended to be a hive of minimum provision with just one short central starter strip in a wood frame at three levels. The bees however tended to draw the line of the comb across the thickness of the frame horizontal bars after leaving the discipline of the (one) starter strip. Two strips as a minimum became the standard and less provision was a saving too far. The bees were less than absolutely delighted to have their frames separated forcefully and is best avoided by the use of the 2 strips for each wood horizontal bar. Bamboo and plastic do not need starter strips, because the bees will draw the spine of the comb from the lowest point on the bar of the frame. Harvesting Honey and Wax. It soon becomes evident that ZEST colonies do not take up much time compared to traditional hives. ZEST’s have plenty of room unrestricted by a queen excluder, being able to incrementally expand although they tend to build from the top down, starting where it is warmer. They then move sideways in both directions and down. The queen has plenty of room to lay eggs and is unlikely to swarm. The (insulated) division boards are supplied and moved to accommodate the size of the colony. The aim is to make the colony compact, but not over crowded. The division boards are insulated on the side away from the colony which is especially useful in the winter to contain the colonies heat. A honey harvest policy of crush, drain and melt (in the ZEST honey warmer) realistically requires 2 persons to harvest the honey if done on site. The first inspects the frames, looking for brood and the queen. Frames to be harvested are selected and put on the frame stand for brushing off by the harvester who cuts the honey into a wine bucket or a nylon bag inside a honey tub with a tap for taking away. An alternative harvest policy that became preferred was to put frames of honey and bees into the ZEST nucleus box and position the two holes in the floor over the holes in the roof blocks with the benefit of Canadian (traffic cone) escapes inserted. The worker bees escape back to the queen over 2 nights allowing the honey to be taken. A few drones remain to be brushed off. The negative consequences of honey granulating in the hive are minimum since it can be melted at the end of the year in the ZEST honey warmer as at any other time,……or even in the spring. 25 lbs. of granulated (blocking) ivy honey was extracted at the spring clean in 2011 from the first ZEST prototype. 4 Kgs. (ZEST maximum weight to normally be lifted) A goose wing feather easily and quickly sweeps the bees off the comb for inspection or taking the honey. A nylon brush upsets them. This may be, because it carries an electrical charge to which bees will be sensitive. The comb sits in the ZEST comb frame holder on a “Lazy Susan” to free both hands and to permit queen marking. Overwintered nuke expanding onto ZEST collapsable bamboo frames. When the honey is brought home from a ZEST hive it will have none of the disadvantages of conventional extraction. The ZEST method is to use strainer bags inside the collecting buckets, which can be cut up with a stainless steel spade, crushed, hung up and squeezed in a warm room until most of the honey has run out. It does so very quickly if broken up. If you find the honey is dripping off your elbows your technique needs enhancing, but with practice this will improve. Draining the honey This honey will generally be put in jars. When it granulates, as all honey will in time, the jars can be stacked up on battens in the ZEST thermostatically controlled honey warmer to re-melt them. Those that granulate or do not make the grade in some way can also be heated in the honey warmer, cleaned and then sold as runny honey, which will not then re-granulate. Deploying the Honey Warmer Honey will overheat if left too long in a solar extractor whose temperature is not controlled. The ZEST thermostatic honey warmer is strongly recommended as a replacement for solar wax extracting. When the strainer bags are drained of honey as far as far as possible at room temperature, the residue will need to be rammed hard into short nylon stockings and placed in the honey/wax drainer. This comprises a 1 gallon saucepan with holes in its base placed in a 2 gallon bucket inside the ZEST honey warmer box. New stockings are preferred over washed ones……. which are preferred over unwashed ones. This enables the final separation of honey and wax by initially employing a temperature high enough to melt the honey, but not the wax. The honey is poured out of the 2 gallon bucket and put in jars. The double saucepan The remaining honey, wax and assorted dross left in the nylon stockings are then placed in the 1 gallon saucepan (with holes) and then it is placed into the 2 gallon bucket and returned to the honey warmer. The temperature is raised sufficiently to melt the honey first which is drained off. The saucepan and bucket are then returned to the honey warmer and the temperature is raised to wax melting temperature. The hot melted wax will drain and accumulate in the 2 gallon bucket. This is then poured through a “J” cloth supported by a metal sieve. The “J” cloth retains everything that is not honey or wax. This is then discarded. The ZEST thermostatically controlled honey warmer (Drawing 5) is an essential item as it carries out the following duties. 1. Melts up to 64 jars of granulated honey in jars. 2. Melts honey for draining out before raising the temperature and melting the wax as described above. 3. Allows home-made wine in a 4 gallon tub to be warmed to assist fermentation. It has a heating element with a thermostatic controller (under a slatted floor) and can be obtained from Ecostat Unit 20 Beehive Workshops Parkengue Penryn Cornwall TR10 9LX Tel: 01326 378654 Managing Varroa Zest hives do not appear to suffer greatly from varroa and its symptoms such as DWV. During the 2012/13 season none were seen in any of the colonies. This may have been caused by them being accidently overdosed with thymol crystals in the 2013 spring stimulation feed, but which seemed to have done them no harm. Ambient temperature appears to impact on varroa numbers. They seem to increase during cold winters. In hot African countries varroa is “just a mite”. This may be due to the fact that egg to hatch period is extended in cold conditions giving the varroa mite a longer time to mature. The naturally warmer conditions of a ZEST may maintain a shorter egg to hatch period. One experimental ZEST owned by the author is receiving no treatment against varroa to see if it is naturally free of it. Until this is known the following dosage is recommended by Manley for the feed. "The ratio of Thymol crystals in grams compared to feed in grams is the starting point and can vary, according to Manley. Manley suggests 1/12000 (Manley 1 strength) up to 1/3000 (Manley 4 strength). A maximum allowable dose beyond which damage to the bees may occur is not specified and may not be known. The lowest dose eliminates mould growth. The highest may kill varroa, but there does not appear to be authorative science on the subject. The Thymol delivery system comprises dissolving the Thymol in surgical spirit at about 1 gram of Thymol to 4mls. of surgical spirit by shaking well in a bottle. This is the stock solution. A dose of 1/12000 will require 5mls (a tea spoon) of the stock solution into a tub containing 12,000mls. or 12 litres. A dose of 1/3000 will require 4# 5mls (4 tea spoons) of the stock solution into a tub containing 12,000mls. or 12 litres". Thymol crystals in tea bags laid on the top of the frames is also recommended in the late autumn and spring. Photos