First we were shown some early flowering plants that are rich in pollen or nectar, and therefore good to have near a hive : Gorse, Sloe, Camelia, several others that I don't know the English names of, a kind of white Heather bush, and a Woody Honeysuckle...
Then we kitted up, and in the same groups as last week, we swapped over so that our group went with Jan to the larger enclosure of hives, whilst the other group went to the six hives we had seen last week with Raymond. Almost everyone has the kit now, though some have only invested in a hat, veil and gloves, and are wearing long sleeved jackets and jeans. This week we were all a bit more with it and "hands on", helping to take the lids off the hives, puff smoke into them, etc.
The main task was to pour syrup and water mixture into feeder trays that sit on top of the main body of the hive. Jan had a plastic watering can full of syrup, which we quickly emptied, and also a knee high vat of the stuff, which also all went ! The organisation was - puff in smoke, lift off lid, lift off feeder tray to check what was happening in the body of the hive, replace feeder, scoop out any stray bees, pour in syrup in a huge dollop, add water, stir togethor with hands (by those with rubber gloves), replace lid. In two of the hives, unfortunately lots of bees had managed to get into the main section of the feeder, and drowned, so on these ones we checked the covers on their access zones and sealed any gaps that they could have crawled through by pushing foam rubber in the holes - also adding grass, leaves and twigs into the lake of syrup, in case they get in again, to give them half a chance of crawling out of the sticky goo.
Another job was to push strips of cardboard into the hive entrance, coated in oïl, and with a few drops of some sort of essence that will make any Varroa mites fall - it's a test, if after a week the cardboard strips have a lot of the little black Varroa stuck to them, then we will need to hang strips of impregnated plastic in the hives to treat for Varroa; More détails of Varroa can be found at Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa It's recommended to treat all hives for this bug in the autumn, and then in the spring treat again any that show signs of infestation.
We were an efficient team working together, and before leaving the compound we brushed each other down to remove any bees that had decided to hitch a ride on our backs, shoulders, heads etc. We carried the empty syrup vat back to Jan's car, and the Varroa catching equîpment, took off our kit, then wandered around to the meeting room and were waiting for the second group to arrive - when I realized I could hear something buzzing very close...
Aaagh! - a bee was caught in my hair! I have a lot of hair, and although those close by tried to help to extract the bee, you couldn't even see it, only hear it... Jan said I should try and crush it, but I couldn't even work out where it was, until the inevitable happened, and I felt a sudden sting on top of my head. After that I managed to shake the dead bee out, but couldn't really check if the sting had stayed in or not.
Congratulations to me - I'm the first student this year to get stung !
At least now I know I'm definitely not allergic to bee stings!