April has been a box of mixed treasures, with copious rain interspersed with a few days of exceptional sunshine, of which most of our beekeepers took full advantage, writes Ethel Irvine from Fermanagh Beekeepers' Association.

THE rain and cooler weather seemed to prolong the flowering life of garden bulbs and shrubs and wild spring flowers.

Dandelions were magnificent, giving a splash of colour to our roadsides, and beekeepers are very grateful to the Council for allowing them to finish flowering and set seed before mowing the verges.

It is a very important plant, as it supplies both nectar and, more importantly, pollen, at a crucial stage of development in a honeybee colony’s life.

It is often spoken of as Fermanagh’s answer to oilseed rape because it supplies, in abundance, the fresh pollen so necessary after a long winter dependence on stored pollen.

As beekeepers, we see the evidence when we open up a colony to find that the porous cappings of wax and pollen sealing the brood are a distinctive yellow due to the predominance of dandelion in the forage.

Dandelion honey tends to crystallise quite quickly (not as quickly as oilseed rape honey), but most years this does not present a problem as the bees will use the nectar to help rear the brood and to feed themselves, so it leaves the shelves – so to speak – as quickly as it is brought in.

The blackthorn, whose starry white flowers brighten many dark corners and leafless hedgerows, has been and gone, but the end of the month in my area has seen the tight buds of hawthorn blossom beginning to appear.

The fields have cuckoo flower, the woods the bluebells, and wild garlic seems to be doing well, while the chestnut is rewarding visiting bees with that lovely red pollen.

I have mentioned only a very few of the wild flowers and trees which enhance our green landscape, but on closer inspection there is a myriad surrounding us.

One of the more relaxing aspects of beekeeping is watching the bees carry pollen into the hive and trying to identify what the source is.

There are many charts on the internet and for sale from bee equipment suppliers.

My advice would be to get one which you can carry in your pocket, and one which also shows the season when the pollen is available.

So many plants yield yellow pollen of varying shades, from a light yellow (strangely, some sunflowers) to a dark yellow orange (dandelion), that it can be difficult to differentiate between them.

Added to this, according to Dorothy Hodges in her book, ‘The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee’, pollen colour varies with its age, time of day when it was collected by the bees, and even weather, and the bees will mix in a little honey/nectar of different colours from their honey sacs to make the grains stick together in the pollen baskets, so making a match can be difficult!

For these reasons, in her book, Dorothy has recorded three shades for the pollen from each flower.

Her book also contains a fantastic description of how the bee collects the pollen and packs it in her corbicula as well as drawings of pollen grains – very useful to anyone using a microscope to study them (the original drawings are stored in Kew).

Bees are flower-faithful, and generally the pollen they carry will be of one colour.

Only once in 42 years have I seen a bee with two distinct bands of colour on its legs, but Dorothy has a picture of a two-banded pollen load – the explanation being that the dandelion was growing under the berberis, so in close proximity.

Obviously, like any good shopper, the bee grabbed the opportunity to collect both.

The fine days gave beekeepers the opportunity to open colonies for their first full examination of the year.

From the reports on our WhatsApp page, most found that bees had overwintered satisfactorily with some reports of colonies with laying workers or a drone-laying queen.

While in many instances the beekeeper is not to blame for these, it illustrates how careful we need to be when settling our hives before winter to ensure that queens in colonies are young and proven to be laying and producing worker brood.

If the queen dies during the winter, there will be a lack of both brood and queen pheromones, and, without these present in the hive, some of the worker bees will develop ovaries, and the ability to lay unfertilised eggs, which will develop into drones.

These colonies are, in my opinion, not worth spending time on.

Our beekeepers have also found an increased number of Varroa mites in their hives.

This was predictable as, due to overall warmer winter temperatures, the queens did not stop laying, and the mite had plenty of opportunity to enter the brood cells and reproduce.

Treatment is difficult to decide upon, but it should be using one of the faster-acting mitacides.

Any supers should be removed during treatment.

The first report of American Foul Brood in Northern Ireland this year has just come in.

It was discovered by the beekeeper himself and confirmed by AFBI.

He relied on instruction by phone to deal with it, as no bee inspector was available to oversee the consequent destruction.

Please, all beekeepers must be extra vigilant during every inspection, and examine all brood cells both capped (for American Foul Brood) and uncapped (European Foul Brood).

European Foul Brood was prevalent in the province last summer. Both are diseases which, by law, have to be notified to DAERA, and a bee inspector should be available to help and to oversee the follow-up measures regarding movement of hives and inspection of apiaries surrounding any outbreak.

Due to the severe lack of bee inspectors and consequently, no spot inspections, detection of the diseases is up to us, and if we hope to preserve honeybees, we must know what we are looking for.

We are on our own here!

At this point, I pay tribute to Tom Williamson, Senior Bee Inspector, here who is a passionate beekeeper, and who will help in any way possible if he can find the time.

UBKA, with their Bee Health road shows last month, have helped raise awareness and Jack Silberrad gave us the field test for EFB (see March report) which we should use if in any doubt about the health of the larvae.

Tom was present also, despite his workload, warning us of pests yet to arrive in Ireland.

On a much more positive note, Jackie Barry, with the help of other qualified beekeepers, has begun the tuition and assessment of the more practical aspects of the Level 1 ‘Introduction to Beekeeping’ course.

At the beginning of April, the Enniskillen campus of CAFRE very kindly gave the use of one of the classrooms where the students were able to, along with gaining other skills, get hands-on experience of building hives from the component parts, while explaining the use of each part, and they each had to nail frames together and, more delicately, put a sheet of wax foundation into their built frame.

Later in the month, a group met in the apiary and in glorious sunshine, opened hives, identified its occupants as either worker, drone or queen, found eggs, capped larvae, pollen and honey, and discussed some of the things which can go wrong.

The enthusiasm shown is always infectious and reinvigorates the tutors and assessors.

The Association owes much to Jackie for her winter lectures to the class and for all the effort in organising sessions at the hives, which will probably stretch into July.

Brian Dane is coming to the end of what can be described as the scientific content of the Level 3 ‘Proficiency in Beekeeping’ course, and the Association gives thanks to him also.

On May 30, the annual barbecue will be held at the apiary site (hopefully, no bees will interfere), costing £10.

Members, please come along with your family or significant others. It is a good opportunity for a frank discussion of how our bees are progressing – and the food is always excellent!

Just let Andy know numbers, and send the money to William, or pay on the night.