Hello Everyone,
In May I had a visit from the National Bee Unit (NBU), which is part of the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA). In essence, they’re a government body that tries to control the invasion and spread of foreign diseases and pests that affect our flora and fauna. The NBU specifically focuses on honeybee diseases and pests.
They came to visit me because I contacted them about a couple of worrying larvae in a swarm, I had collected last summer. I noticed them during my first inspection of the year, took a photo and emailed it to the NBU straight away.
My fear was that the colony had European Foul Brood, which is nasty stuff and highly infectious. In their reply to me, they said that the disease is relatively rare in the northwest, so they thought it was unlikely to be anything too horrendous and to relax a bit. It was at this point they realised that they had never completed a check of my apiaries before and asked if I was able to show them around.
Once you become a beekeeper, it is highly recommended that you join a system called “bee base.” It allows the NBU to keep track of how many managed colonies there are in a specific area, as well as giving them information about winter losses, colony migration (via sales or pollination) among other things. The benefits for beekeepers are that the system will alert them to any dangers in their area and in the country in general. Recently I had an email about an invasive species called the ‘Asian Hornet’ that is coming over from France. Turns out they’re already in the country but that is a story for another blog post. Bee base also houses a massive encyclopaedia of the different diseases and pests that can affect honeybees, including ones not in the country yet. It’s an incredibly useful resource and the alerts can be a life saver.
Of course, I accepted their request to have a look around my apiaries, as long as I could take photos and write about it for my blog. The NBU is rarely seen or even known about by non-beekeepers, so I hope this is an interesting post for you.
The arranged day (Thursday 4th May) came pretty quickly, and I didn’t realise how nervous I was until I parked up at the Allotment Apiary - our first stop. I took a few deep breaths, put my bee suit on and waited for the inspectors to arrive. Ten minutes or so after our agreed start time I received a call asking how to actually get into the allotments. I was quite puzzled as I thought I’d described it pretty well when I gave them the postcode.
It just so happened that the workmen that have been doing vital repairs on the nearby Train Station for the past 6 months or so had decided to resurface the roads with a stack of hardcore and grit. This meant that they were using a digger to pile a stack of rubble onto the road, in essence hiding the path to the allotments from the inspectors. I only found out about this when I went to go find them parked up near the traffic lights.
The first inspector was in a big land rover and introduced herself as Caroline, the person who I had been talking to. She asked if it was okay if her trainee, Ewan, joined us in inspecting my hives, which of course I said was fine. After the initial pleasantries a small red van trundled down the road and stopped behind the land rover. Caroline said “oh good, we’re all here! Now how do we get to your hives?”
To be honest I was absolutely dreading asking the workmen to move all of the rubble that they’d just spent half an hour piling up into the road. I’m not an especially imposing figure and some foremen can get a bit grumpy when the public tell them how to do their jobs. Fortunately, he was a lovely bloke with a cheery disposition and managed to get his lads to clear a path in minutes. It was quite fun to walk behind a big steam roller flattening a big mound of stone into a lovely smooth road. Anyway, first stress over and the two cars followed me down the central road of the allotments, like an odd beekeeper led procession, to the car park area next to my apiary.
When they parked up the first thing they did was introduce themselves properly, shake my hand and explain what was going to happen.
“The main aim for today Greg is to check colony health, size, and any signs of disease. We will be checking your knowledge, both practical and theoretical to see how well you are managing your colonies.”
Obviously, I had no qualms about them asking me questions as one of my favourite pastimes is annoying people with bee trivia. I was a tad worried that my knowledge was lacking or that I had been telling people the wrong information all this time. My Bumblebee blog post sprung to mind, how I found out that they aren’t endangered or protected, and I had been telling everyone the contrary up until it was published…
I’m going to sound a bit creepy here, but watching the inspectors get suited and booted was quite interesting. They had several bee suits in their cars and each one was contained in its own plastic bag. Everything else they were putting on, such as gloves and wellies were disinfected completely with a spray bottle. It’s clear that they REALLY care about not spreading disease, which I guess is the main part of their job. Once they were dressed, it was time to light their smoker. They just use one between them to save fuel and reduce the chance of knocking over a potential fire risk.
Ewan, who was a professional beekeeper, before joining the NBU recently, showed me how he prepared his smoker so it would stay lit for hours, something I still have trouble with to this day!
First, he lit a small bit of cardboard in the bottom of the smoker to get a flame going and then dropped in a handful of dried wood chips. He pumped the bellows until the wood chip caught and then poured in wooden cat litter to the brim of his smoker. A few more squeezes of his bellows and the thickest smoke I’ve ever seen puffed out. He was absolutely correct as well; his smoker was still going strong at the end of the day. I’ve sent him an email to find out what cat litter he used because it was truly impressive!
Another clever idea which I may be stealing is having their wash bucket inside a slightly larger bucket. When you’re grabbing hive tools and washing your hands regularly between colonies, you can spill a fair amount of soda water out of your bucket. This can cause a bit of damage in the boot of your car, so having a second skin to catch the drips is really smart.
Once everyone was suited and booted, we entered the apiary.
First thing they did was ask me about each hive’s temper, background and if I had noticed anything peculiar in my last inspections. These questions were to help decide the order in which they would do their inspections. Anything particularly angry or with possible disease they would do last. Background knowledge is important because if it’s a swarm you’ve collected and they have disease then the inspectors will need to go to the collection site and test any managed beehives nearby. If it’s a home-grown colony, like mine are in the allotments, then any disease found will likely only be in that area.
With a plan of attack decided, they methodically moved through my hives taking notes and calling things out to one another. They were surprised with the size of my colonies and remarked on how well looked after they are, which was quite nice to hear. Throughout the inspections they were both asking me questions to test my knowledge, such as “what do you look for when inspecting?”, “what is an easily noticeable sign of disease?”, “what are American foul brood and European foul brood indicators?”, etc. All of the questions I did my best to answer but I messed up a few replies. They were really nice about it though and just went into more detail than anything my beginner’s course did, several years ago.
There was a minor worry from a middle hive that a drone larvae had a white gut when squished (yeah, it’s gross sorry) rather than yellow. Ewan stated that this can be a pointer for EFB so he was going to check it for me. He produced a pack that looked very similar to a covid test and told me to follow his instructions as he reads them out. It was actually really easy as all I needed to do is scoop the squished larva (RIP) into the fluid, shake it for a few minutes and then drip it onto the plastic test strip. Just like the covid test there are two lines that appear if the test is positive but fortunately only one line appeared, meaning it was negative and my hives were in the clear. Phew!
Some negatives that did crop up were that I have a moisture problem with my hives, but that is a problem with the Northwest UK in general, they did point out swarm cells in every colony though which was very embarrassing. Ewan found that a few of the cells had fully developed queens trying to get out. I caged them for later as the inspectors were ready to move on to the next apiary.
The first apiary took a whopping three hours to inspect, even though there were two of them and I was opening and closing hives for them. They said the next apiaries would be quicker as they were spending a lot of time feeling out my knowledge during the first. Caroline seemed quite content with what I was doing and asked what I did as a job. After I told her she suggested that it might be worth my time looking into becoming an NBU inspector myself. It was quite the reassurance, as I was beating myself up for some of the terrible answers I gave to their earlier questions.
We travelled in convoy to my second apiary with me in the lead and Ewan at the back. We arrived as a funeral was going on so parking was a little tight. After a bit of tense manoeuvring, we were all haphazardly parked next to the grounds keeper’s barn. As we walked through the gate into my apiary Caroline asked if she could take a honey sample for the honey monitoring scheme. It’s an important check that the NBU does at random intervals to ensure there are no contaminants in the honey being sold locally. It’s also useful as the beekeeper because it tells them what plants have been foraged by their bees.
I, of course, agreed because I am curious myself. Last thing I want is to be selling tainted honey without realising!
Caroline then produced a disconcertingly large jar and said she needed me to fill it up. After a few toilet jokes, I found her a super frame to hack away at, and hack away she did! Virtually the whole super frame ended up in the jar to my dismay. “That’s like £24 you’ve just taken off me there!” I (half) joked, to which Ewan said she did the same with his honey during his past inspections before joining the NBU and was sure she just wanted the honey for her toast at home. Reassuringly though, there was a stack of paperwork that needed to be filled out and signed before the jar was secured in a polystyrene box and sealed up. The results can take up to a year to be published but when they are I’ll make a social media post about it as I think it’ll be very interesting!
The inspections in this apiary went surprisingly quick even though it housed the most hives (twelve). After the initial joking with the honey collection everyone kind of went into business mode, with little to any talking. Just a few shouted statements like “SMOKER!” when opening up the angry hives mentioned in a recent social media post. No real issues cropped up other than swarm cells (again to my dismay). They did show me some signs of varroa that I wasn’t aware of so that was interesting. If you look at the inside edge of the comb, if you see a white staining then that is varroa poop. It can be an indicator that you may have problems, but it can also just mean that there was definitely a varroa in that cell in the honeycomb’s working life. The inspectors hadn’t seen any other signs of varroa so said it was probably just historic evidence and nothing to worry about.
It was around this point that Kat called to remind me that, although my daughter is only 9 months old and can barely crawl let alone walk, she had her first rugby match today and it was going to start in the next two hours. The inspectors told me that they can look at the last apiary without me as long as I was okay with that. I agreed as long as Caroline didn’t pilfer any more honey for her breakfast!
We closed up the hives and travelled in convoy again to the final stop. I quickly went over the history of each hive and pointed to the troublesome nuc. This apiary is the one I use for quarantining swarms. Colonies stay here for a year and are constantly checked by me for temperament, honey production and most importantly, disease. As mentioned earlier, I had seen a worrying looking larva in a swarm I had collected last year. I had sadly closed up the nuc box as soon as I had seen it because I didn’t want any spread of disease, especially if it was a brood related one. It had been about 3 weeks since this so, with a heavy sigh, I told them that all the bees will probably be dead by now.
Finding out that it was my quarantine apiary, the inspectors asked if I kept the addresses of each swarm collected, which I do - fortunately.
As an aside to you dear reader, if you are in the swarm collecting or bait hive game then make sure you keep good records of where the bees came from. It is vital that if any disease is discovered that it is removed from the area asap.
I had to bid the inspectors “adieu” as I still needed a shower before taking Esme to the Saint’s ground.
They pretty much cracked on straight away and I felt so strange just leaving some strangers to go rummaging through my hives unattended. I had to reassure myself that they have way more experience than I do with bees and they had been very respectful to my colonies and equipment up to this point. Part of me wanted to stay as well because I was having such a blast, talking shop and opening up the hives … I’m a little strange you know…
After going watching our friend’s girls’ rugby team kick ass and take names I received a phone call from Caroline. She told me what they had been up to and how they left the apiary. No issues in any of the colonies but surprisingly the nuc that had been closed up for the best part of a month was still alive! She said that there was no brood in the nuc for them to check so sadly they could neither confirm or deny any disease. She said that to be safe the colony should really be euthanised but because they didn’t find anything she legally couldn’t force me to do it.
I agreed that I would euthanise them, as the last thing I want is for a horrible disease to affect all of the honeybee colonies in a 3-mile radius, just because of a technicality. It’s a horrible decision to make and to say I didn’t shed a tear would be a lie. I treat my hives like they’re part of the family so to actively kill one is genuinely a heart-breaking decision. I didn’t take any photos or videos of the event as I feel like it would have been wrong but in order to do this. Caroline advised that I move the frames and bees into a sealed cardboard box, pour a cup of petrol into the hive and then burn the box and its contents. I’d then need to clean and sterilise the nuc box before using it again. The cup of petrol isn’t used to make the box burn, the fumes instantly kill the bees meaning that it’s a split-second death with no pain or suffering...
I have since received the reports from the inspections on my bee base account. It’s good to have a record of it all in one place and hopefully it helps them get a clearer picture of the area. One thing for sure, is that Caroline suggesting I try to take up a role as an NBU inspector has been eating away at me since and I’ve decided to send them my CV. Wish me luck!
Hope you’re all safe and well,
Greg
P.S. here are some pictures from the rugby game:
