Shook swarm day... to keep our school bees healthy

Beekeepers use something called a 'Shook Swarm' to help reduce disease and pests in bee colonies. Basically, it is like a 'forced spring clean for bees!'
Many pests and diseases use the Brood combs (where the Queen lays her eggs and the baby bees are born) to multiply and live, so the idea of a Shook Swarm is to replace all the brood frames with new clean ones for the bees to use in a clean new hive... the plan being, all the pests such as Varroa are left behind!
Also, after each new bee emerges, the cell becomes very slightly smaller as she leaves behind her cocoon, after a few seasons, these smaller cells lead to smaller bees which are much less likely to winter well and resist disease. 

 

First we find the Queen & cage her to make sure she is safe... Then all the bees are shaken into their new clean hive with new frames of foundation. As you can imagine, there are bees everywhere!

The old frames, which sadly contain stores and brood, are dispatched quickly in a steamer... it is a very difficult thing to do, but the bees soon recover and this method of pest and disease control means we need to use less harmful chemicals on our bees. 

The golden wax is then taken out and filtered through old tights to take out any remaining debris...

Good use for all those old tights!!

The frames go into the steamer and in a matter of minutes the wax has melted and the brood & cocoons are all left on the filter

The 'tights' full of wax are then put into a double boiler and melted down... the cleaned wax is then poured into moulds ready for the children to use for a host of exciting things this year!

So, from 5 hives, we extracted all this wax! The children will be using this to make a variety of things, from Environmentally friendly Beeswax wraps, to polish, lip balm and candles. The children will be feeding the bees this week to make sure they have enough food to make all the new wax in the hive.