Oh crapus - there's no B. napus!

Well it's official - there's no Brassica napus being grown on Flemish Farm this year, which means no spring honey.

Brassica napus, or oilseed rape as it is commonly known, is more than just a flowering turnip that provides oil for chainsaws and chips; it's also the UK's largest source of nectar for honey bees. Last May one of my hives produced 90 lb of honey in 3 weeks when the rape was in flower!

So you might expect beekeepers to love B. napus, but opinion is divided. The main criticism of rape honey is that it has to be extracted as soon as the flowers begin to fade, otherwise the honey sets in the comb like concrete. The other criticism is that the honey is pale and rather bland.

Personally I don't see the problem. Extracting honey is tedious, especially if you have to do it twice in the season, but if you are getting bumper yields it's worth the effort. As for blandness, it seems to me that many people don't like strong flavoured summer honey which is why most commercially produced 'English Honey' is a blend of summer and spring honeys.

This year I'll only have summer honey, which is fine by me... except for one nagging doubt. Take a look at this picture:

The long cold winter not only took it's toll on the bees - the wheat crop also died. Two weeks ago the yellow tufts of dead wheat were ploughed in and last week the field was sown with ....

Oh crapus - I hope it's not B. napus! Spring rape is fine but summer rape will ruin the summer honey crop if it comes into flower the same time as the clover and blackberry!

How to kill bees

My neurotic bees have died. Over the past few weeks the cluster of bees got smaller and smaller until there were insufficient bees to keep the meagre brood warm, and the colony faded away.
It was always an unsatisfactory colony; constantly busy but unproductive. Last summer they produced a new queen and I was hopeful that their characteristics would change, but the neurotic behaviour continued. I could never find the new queen until a few weeks ago when I found her in the diminishing cluster. What a poor specimen she turned out to be - dark and skinny and not much bigger than a worker. "No wonder the bees were anxious" I thought.
But a poor queen does not explain why this colony died, only why it never flourished. The prolonged winter didn't help. Each cold day that passed meant fewer winter bees to keep the brood warm and no fresh pollen coming in to keep it fed.
And that shook swarm weakened the colony further - but shouldn't have killed it because my other colony is doing fine. So what killed this colony?
Well I'd like to say all of the above, but I'd be making excuses because .... I killed the colony.
It was a cock-up rather than a conspiracy. When checking the bees a few weeks ago the solid crownboard that sits on top of the hive got switched with the crownboard with a hole in it to allow the bees access to the feeder. The upshot was that for almost 2 weeks the bees weren't fed.
I'm not best pleased with myself and I realise now why those bees were neurotic - they didn't trust me, and who can blame them.