Bee Autumn

Every single week I learn something new about beekeeping and one common factor is that all beekeepers have strong opinions on how it should be done and they are all different. When asking for advice it is quite likely you will receive several answers and some of them diametrically opposed. I’m learning to listen to everyone, think it through with my current knowledge and understanding then, if none of that makes sense, I do whatever my friend Gary tells me to do. This week I learned that bees start their winter preparations when the nights start drawing in (22nd June) – they can tell when the daylight hours are getting shorter even if it’s only a couple of minutes.

Today I did another inspection to see how the varroa treatment had worked. The “super” box on top of the brood which last week contained some honey has now been emptied and so I removed it. You can see one of the frames with the foundation wax extended by the bees but no honey.

I did have a plan to keep this on the very top if it still had honey in it but that wasn’t necessary.

I worked my way through the brood frames where there wasn’t a great deal of stores and a few cells still capped awaiting the new bees to emerge. The bees in the hive at the moment will be the same ones in March when the queen starts laying again provided they don’t starve during the winter.

I was pleased to see the queen again. She’s in the middle of this shot (longer body and legs) and is very canny because by the time I got the camera she had moved on and was surrounded by workers. I had hoped to mark her with a special pen so it would be easier to see her however with the rest of the hive buzzing around my head (they’re still quite aggressive) I decided not to try to mark on this occasion. It’s a task that requires a minimum of three hands – one hand holding the frame and two hands to catch the queen in a specially designed container and then mark her.