In The Apiary

Summer 2022

This summer has been excellent for bees and for honey. The season has been short and with the hot weather ended very quickly but the bees brought in a lot of nectar to be converted to honey. The hot weather has made it easy for them to reduce the water content so they can cap it for stores or for us to take for extraction.

Growing older, we can no longer collect all the honey supers and extract at the same time so we split it into two a few weeks apart. The extra weeks means the bees will bring in nectar and pollen from different flowers and this does slightly change the taste of the honey. As a very small scale operation we don't have a large tank to mix all our honey in so as we extract into small containers and put into jars honey from different hives taken at different times will have different flavours, that said, it's all been taste tested and all tastes good to us.

Spring 2022

Though we'd been keeping an eye on our hives and checking the fondant over winter Spring is the first chance to open the hives and see how our bees have done over winter. We'd thought we'd suffer some losses at worst three out of our seven hives but on opening up we found it was much worse, only two of our seven hives survived winter. There can be various reasons, disease is one but our bees had a clean bill of health from the National Bee Unit and received the recommended treatments for the varroa mite so unlikely, Queens can fail but again unlikely for so many to fail. The most likely explanation is starvation, the bees went into winter as strong colonies with plenty of stores, but they will often cluster, eat the stores around them but not move an inch to find all the remaining stores which would allow them to survive. This year we'll again ensure they enter winter with plenty of supplies but we'll also get them started on the fondant much earlier.

The two hives that survived were very denuded so we moved them into nucs, a small hive. We bought two more nucs which were strong and could be moved into full size hives. These new colonies were prolific and so they wouldn't swarm we took some of their brood to add to the winter survivors which made them strong enough to be rehived. We were also able to split the two new hives to create two new hives taking us back to our ideal number of six.

December 2021

A quiet month for bee keepers though we visit the apiary regularly to make sure nothing is amiss. The important jobs are to check the varroa board under the floor, looking at this we can see where the bees are clustered and from the different colours whether they are eating stores or if warm enough uncapping brood. We heft the hive to check the weight and gauge whether the bees still have their own stores though at this time we always add a slab of fondant over the cover board which the bees can feed on with little effort, a slab of fondant to keep the bees fed is far cheaper than replacing a hive of bees that died due to lack of supplies. We'll also check the entrance to the hive, bees die over winter and it's possible the dead bodies can block the entrance so we need to make sure the entrance remains clear. At home all our super frames have been through a freezer cycle to kill any wax moth that might have taken residence, they're now all safely stored ready for use in the spring.

November 2021

Our bees are now wrapped up for winter with insulation under the roof, a mouse guard over the entrance to reduce the opening size so no hungry mice can squeeze inside and sacking draped round the hives to discourage woodpeckers who could otherwise peck through and be inside the hive in minutes. We'll check periodically and clear the entrances of any dead bees.

On sunny warmer days the bees will fly on 'cleansing' flights but when it's cold they cluster to maintain the temperature in the hive and keep warm.

As the bees don't take up much of our time in winter we turn our attention to other tasks. All the frames we extracted honey from have to go through a freezing cycle in case any wax moth have laid eggs while the boxes are flamed internally to kill any disease and given a fresh coat of paint externally to keep them looking good before they're all stored for the winter. The apiary itself receives a tidy up before winter.

October 2021

We've had our last look at the bees and won't be opening the hives up again until next Spring. We've checked we have a queen and there's enough bees to see the hive through winter, if there weren't we'd have to unite with another hive. Having checked to see they have enough stores to last the winter we've stopped feeding and removed the Thymovar, our treatment for varroa. We'll be putting insulation under the hive roof, the bees cluster in winter and keep the hive warm, when the warm air meets a cold roof condensation forms and falls on the bees, the insulation raises the dew point keeping the bees dry. We don't insulate the walls, so condensation will form but will run down and out but some moisture is useful for the bees as they use it to convert their stored honey back into food.

September 2021

In the hive the drones are being evicted and the winter bees that will live through to the spring are emerging. The bees are are busy gathering pollen and to help them replace the honey we took off we feed them a heavy syrup which they store and feed on during the winter. Now we've taken the honey off we can treat the bees for varroa, a small mite that attaches itself to the bee, sadly endemic now. Varroa can weaken the colony to the extent it dies off. This year we're treating with a natural product Thyomar which doesn't affect bees but does do for the varroa.

August 2021

Mid month we removed the supers from the hives and extracted the honey. The Surrey weather this year hasn't been kind so yields aren't as good as they'd normally be but the flavour is excellent. Shop bought honeys are blended to achieve a consistent flavour whereas honey from your local bee keeper varies from year to year depending on what flowers the bees have found. This year our bees found a rich harvest of bluebells.

The Bee Inspector calls

Spent an informative afternoon with a Bee Inspector from The National Bee Unit (part of DEFRA) who inspected our hives and bees, their role is to inspect for pests and diseases but they also provide excellent advice. We were delighted to receive a clean bill of health. As bees form part of the human food chain they're classed as livestock so bee keepers are under a duty to inspect for disease and inform the NBU of any notifiable diseases and record any veterinary products used.

July 2021

Regular weekly inspections to check the bees aren't thinking of swarming. Swarming is the bees natural way of reproducing but not something we encourage as if most of the bees fly away to find a new home we lose our honey producing workforce. If the bees are thinking of swarming they will create new queens to lead them away, should we spot the signs we can either create an artificial swarm situation to make them think they've swarmed or split the hive to make another hive though this does lessen the honey produced. Bees also create a new queen if they're unhappy with the old queen, this is called Supersedure, we usually let the bees alone to get on with this. Most of our hives replaced their old queens this year. While queens can carry on for 4 years or more, more and more the bees seem to be replacing their queens every couple of years.

April 2021

We're really happy to be moving to a new apiary much closer to home. Our old apiary was at Pyrford and though the bees had free roam over the plants of RHS Wisley it could be a bit of a trek. Being closer to home means we can spend more time with the bees and give them a bit more care and attention.

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