Winter Preparations Update

What do honey bees do in winter?

Honey bees are unique in that the whole colony rides out the cold of the winter. Other similar insects such as wasps and bumblebees die at the end of the season and only the queen survives to the next year by hibernating. Not so with honey bees! They have adapted to be able to store food for the winter (that is what honey is!).

During very cold periods, the bees form a cluster inside the hive with the queen at the centre. They vibrate their wings to generate heat, which keeps the cluster at about 20C. This uses energy, so if they run out of food stores the whole colony can die.

What have we been doing to ensure they have enough food?

Every beekeeper needs to ensure their colonies go into winter with as much stores as possible. How much a colony needs can vary (depending on the weather and also how active the bees are), but generally they need 20-30kg of food to survive.

So we’ve been feeding our bees sugar syrup through September and October, which they have collected and taken down into the hive and stored in honeycomb so it is close to them when it’s cold.

We have been trying a couple of different feeders, both of which are called “rapid feeders”. They are placed on top of the hive, and the bees access the sugar syrup by climbing up a central column, over the top of it, and down to the syrup. We have one small white feeder which holds 2 litres of syrup, so needs to be topped up every week at least. We also have green “jumbo” feeders which work in the same way but hold up to 3 gallons!!

We have found that the bees were very hungry, and they have taken everything we have given them.

Will that be enough food for winter?

Possibly not. Beekeepers use a technique called “hefting”, which is basically lifting the edge of the hive without opening it, to gauge whether the hive has become lighter. A lighter hive will mean they probably need more food.

During the cold months when the bees are very inactive they will not make the journey up into rapid feeders to consume syrup. So instead we’ll feed them a solid food which is like sugar fondant icing. This can be placed right on top of the hive frames so the bees can access it without having to travel very far.

What else can cause bees to die over winter?

The other primary cause of winter losses is disease. The most common bee parasite is the varroa mite, which reached the UK in the 1980s and has now spread to every colony in the country.

There are a number of ways to reduce the number of varroa mites in a beehive. One of them is to apply a treatment (oxalic acid) in the coldest winter months. We will be doing this in early January.

Pests

The most common pests that can damage a beehive in the winter months are mice and woodpeckers.

Mice can squeeze through the hive entrance and make a nest at the bottom of the hive, away from the bee cluster above. This causes a lot of damage, so we have some mouseguards to fit to the hive entrances to make it impossible for mice to get in.

Woodpeckers can peck at the side of the hive to try to access the bees and honey inside. This can be prevented with chicken wire, but it depends if we have woodpeckers in the area as to whether we’ll need to do this.

When do the bees become active again?

It all depends on the weather. Sometimes if the weather is mild they can be out flying in January or February, but there is very little for them to forage at that time of year. So really we don’t want them to become active until the first spring flowers start appearing.

Why didn’t we have any honey this year?

Our colonies are new and we only received them at the beginning of July. They spent the summer building up their numbers and making honeycomb. Because we started late they did not have time to make enough honey for us to harvest. What they did make we have left for them!

Will we have any honey next year?

We hope so! Honey is generally harvested in mid to late summer.

Feeding the bees

With autumn here, every beekeeper is thinking about ensuring that their bees have enough food to last them through the long cold winter months.

Honey bees are unique in that the whole colony rides out the cold of the winter. Other similar insects such as wasps and bumblebees die at the end of the season and only the queen survives to the next year by hibernating. Not so with honey bees! They have adapted to be able to store food for the winter (that is what honey is!).

So every beekeeper needs to ensure their colonies go into winter with as much stores as possible. How much a colony needs can vary (depending on the weather and also how active the bees are), but generally they need 20-30kg of food to survive.

So we’ve been feeding our bees sugar syrup over the last few weeks, which they collect and take down into the hive and store in honeycomb so it is close to them when its cold.

We have been trying a couple of different feeders, both of which are called “rapid feeders”. They are placed on top of the hive, and the bees access the sugar syrup by climbing up a central column, over the top of it, and down to the syrup. We have one small white feeder which holds 2 litres of syrup, so needs to be topped up every week at least. We also have a green “jumbo” feeder which works in the same way but holds up to 3 gallons!!

We have found that the bees are very hungry, and they have taken everything we have given them. So far they have devoured 3 gallons of syrup (across two hives), and we’ve given them more that they are currently working on.

Guest beekeeper

We had a guest beekeeper at our inspection last week. Mark is a very experienced beekeeper and tutor in beekeeping. I’ve been promising to invite him to an inspection all summer. So last week we finally managed to get it organised.

We were very pleased that we did – Mark has a wealth of experience and to have him come and check over our bees was very reassuring. In particular, he was checking that the bees are preparing well for their winter dormancy. Honeybees are unique in that the whole colony rides out the winter, rather than just the queen (as with bumblebees, wasps and hornets). But to be able to do this they have to make sure that they have enough food to be able to survive the cold months when there is nothing available outside. We call this food “honey”. This is exactly why honeybees are kept by humans (rather than bumblebees or wasps): so they can steal some of the surplus honey. But beekeepers have to be sure that enough supplies are left for them to survive. They need quite a lot: generally 20-30lbs of honey per colony.

Mark also checked that the bees’ brood nest is big enough for them for the winter. He was concerned that they have been “chimneying”, which is building a tall thin nest that spans both the upper and lower brood box. So he suggested a slightly radical re-arrangement of the frames called “checkerboarding”, which as the name suggests, involves moving the frames around so each frame of brood is separated by an empty frame.

It will take our bees a few weeks to build out their nest to incorporate these frames, but I’m very pleased to see that a week later we’ve had nice warm weather and the bees have been very active. So hopefully the stores have been coming in.

When hive activity slows down through autumn, we’ll be doing fewer inspections which will probably mean fewer blog posts. But keep watching for new posts anyway. There’s still more to do this season before it all goes quiet.

Spot our queen! Red 54.

Queen marking

When you see a queen bee, you can tell that she is quite different to a worker bee. She has a longer and less hairy body. She also moves in a different way, seeming to “run” across the frames in a different way to the workers.

But when you are faced with a frame covered in thousands of bees it is still very hard to spot the queen, especially if she is choosing to move fast. So beekeepers like to mark their queen with a blob of paint or a label on the back of her head. This speeds up hive inspections because the queen can be located and checked easily.

Our bees were marked by the breeder, but at my beekeeping class on a Monday night I recently had a go at marking a queen. We used a fantastic device called a one-handed queen catcher. (This is for beekeepers to catch a queen using only one hand (the other being used to hold the frame); it’s not for catching queens that only have one hand).

Here it is in action. You can see the queen on the outside of the catcher (on the blue bit at the bottom):

Here she has been scooped inside:

A flexible plastic screen is slid across the opening. This has gaps in that are wide enough for a worker to escape but too narrow for the queen to pass through. So any workers that are captured at the same time can be allows to leave:

Here she is, safe in the catcher.

Now the plunger at the bottom can be slid upwards to hold her firmly but very gently between the blue plastic strips and soft foam:

Some glue and then a numbered dot is applied and allowed to dry. Then she can be released to go back to her duties.

Inspection video

Ste brought his GoPro to our weekly bee inspection this morning, so here is a short video of the inside of “Mango” hive. There are three clips:

1. Using the smoker

2. A frame of honey

3. A frame of brood, which is baby bees as larvae and pupae in capped cells

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8worv2SlZCU

Regional Bee Inspector

I had a call yesterday from the Regional Bee Inspector, asking if he could come and inspect my company’s hives. To say I was surprised would be an understatement – we’ve had them less than two weeks!

So why is there a Regional Bee Inspector, and what exactly do they do?

The Regional Bee Inspector works for the National Bee Unit, which is a government funded body, part of the Animal and Plant Health Agency. The NBU’s role is to assist beekeepers and in particular help to prevent the spread of disease between apiaries. So we were very pleased to welcome the inspector to the office car park to see our new bees and offer advice.

He was very happy with the health of both colonies. We asked him if there was a reason for inspecting our bees so soon after we got them. It turns out to be coincidence. The inspection was made because there has been an outbreak of American Foul Brood in the Oldham area, and their policy is to inspect all apiaries in a five mile radius of a notifiable disease outbreak. We just happen to have appeared on their records at about the time the outbreak happened. We were very pleased to hear that there was no sign of disease, which is a good job because the mandatory method of dealing with this disease is destruction of the colonies.

Adding brood boxes

Whilst he was here, we asked advice on adding an “extension” to our bees’ homes. He recommended that we add a second brood box to both hives, which doubles their capacity and will give the bees a great deal more space into which to expand and prepare themselves for the winter. They now have 22 frames onto which to build honeycomb, lay eggs and store food. Below are photos of our hives with the new boxes added on top.

First Inspection

Ste and I conducted our first inspection of the office beehives this morning. Although it was overcast, it was baking hot and we both nearly melted in our beesuits. But the inspection was successful and we were able to confirm that our new colonies seem to have settled in very well.

We found the queen in both colonies – not difficult because they are clearly marked with a red dot on the back of their head. Queens are marked with a colour according to the year they are born. Queens born in years ending 3 or 8 are marked with a red dot.

We checked that the queen is laying eggs OK, which they are in both colonies. We saw eggs, hatched larvae and also “sealed brood”. This is where the larvae are sealed into their honeycomb cell with a wax cap by the worker bees. During their time as sealed brood they pupate into an adult bee. When ready to emerge as an adult (after 12 days), they nibble their way out through the cap.

So that was all good news. In addition both colonies have at least two frames full of honey which means they are finding plenty of nectar to collect to enable them to feed and grow the colony. No, it doesn’t mean we’ll have any honey for sale yet!

We’ll be performing another inspection in about a week.

My bees have arrived!

After months of waiting, I took delivery of my office’s two bee colonies late on Wednesday night.

Beehives have to be moved either first thing in the morning or late at night, when the bees are all back home in their hive and not out foraging. So I collected the hives from the breeder late at night and delivered them to their new home at the end of the office car park at about 11pm.

Here are some photos of them in place, and of me and fellow beekeeper Ste.

On Thursday morning there was a great deal of activity because there is plenty of nectar and pollen in the local vicinity for them to start foraging.

Keep checking back on this blog as I post more photos of us looking after the beehives over the coming months.

The hives in place at 11pm

Building our beehives

I took all our beehive equipment into my office today and my colleague Ste and I spent the day building, building, building, then painting, painting, painting.

We built four brood boxes (hold the queen and brood) and five supers (hold the stored honey). The boxes come flat-packed and have to be glued then nailed together. You need slightly better woodworking skills than to make an Ikea wardrobe, but it’s not exactly rocket science.

Once built we painted the hives in two contrasting colours using Cuprinol Garden Shades paint. This is not harmful to the bees as long as it is only on the outside of the hive.

We have a third (spare) hive to paint yet. We also have to make a lot of honeycomb frames. We need 94 of these in all. I’ve only made 11 so far! Once we have the brood frames made we’ll be ready to take delivery of our bees.