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.