We don’t open the hives between October and March. It’s too cold during that time and the bees are huddled together in a cluster to share warmth and wait for spring, a bit like penguins in Antarctica. There is however one exception, and that is to give the bees their winter medicine to kill varroa mites.
Why do we open the bees during a freezing cold day in winter? Why can’t they have the medicine in summer? Well the varroa mites’ favourite place to live is inside sealed brood cells, feeding off the developing bee larvae. If we apply the medicine when there is a lot of brood, most of the mites will avoid it by being sealed away. So we aim for a time when there is little or no brood in the hive. This is generally around Christmas.
So on Wednesday we headed to the apiary on a very cold, but glorious morning. The medicine is mixed with sugar syrup and trickled onto the bees with a syringe. With two of you, we can lift the lid, trickle the syrup and have the lid down again in about 20 seconds. We also took the opportunity to give the bees a couple of kilos of fondant sugar (exactly the same stuff that is used to ice cakes). This should hopefully keep them going during the cold months until the first flowers come out in spring.
I was pleased to see that five out of six of our hives had a living cluster of bees right under the crown board. I’m not sure about the sixth one. They may be OK. I did see a few bees come up when we lifted the lid, so the cluster may just have been further down, out of sight.
So now the bees are closed up again and we won’t visit them again until March. Partly because of the winter, and partly because of the pandemic lockdown. Keep safe everyone.
