Category Archives: Practice

Your second season

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Synopsis: In your second season of beekeeping use swarm control to create an additional colony. It will improve your beekeeping and provide insurance against calamities. Make plans now and buy equipment in the sales.

Introduction

Going by the sound of the wind and the rain outside, the beekeeping season is now well and truly over. Entirely appropriately, as it was the autumn equinox on Saturday, the first of the equinoctial gales (Storm Agnes) is currently battering the west coast and I didn’t see a single bee when I checked the hives earlier.

Storm Agnes

It’s too soon to review the season but, with the National Honey Show approaching and end-of-season 1 sales from some suppliers, it’s not too soon to think about equipment needs for next year.

If 2023 was your first season then I hope it was successful … you’re allowed to define success using broad and generous criteria.

Do you still have the colony you started with? Did you manage to get any honey? Have you started feeding them and treating them to control Varroa?

If you can answer yes to those three questions then it was probably successful.

If you answered no to the last question then you need to get a move on to ensure that you have bees at the start of next season.

And, to be frank, it’s only if your bees are doing well at the start of next season that you can properly conclude that this season was a success. Getting the colony to the autumn is like being three under for the first nine holes of a round of golf … it can still all go horribly wrong 2.

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Repurposed

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Synopsis: Think laterally, use your imagination, hoard stuff … there’s lots you can repurpose to make both your beekeeping and bank balance better. And it’s something to fill the months until the season starts.

Introduction

The big equipment suppliers – Thorne’s, Abelo, Dadant etc. – are very happy to sell you everything you need for your beekeeping … and a whole lot of stuff you probably don’t. A ‘hard sell’ approach to marketing isn’t needed, they simply provide an enticing catalogue or website and rely upon the long, cold, dark, wet and windy winter to do the rest.

It’s disturbingly effective … I’ve got the receipts.

An enthusiastic beginner might need a second mortgage after a trip to Rand or a winter afternoon in front of the fire browsing the catalogue.

Beekeeping is not an inexpensive pastime 1 when starting from scratch. Hives, beesuits, bees, smokers, hive tools, multi-purpose eke/clearer/insulated crownboards 2 and other essentials leave little change from a substantial chunk of moolah.

Buster the hivebarrow

Of course, with certain exceptions, buying shiny new kit makes things easy. Equipment is compatible, it’s been tested, built to a high standard and ‘just works’. It’s one less thing to worry about when starting out, and – midseason – it provides a quick fix to rectify an urgent problem.

However … as well as sometimes being painfully expensive 3, it turns out that the suppliers don’t sell everything you need. With a little effort, some opportunism, a sprinkling of imagination and those long winters you can rectify this and save money.

Today I’m going to discuss repurposing things you beg, borrow or steal find (or perhaps buy cheaply) to enhance, or even improve, your beekeeping.

And your bank balance.

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Apiguard advice

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Synopsis : Apiguard activity is temperature-dependent but the instructions are vague on the minimum temperatures needed for high efficacy. Is Apiguard appropriate for the bees in your area? How might you determine this?

Introduction

A few months ago I discussed the instructions supplied with some formic or oxalic acid-containing miticides beekeepers use to control Varroa. The post was titled ’Infernal contradictions’ reflecting the state of the documentation provided, either with the purchased products or via the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) database of approved treatments.

Are the instructions clear, unambiguous, meaningful, accurate and helpful?

Sometimes … but not always 🙁 .

Apiguard

This time I’m turning my attention to Apiguard, a thymol containing miticide that – used properly – is very effective at reducing Varroa levels. It’s an organic treatment and there is no evidence that mites can become resistant to the active ingredient.

Effective and no resistance … what’s not to like?

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Poly nucs and winter losses

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Synopsis : Save money. Take your winter losses now. Unite weak colonies or those headed by dodgy queens … and some thoughts on poly nucs for overwintering.

Introduction

With apologies to Winston Churchill:

“Now this is not the end. It is perhaps the beginning of the end.” 1

And even a cursory look through couple of colonies will confirm this. They are shifting from their summer labours to the late summer preparations for winter.

The signs are easy to spot.

Colonies with ample super space are beginning to backfill the broodnest with nectar. You can see it sparkling in the sun.

Backfilled cells (and a drone or two)

You also see this when the colonies have nowhere else to store fresh nectar, but my supers are disappointingly full of space this year 2 ) so they’re opting to keep it close. The brood pattern can look a bit spotty, but the queen is ‘missing’ the cells because they’re already full.

Most of my east coast colonies have stopped, or almost stopped, rearing drones. There are still plenty of drones about but they’re not producing any more this season.

This makes sense. Drones are ‘expensive’ in terms of the resources (pollen, nectar, time, workers) needed to rear them and the chance that they will successfully complete a mating flight this late in the season is limited.

They’re not chucking them out yet though. On a warm afternoon the distinctive sound of a thousand drones going out ‘on the pull’ fills the air.

Ever the optimists 😉 .

Colonies are still strong and busy. They contain a lot of brood, but the laying rate of the queen is slowing and – presumably 3 – they will very soon start rearing the long-lived winter bees that will take the colony through to next spring.

Take your winter losses now

And, as the colonies segue from producing summer bees to winter bees, I’m also starting to plan for the winter. This involves preparing the colonies I want and getting rid of (i.e. uniting) those surplus to requirements or underperforming.

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Summer doldrums

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Synopsis : Weather, nucs, queens, swarms and wax. A potpourri of topics that have entertained me while waiting for the heather flow to start … if it starts. 

Introduction

Maybe it’s old age 1 but the calendar seems to be speeding up these days. The dawn chorus is just a chirrup or two, there are mushrooms appearing everywhere, and I can sense the end of the season galloping towards me.

Or, maybe this is just a bit of a weird season.

It barely seems to have got started before it feels like it’s about to end.

The peak swarming period in my part(s) of Scotland has long gone 2 and the ‘June gap’ didn’t really happen, perhaps because the summer flowers started early. It’s now late July and the lime and blackberry are over. There’s some rosebay willow herb left, though not much and the heather has yet to properly start.

Erratic, just flowering heather

These are the summer doldrums; the time between the end of swarming and taking the summer honey off. It’s a relatively quiet time for my beekeeping. It’s too late (in Scotland, at least in my experience) for dependable queen rearing and it’s too early for any serious winter preparations.

There’s no longer a need to conduct weekly colony inspections. I’m reasonably confident that my colonies won’t swarm now, though I expect a few might supersede 3.

That doesn’t mean they won’t swarm … it just means my confidence might be misplaced 😉 .

Of course, that doesn’t mean that there’s no beekeeping to do … it’s just that I’ve got a little more time to complete what I need to do, and a bit of spare time to do a few other related activities.

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