Tag Archives: autumn

Mellow fruitfulness

Synopsis : Final colony inspections and some thoughts on Apivar-contaminated supers, clearing dried supers, feeding fondant and John Keats’ beekeeping.

Introduction

The title of today’s post comes from the first line of the poem ’To Autumn’ by John Keats:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

The poem was written just over 200 years ago and was the last major work by Keats (1795-1821) before he died of tuberculosis. Although it wasn’t received enthusiastically at the time, To Autumn is now one of the most highly regarded English poems.

The poem praises autumn, using the typically sensuous imagery of the Romantic poets, and describes the abundance of the season and the harvest as it transitions to winter.

That’s as maybe … the last few lines of the first verse raises some doubts about Keats’ beekeeping skills:

And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
 For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

It’s certainly true that there are late summer flowers that the bees can forage on 1. However, he’s probably mistaken in suggesting that the bees think in any sense that involves an appreciation of the future.

And what’s all this about clammy cells?

If there’s damp in the hive in late summer then it certainly doesn’t bode well for the winter ahead.

Clammy is now used mean damp; like vapour, perspiration or mist. The word was first used in this context in the mid-17th Century.

‘Clammy’ honey

But Keats is using an earlier meaning of ’clammy’ … in this case ’soft, moist and sticky; viscous, tenacious, adhesive’, which dates back to the late 14th-Century.

And anyone who has recently completed the honey harvest will be well aware of how apt that definition is 😉 … so maybe Keats was a beekeeper (with a broad vocabulary).

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies

That’s the last line of ’To Autumn’ (don’t worry … you’ve not inadvertently accessed the Poetry Please website). The swallows are gathering and, like most summer migrants, already moving south. Skeins of pink-footed geese have started arriving from Iceland and Greenland.

Skein of geese over Fife

My beekeeping over the last fortnight has been accompanied by the incessant, plaintive mewing of buzzards. These nest near my apiaries and the calling birds are almost certainly the young from this season.

A few nights ago, while hosing the extractor out in the bee-free-but-midge-filled late evening, I was serenaded by tawny owls as the adults evicted their young from the breeding territory in preparation for next season.

These are all signs, together with the early morning mists, that summer is slipping away and the autumn is gently arriving.

Morning mist clearing over the loch

The beekeeping season is effectively over and all that remains is preparing the colonies for winter.

Supers

All the supers were off by the 22nd of August. There was still a little bit of nectar being taken in but the majority was ripe and ready. As it turns out there was fresh nectar in all the colonies when I checked on the 10th of September, but in such small amounts – no more than half a frame – that it wouldn’t have been worth waiting for.

At some point you have to say … enough!

Or, this year, more than enough 🙂 .

Most of the honey was extracted by the end of August. It was a bonanza season with a very good spring, and an outstanding summer, crop. By some distance the best year I’ve had since returning to Scotland in 2015.

Of course, that also meant that there were more supers to extract and return and store for the winter ahead.

Lots of lifting, lots of extracting and lots of buckets … and in due course, lots of jarring.

Storing supers wet or dry?

In response to some recent questions on storing supers wet or dry I tested ‘drying’ some.

I’ve stored supers wet for several seasons. I think the bees ‘like’ the heady smell of honey when they are added back to the hives for the spring nectar flow. The supers store well and I’ve not had any problems with wax moth.

However, this year I have over two full carloads of supers, so – not having a trailer or a Toyota Hilux 2 – I have to make multiple trips back to put them in storage 3. These trips were a few days apart.

I added a stack of wet supers to a few hives on the 1st of September and cleared them on the 9th. All these supers were added over an empty super (being used as an eke to accommodate a half block of fondant – see below) topped with a crownboard with a small hole in it (no more than 2.5 cm in diameter, usually less).

Converting wet supers to dry supers – note the crownboard with a small central hole

When I removed the supers on the 10th they had been pretty well cleaned out by the bees. In one case the bottom super had a very small amount of fresh nectar in it.

So, 7-8 days should be sufficient for a strong colony to clean out 3-4 supers and it appears as though you can do it at the same time as feeding fondant … result 🙂 .

Feeding fondant

I only feed my colonies Baker’s fondant. I add this on the same day I remove the honey-laden supers. I’ve discussed fondant extensively here before and don’t intend to rehash the case for its use again.

Oh well, if you insist 😉 .

I can feed a colony in less than two minutes; unpacking the block, slicing it in half and placing it face down over a queen excluder (with an empty super as an eke) takes almost as much time to write as it does to do.

Take care with sharp knives … much easier with a slightly warm block of fondant

But speed isn’t the only advantage; I don’t need to purchase or store any special feeders (an Ashforth feeder costs £66 and will sit unused for 49 weeks of the year). I’ve also not risked slopping syrup about and so have avoided encouraging robbing bees or wasps.

I buy the fondant through my association. We paid £13 a block this year (up from about £11 last year). That’s more expensive than making or buying syrup (though not by much) and I don’t need to have buckets or whatever people use to store, transport and distribute syrup. Fondant has a long shelf life so I buy a quarter of a ton at a time and store what I don’t use.

All gone! 12.5 kg of fondant added on 22/8/22 and photographed on 9/9/22

And, contrary to what the naysayers claim, the bees take it down and store it very well.

What’s the biggest problem I’ve had using fondant?

The grief I get when I forget to return the breadknife I stole from the kitchen … 😉 .

Apivar-contaminated honey and supers

Last season I had to treat a colony with Apivar before the supers came off. This was one of our research colonies and we had to minimise mite levels before harvesting brood.

I’ve had a couple of questions recently on what to do with supers exposed to Apivar … this is what I’ve done/will do.

Apivar

The Apivar instructions state something like ’do not use when supers are present’ … I don’t have a set of instructions to check the precise wording (and can’t be bothered to search the labyrinthine VMD database).

Of course, you’re free to use Apivar whenever you want.

What those instructions mean is that honey collected if Apivar is in the hive will be ’tainted’ and must not be used for human consumption.

But, it’s OK for the bees 🙂 .

So, I didn’t extract my Apivar-exposed supers but instead I stored them – clearly labelled – protected from wasps, bees and mice.

This August, after removing the honey supers I added fondant to the colonies. In addition, I added an Apivar-exposed super underneath the very strongest colonies – between the floor and the lower brood box.

I’ll leave this super throughout the winter. The bees will either use the honey in situ or will move it up adjacent to the cluster.

In spring – if I get there early enough – the super will be empty.

If I’m late they may already be rearing brood in it 🙁 … not in itself a problem, other than it means I’m flirting with a ridiculous ’double brood and a half’.

Which, of course, is why I added it to the strongest double brood colonies. It’s very unlikely the queen will have laid up two complete boxes (above the nadired super) before I conduct the first inspection.

But what to do with the now-empty-but-Apivar-exposed supers?

It’s not clear from my interpretation of the Apivar instructions (that I currently can’t find) whether empty supers previously exposed to Apivar can be reused.

WARNING … my reading might be wrong. It states Apivar isn’t to be used when honey supers are on but, by inference, you can use and reuse brood frames that have been exposed to Apivar.

Could you extract honey from brood frames that have previously (i.e. distant, not immediate, past) been Apivar-exposed?

Some beekeepers might do this 4.

It’s at this point that some common sense it needed.

Just because re-using the miticide-exposed supers is not specifically outlawed 5 is it a good idea?

I don’t think it is.

Once the bees have emptied those supers I’ll melt the wax out and add fresh foundation before reusing them.

My justification goes something like this:

  • Although amitraz 6 isn’t wax-soluble a formamidine breakdown product of the miticide is. I have assumed that this contaminates the wax in the super.
  • I want to produce the highest quality honey. Of course this means great tasting. It also means things like wings, legs, dog hairs and miticides are excluded. I filter the honey to remove the bee bits, I don’t allow the puppies in the extracting room and I do not reuse supers exposed to miticides.
  • During a strong nectar flow bees draw fresh comb ‘for fun’. They’re desperate to have somewhere to store the stuff, so they’ll draw out comb in a new super very quickly. Yes, drawn comb is precious, but it’s also easy to replace.

Final inspections

I conducted final inspections of all my colonies in Fife last weekend 7.

For many of these colonies this was the first time they’d been opened since late July. By then most had had swarm control, many had been requeened and all were busy piling in the summer nectar.

Why disturb them?

The queen had space to lay, they weren’t likely to think about swarming again 8 and they were strong and healthy.

Midsummer inspections are hard work … lots of supers to lift.

If there’s no need then why do it?

Of course, some colonies were still busy requeening, or were being united or had some other reason that did necessitate a proper inspection … I don’t just abandon them 😉 .

I don’t just abandon them … introducing a queen to a nucleus colony

But now the supers were off it was important to check that the colonies were in a suitable state to go into the winter.

I take a lot of care over these final inspections as I want to be sure that the colony has the very best chance of surviving the winter. 

I check for overt disease, the amount of brood in all stages (BIAS; so determining if they are queenright) and the level of stores.

And, while I’m at it, I also try and avoid crushing the queen 🙁 .

Queenright?

I don’t have to see the queen. In fact, in most hives it’s almost impossible to see the queen because the box is packed with bees. If there are eggs present then the queen is present 9.

But, there might not be a whole lot of eggs to find.

Firstly, the queen is rapidly slowing down her egg laying rate. She’s not producing anything like 1500-2000 eggs per day by early autumn.

A National brood frame has ~3000 cells per side. If you find eggs equivalent in area to one side of a brood frame she’s laying at ~1000/day. By now it’s likely to be much less. At 500 eggs/day you can expect to find no more than half a frame of eggs in the hive.

Remember the steady-state 3:5:13 (or easier 1:2:4) ratio of eggs to larvae to pupae? 10

Several of my colonies had about half a frame of eggs but significantly more than four times that amount of sealed brood … clear evidence that the laying rate is slowing dramatically.

The shrinking brood nest – note the capped stores and a little space to lay in the centre of the frame

Secondly, the colony is rapidly filling the box with stores, so reducing the space she has to lay. They’re busy backfilling brood cells with nectar.

Look and ye shall find …

So I focus carefully on finding eggs. I gently blow onto the centre of the frames to move the bees aside and search for eggs.

In a couple of hives I was so focused on finding eggs that – as I prepared to return the frame to the colony – I only then saw the queen ambling around on the frame. D’oh!

Some colonies had only 3-4 frames of BIAS, others had lots more though guesstimating the precise area of brood is tricky because of the amount of backfilling taking place.

I still need to check my notes to determine whether it’s the younger queens that are still laying most eggs … I’d not be surprised.

Stores

Boxes are now heavy but not full. All received (at least) half a block of fondant in late August and more last weekend. There’s also a bit of late nectar. The initial half block was almost finished in a week.

Once the bag is empty I simply peel it away from the queen excluder. If you’re doing this, leave the surrounding super in place. It acts as a ‘funnel’ to keep the thousands of displaced bees in the hive rather than down your boots and all over the floor.

Although the bees were flying well, the bees in and around the super were pretty lethargic. I’ve seen this before and am not concerned. I don’t know whether these are bees gorged with stores, having a kip or perhaps young bees that don’t know their way about yet. However, it does mean that any bees dropped while removing the bag tend to wander aimlessly around on the ground.

I’d prefer they were in the hive, out of the way of my size 10’s.

If you look at many of the frames in the hive they will be partially or completely filled with stores. The outer frames are likely to be capped already. 

An outer frame of capped stores

These frames of stores are heavy. There’s no need to look through the entire box. I simply judge the weight of each frame and inspect any that are lighter than a full frame of stores.

Closer to the brood nest you’ll probably find a frame or two stuffed, wall-to-wall, with pollen. Again, a good sign of a healthy hive with the provisions it needs to rear the winter bees and make it to spring.

Disease

The only sign of disease I saw was a small amount of chalkbrood in one or two colonies. This is a perennial situation (it’s not really a problem) with some of my bees. Quite a few of my stocks have some (or a lot of) native Apis mellifera mellifera genes and these often have a bit of chalkbrood.

I also look for signs of overt deformed wing virus (DWV) damage to recently emerged workers. This is the most likely time of the year to see it as mite levels have been building all season and brood levels are decreasing fast. Therefore, developing brood is more likely to become infested and consequently develop symptoms.

Fortunately I didn’t see any signs of DWV damage and the initial impression following the first week or so of miticide treatment is that mite levels are very low this season. I’ll return to this topic once I’ve had a chance to do some proper counts after treating for at least 8-10 weeks (I use Apivar and, since my colonies all have medium to good levels of brood, the strips need to be present for more than the minimum recommended 6 weeks).

Closing up

Although these were the last hive inspections, they weren’t the last time I’ll be rummaging about in the brood box.

At some point during the period of miticide treatment I’ll reposition the strips (adjacent to the ever-shrinking brood nest) having scraped them to maximise their effectiveness.

Apivar scratch and sniff repositioning studies

However, all that will happen in a month or so when I can be reasonably sure the weather will be a lot less benign. Far better to get the inspections out of the way now, just in case.

So, having added the additional fondant (typically half a block) I closed the hives, strapped them up securely and let them get on with making their preparations for the coming winter.

Goodbye and thanks for the memories

There’s a poignancy about the last hive inspections of the season.

The weather was lovely, the colonies were strong and flying well, and the bees were wonderfully placid. It’s been a great season for honey, disease levels are low to negligible and queen rearing has gone well 11.

But it’s all over so soon 🙁 .

Hive #5 (pictured somewhere above … with the empty bag of fondant) was from a swarm control nuc made up on the last day of May (i.e. a 2021 queen). It was promoted to a full hive in mid-June. At the same time, while the hive they came from (#28) was requeening I’d taken more than 20 kg of spring honey from it. The requeening of #28 took longer than expected as the first was almost immediately superseded. Nevertheless, the two hives also produced almost 4 full supers (conservatively at least 40 kg) of summer honey.

Good times 🙂 .

My notes – for once – are comprehensive. Over the long, dark months ahead I’ll be able to sift through them to try and understand better 12 what went wrong.

That’s because – despite what I said in the opening paragraph of this section – there were inevitably any number of minor calamities and a couple of major snafu’s.

Or ’learning opportunities’ as I prefer to call them.

Last light over Rum and Eigg … not a bad view when visiting an out apiary

But that’s all for the future.

For the moment I have a sore back and aching fingers from extracting for days and the memory of a near-perfect final day of proper beekeeping.

It’s probably time I started building some frames 🙁


 

Autumn cleaning

Over the last fortnight, despite some occasional warm and sunny days, the autumn has made its presence known. 

Flaming autumn aspen

The aspen down the road are a stunning colour at this time of the year. Although I’ve planted a couple of dozen, they’re still not more than thigh-high and it will be quite a few years until they can match the display shown above.

Almost overnight hundreds of redwing have arrived from Scandinavia and many of the rowan have already been stripped bare 1.

In Fife, the leaden skies are filled with skeins of geese forming raggedy V’s as they fly in from the North Sea. It’s an evocative sight … it reminds me of my first weeks as an undergraduate student at Dundee University half a lifetime ago

And it also emphasises that the beekeeping season is over.

Of course, there will be jobs to do in the winter, but the bees are pretty much on their own for at least the next five months.

Apivar

The final essential task of the season for me is to remove the Apivar strips that went into the hives in August. Initially the strips were placed on either side of the – still large – brood nest. A few weeks ago I removed the strips, scraped them free of propolis and wax and re-inserted them around the, now shrunken, brood nest.

Mid-autumn and time for the Apivar strips to be removed

You can just about see them in the photo above, flanking the four central frames.

It is important to remove the strips. Although Apivar has a relatively short half-life, some residual activity will remain. If you leave them in the hive any surviving Varroa – and there will be survivors 2 – will continue to reproduce in the presence of trace levels of amitraz, the active ingredient in Apivar. 

With reduced – and possibly borderline for killing – levels of amitraz present, these are ideal conditions in which resistance may develop. Although this has been reported it does not appear to be widespread. 

Therefore, to ensure that Apivar remains an effective miticide it is important to remove any remaining strips before the winter.

Your next adventure in Glenrothes awaits!

Tragic isn’t it?

That’s the subject line on the emails I receive from Travelodge where I stay when I’m doing my beekeeping in Fife. 

Have you ever been to Glenrothes?

‘Adventure’ isn’t the word most people associate with Glenrothes. 

Good morning Glenrothes

GetMeOuttaHere is. 

This is a town where every third car being driven late at night has a raucous exhaust, lowered shocks, tinted windows and a spoiler. The drive-in queue for McDonald’s sounds like the pit lane at the Indianapolis 500 and there are more donuts in the car park than in the fast food outlets 3.

But none of that usually bothers me as, by the time I get to the hotel, I’ll have been driving for 5 hours and will have spent about the same amount of time inspecting colonies or lifting cleared supers. I may also have squeezed in a couple of hours of meetings at work.

The environment might be noisy, but the beds are comfortable. 

But visits in late autumn are a bit different.

No colonies to inspect, no grafting to do, no nucs to check for mated queens and no supers to remove.

All I need to do is gently lift a few crownboards and pull out the Apivar strips now that treatment is complete.

So, what do I do for the rest of the day?

Long range weather forecasting

Is that an oxymoron?

I book my trips to Fife to fit in with what the bees need. To make the hotel affordable I book many weeks in advance.

I therefore put up with whatever the weather throws at me. Usually it works out OK.

Furthermore, as regular reader know, several hives are in a bee shed, so the weather is largely irrelevant.

But ~60% of them are outside.

And Monday was really wet. 

Having driven for four hours through increasingly heavy rain – stopping en route to make a honey delivery – I fortified myself with a cappuccino and excellent almond croissant from Taste, the best independent coffee shop in St Andrews 4.

Essential fortifications

I then sat in the shed enjoying my late breakfast listening to the rain hammering on the roof.

I needed something to occupy me until either:

  • the rain stopped
  • it got so late in the day that I’d just have to open the hives and remove the strips anyway

And the obvious thing to do was a bit of spring autumn cleaning. 

During the season the bee shed is used on a daily or weekly basis depending upon the experiments underway. In addition, we have a storage shed on the same site and a number of additional hives in the same apiary. I also do most of my queen rearing in this apiary (the bee shed provides a near-perfect environment for grafting), distributing the nucs to other apiaries for mating.

And all that beekeeping tends to leave a bit of a mess. At least, it does where I’m involved.

Super job

For the last couple of years I’ve not bothered returning the extracted supers to the hives for the bees to recover the last of the honey.

Instead I’ve just stacked them ‘wet’ in the shed, protected from wasps, mice and robbing bees, by covering the top of the stack with a well-fitting roof.

Or a snug-fitting crownboard and a badly fitting roof.

Stacked ‘wet’ supers

Experience has taught me that the floor of the shed isn’t level and/or has gaps between the planking. Rather than seal all these gaps I simply stand the stack of boxes on the sort of closed cell foam sheeting used for packing furniture, or – when I run out – on double thicknesses of cardboard 5. This stops the wasps, ants and bees from getting access. 

So I started by tidying the stacks of supers. Inevitably this necessitated moving them first, sweeping the floor clean, laying out the foam/cardboard and then restacking them. There’s not enough space in the shed to move ~60 supers so they went out in the rain.

So I got wet 🙁

Floors, roofs, boards, unidentifiable objects and wax moth

Once they were back I could turn my attention to the other side of the storage shed which houses spare roofs, nuc feeders, floors, boards (split, crown, surf, Morris, Snelgrove etc. 6 ), a breeding colony of queen excluders 7 and a motley collection of other items that:

  • might come in useful
  • don’t logically belong anywhere else
  • appear valuable and/or difficult to make … but I don’t know what they are
  • are essential and were needed several times in the season … but I’d lost them 🙁

Sorting this lot out took another hour or two, and involved a further soaking as I needed to clear the space before I could refill the space.

Early on in the process … 

Is beekeeping the largest volume hobby?

… and when at least partial order had been restored …

Floors from Abelo, Pete Little and some homemade abominations

I also found several brood boxes full of drawn comb or sealed stores.

Excellent 🙂

And I found a nuc box lurking in the far corner containing comb riddled with wax moth 🙁

Wax moth larvae and damage

Aargh!

DiPel DF

Wax moth are something I’ve largely avoided or ignored for most of the last decade. The cold winters in Scotland seem to keep their numbers down.

Not this time … 

All of the infested frames were bagged up for burning at the earliest opportunity. The remaining brood frames were treated with DiPel DF, a suspension of Bacillus thuringiensis kustaki spores and toxins. If ingested by the larvae of wax moths, the δ-endotoxin component dissolves in the alkaline environment of the gut, is activated following cleavage by gut proteases and then ‘punches’ a hole through the gut wall.

Ouch.

And the spores germinate, allowing the bacteria to grow inside the larva.

As I wrote in a post several years ago about this treatment:

This isn’t good for the moth larva. Not good at all. Actually, it’s probably a rather grisly end for the moth but, having seen the damage they can do to stored comb, my sympathy is rather limited.

DiPel DF is non-toxic for bees.

DiPel DF

I’ve not had problems with wax moth infesting supers stored ‘wet’ … they’re after the old cocoons and other rubbish that accumulates in brood frames.

Vita used to sell a product called B401 – also a suspension of Bacillus thuringiensis spores and proteins – which was withdrawn from sale in 2019. Despite assurances that a replacement – imaginatively labelled B402 – would be available ‘soon’ it appears to only currently be sold in the US.

Out with the old … and the not fit for purpose

I was on a roll … 

All this organisation meant I discovered things that I’d lost … like a small stack of contact feeders hiding in the corner that had not been used this season as I hadn’t done any shook swarms.

There they are! Contact feeders lurking shyly in the furthest corner (unlike those brazen frame feeders at the front)

I also found some mini-nucs I’d built for queen mating almost 10 years ago. They were made of ply and housed a tri-fold full-size brood frame (you can now buy these, but couldn’t when I built them). 

Tri-fold brood frame

However, the ply was starting to delaminate and it was pretty clear that they wouldn’t survive a Scottish summer season so they were unceremoniously binned.

And I finally bit the bullet and got rid of all my XP Plus queen excluders. These were bought from Thorne’s a few years ago and had been used only when I ran out of everything else.

In principle they are a good idea. A white plastic queen excluder with bee space on the underside provided by a raised rim and a series of small X-shaped spacers that stand on the top bars.

XP Plus queen excluder (the plus must mean ‘plus warp’)

However, in practice, they’re rubbish. They were the ‘ugly’ in my 2017 description of queen excluders that included the phrase ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’.  

They warp really badly. The photo above – if anything – obscures the warp because the QE is not being held flat. When you place them under a super the centre bows up and contacts the underside of the super frames.

Rubbish. 

Out they went.

The little things

There’s something rather poignant about the death throes of the beekeeping season. It can end with a bang as autumn storms roll in, or it can end in a protracted stutter as intermittent good days allow the bees to forage late into October. 

Of course, it’s au revoir 8 and not a final goodbye

It forms such a large part of my life for six months of the year that little things found during the clear-out bring back a flood of memories …

Nicot cup and (partly squidged) queen cell amongst the debris on the shed floor

A Nicot cup and vacated queen cell reminded me what a good queen rearing season we’d had on the east coast. Although the first round of grafting was a near-total failure, successive rounds were excellent, and queen mating was very successful. One of the best seasons in memory 9.

Coffee stirrer … or AFB test kit

Not all the memories were good ones though. I received one of the dreaded ‘AFB alert’ warnings for the apiary and spent a very long couple of days checking every cell on every brood frame in every colony, and testing any that looked suspicious.

I don’t take sugar, and the coffee stirrer shown above is provided in the AFB LFD kit to lift the dodgy-looking larva into a tube for analysis. Everything looked clear, but it gave me a few very stressful days.

And … after all that tidying, and repeated trips to the industrial-scale bins, it finally stopped raining.

Finally … some practical beekeeping

I fired up the smoker and quickly, but gently, removed all the Apivar strips. The crownboards on all the hives were very firmly stuck down with propolis and the bees, although calm, weren’t exactly overjoyed to see me.

Autumn still life – smoker, hive tool, Varroa trays and Apivar strips

I still had another apiary to visit. With rain threatening there wasn’t time to monitor the level of brood present so I slipped cleaned Varroa trays under the hives. This will allow me to inspect both residual mite drop and look for the presence of the characteristic biscuit-coloured cappings when brood is uncapped.

And then, after about half an hour of practical beekeeping, I set off back to the west coast as the rain started again.

The Moidart hills – An Stac, Rois-Bheinn and Sgùrr na Ba Glaise

Two days later the Moidart hills had their first dusting of snow.

It’s official, autumn is here and the beekeeping season is over.


 

Fondant fancies

My colonies are all busy piling in the calories in preparation for winter.

Late season supers hiding fondant blocks

Late season supers hiding fondant blocks

As always, at this time of the year I only feed my colonies using bakers fondant. This is exactly the same stuff you get on the top of iced buns. It’s available plastic-wrapped and boxed in 12.5kg blocks from a variety of sources ranging from your friendly local baker to wholesale food suppliers.

I purchase it on a pallet with friends in my local beekeeping association. If you buy enough delivery is free and this year we’ve been paying about £10.50 per block (12.5kg) when purchasing about half a metric tonne.

It’s worth buying in bulk as it keeps well. Store it somewhere dry and cool. Don’t stack it more than 3-4 blocks high if it’s likely to get warm … we kept some in the bee shed for a year and the boxes at the bottom of the pile were horribly misshapen after a warm summer. Next year sugar prices might be significantly more and it will always come in.

300kg of fondant

300kg of fondant

Convenience foods

I’ve discussed the benefits of feeding fondant in 2014 and 2016. Many of the benefits can be grouped under the heading of convenience.

  1. It’s easy to transport, easy to store, keeps well and is ready to use.
  2. Takes minutes (or less) to add to a hive.
  3. Needs no specialised feeders (so there’s also nothing to be stored for the other 11 months of the year).

However, as important, I think there are significant beekeeping benefits from feeding fondant.

  1. Compatible with most/all autumn Varroa treatments – sublimation, Amitraz, Apiguard etc.
  2. No spillages … so less risk of encouraging robbing by wasps or bees.
  3. Taken down more slowly than syrup, so leaving space in the brood box for the all-important rearing of late-season brood for overwintering.

Feeding fondant

Full-sized colonies get an entire block of fondant in late summer. As described previously, simply slice the block in half using a breadknife (or spade), open it up like a book and place it face down on top of the frames.

Do not remove the plastic. Leave it in place to stop the fondant drying out. The bees access it from below and – in due course – leave an empty ‘husk’ of blue plastic that can be removed late in the year 1.

Adding the fondant block takes seconds and, with a very small amount of smoke, barely disturbs the colony.

Sticky stuff

The fondant block is heavy and sticky. If, for whatever reason, you want to access the hive whilst you’re feeding the colony do not place the fondant directly on top of the frames 2.

Abelo poly National crownboard ...

Abelo poly National crownboard …

You probably don’t need to conduct inspections this late in the season, but there may be reasons you need to go into the brood box. If this is the case make your life easier by putting the fondant face down on top of a framed wire queen excluder 3. You can then simply lift the entire block off, do what you need to do, and replace it very easily.

I use a lot of Abelo hives and they have a rather fussy crownboard. It turns out these are ideal for feeding fondant. Simply pop out a few of the ventilated disks and add the fondant on top. The crownboard is rigid and so can easily be lifted off if needed and the bees have no problems accessing the fondant.

Headspace

A fondant block is about 17x17x31 cm. Cut in half it’s therefore a little over 8cm thick. You need to provide space to accommodate this under the crownboard and roof.

The simplest solution is to use an empty super. Alternatively, the insulated crownboards I use are reversible and provide 5cm of headspace. I either use these with a simple eke, or – by judicious use of a wellington boot and my weight (!) – squash the fondant block until it’s 5cm thick.

Either way I try and keep the top of the hive insulated and warm (for example, using polystyrene supers and/or insulation over the crownboard) so that the bees continue to take the fondant down even if the temperature outside is dropping.

Feeding nucs

Although I own a few Miller-type feeders for nucs I generally feed fondant directly in the nuc brood box, taking advantage of the inbuilt feeder in the Everynucs I favour.

Fondant blocks for nucs

Fondant blocks for nucs

These have a limited capacity so I prepare blocks of fondant wrapped in clingfilm and add them as the bees finish the last block off.

Everynuc fondant topup

Everynuc fondant topup

As long as the feeding compartment is largely vacant you can easily prise up the plastic crownboard and slide a couple of blocks of unwrapped fondant into the feeder.

Relax

That’s it.

It’s all over.

With colonies treated for Varroa 4 and fed for winter, now is the time to take a holiday.

Serra de Tramuntana, Mallorca

Serra de Tramuntana, Mallorca

Which is what I’m now doing 😉


Colophon

If you came here looking for a recipe for fondant fancies and have had to wade through paragraphs of irrelevant beekeeping information then I recommend you try these by Mary Berry.

Mary Berry's fondant fancies

Mary Berry’s fondant fancies

They think it’s all over!

We’re gently but inexorably segueing into early autumn after an excellent beekeeping season. The rosebay willow herb is almost over, the farmers are busy taking in the harvest and colonies are – or should be – crowded with under-occupied workers.

Rosebay willow herb

Rosebay willow herb

Drones are being ejected, wasps are persistently looking for access and there’s a long winter – or at least non-beekeeping period – ahead.

There’s a poignancy now in being in the apiary conducting the last few inspections of the season. Only a few short weeks ago, during late May and early June, the apiary was a scene of frenetic productivity … or complete turmoil, depending upon your level of organisation or competence.

Now there’s little activity as there’s not much forage available.

Colonies are busy doing nothing.

The most important time of the season

But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to do.

Rather, I’d argue that late August and early September is probably the most important period during the beekeeping year.

However well or badly the season progressed, this is the time that colonies have to be prepared for the coming winter. With good preparation, colonies will come through the winter well. They’ll build up strongly in spring and be ready to exploit the early season nectar flows.

In Fife, this is about 8 months away 🙁

This explains the poignancy.

There are some colonies inspected last weekend that probably won’t get properly opened again until mid/late April 2019. Queens I saw for the first time in August won’t get marked or clipped until next spring 1.

Au revoir!

Spot the queen ...

Spot the queen …

To survive the winter and build up well in the spring the colony has few requirements. But they are important. A lack of attention now can result in the loss of the colony later.

To appreciate their needs it’s important to understand what the colony does during the winter.

Suspended animation

Honey bees don’t hibernate in winter. In cold weather (under ~7°C) they cluster tightly to conserve energy and protect the queen and any brood in the colony.

At higher temperatures the cluster breaks but they largely remain within the hive. After all, there’s little or no forage available, so they use their honey and pollen stores.

The fat-bodied overwintering bees that are reared in autumn have a very different physiology to the ephemeral summer workers. The latter have a life-expectancy of 5-6 weeks whereas overwintering bees can live for many months 2.

But they’re not immortal.

Throughout the winter there’s a slow and steady attrition of these workers. As they die off the clustered colony gradually reduces in volume, shrinking from the size of a medicine ball, to a football, to a grapefruit … you get the picture.

Some brood rearing does occur. The queen often stops laying after the summer nectar flows stop 3 and laying might be sporadic through the autumn, dependent upon weather and forage availability.

Late summer brood frame from a nuc ...

Late summer brood frame from a nuc …

However, by the turn of the year she starts laying again. At a much reduced level to her maximum rate, but laying nevertheless and, with sufficient workers in the colony and as forage become available, this rate will increase.

The amount of brood reared during the winter period (late autumn to early spring) isn’t enough to make up for the losses that occur through attrition. This explains why colonies are much smaller in the spring than the early autumn.

Strong, healthy, well-provisioned and weathertight

Knowing what’s happening in the colony during the winter makes the requirements that must be met understandable.

  • Strong colonies start the winter with ample bees. Assuming the same attrition rate, a larger colony will get through the winter stronger than a smaller one. There will be more workers available to ‘reach’ stores (I’ll deal with this in the next week or two) and keep the queen and brood warm. Hence there will be more foragers to exploit the early crocus, snowdrop and willow.
  • Healthy colonies will have a lower attrition rate. The overwintering workers will live longer. High levels of deformed wing virus (DWV) are known to shorten the life of winter bees. To minimise the levels of DWV you must reduce the levels of Varroa in the colony. Critically, you must protect the overwintering bees from Varroa exposure. Treat too late in the season and they will already be heavily infected …
  • Well-provisioned colonies have more than enough stores to survive the winter. The clustered colony will have to move relatively short distances to access the stores. As a beekeeper, you won’t have to constantly meddle with the colony, lifting the lid and crownboard to add additional stores in midwinter.
  • Weathertight colonies will be protected from draughts and damp 4.The hive must be weathertight and, preferably, not situated in a frost pocket or damp location 5.

Winter preparation

Once the honey supers are off all activities in the apiary are focused on ensuring that these four requirements for successful overwintering are achieved in a timely manner.

Clearing bees from wet supers ...

Clearing bees from wet supers …

Weak colonies are united with strong colonies. At this stage in the season – other than disease – the main reason a colony is likely to be weak is because the queen isn’t up to the job. If she’s not now, what chance has the colony got over the winter or early spring? 6

Varroa treatment is started as early as reasonably possible with the intention of protecting the overwintering bees from the ravages of DWV. This means now, not early October. Use an appropriate treatment and use it correctly. Apiguard, oxalic acid (Api-Bioxal), Apivar etc. … all have been discussed extensively here previously. All are equivalently effective if used correctly.

All colonies get at least one block (12.5kg) of bakers fondant, opened like a book and slapped (gently!) on the tops of the frames. An eke or an empty super provides the ‘headspace’ for the fondant block. All of the Varroa treatments listed above are compatible with this type of feeding simultaneously 7.

Hopefully, hives are already weathertight and secure. Other than strapping them to the hive stands to survive winter gales there’s little to do.

They think it’s all over!?

It is … almost 🙂


Colophon

They think it’s all over! is a quote by Kenneth Wolstenholme made in the closing stages of the 1966 World Cup final. Some fans had spilled onto the pitch just before Geoff Hurst scored the the last goal of the match (England beat West Germany 4-2 after extra time), which Wolstenholme announced with “It is now, it’s four!”. This was the only World Cup final England have reached, whereas Germany have won four.

As Gary Lineker says “Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.”

Robbery

Robber

Robber

Another apiculture-flavoured tale of daylight robbery, literally, to follow the post on hive and bee thefts last week.

However, this time it’s not dodgy bee-suited perps with badly inked prison tats offering cheap nucs down the Dog and Duck.

Like other offenders, the robbers this week wear striped apparel, but this time it’s dark brown and tan, or brown and yellow or black and yellow.

I am of course referring to honey bees and wasps (Vespa vulgaris and V. germanica), both of which can cause major problems at this time of year by robbing weak colonies.

Carb loading

The season here – other than for those who have taken colonies to the heather – is drawing to a close. The main nectar sources have more or less dried up in the last fortnight. There’s a bit of rosebay willow herb and bramble in the hedgerows and some himalayan balsam in the river valleys, but that’s about it.

Colonies are strong, or should be. With the dearth of nectar in the fields, the foragers turn their attention to other colonies as a potential source of carbohydrates. Colonies need large amounts of stores to get through the winter and evolution has selected a behavioural strategy – robbing of weaker colonies – to get as much carbohydrate from the easiest possible sources.

Like the nucs you carefully prepared for overwintering 🙁

At the same time, wasps are also wanting to pile in the carbs before winter 1. In the last fortnight the wasp numbers in my apiaries and equipment stores have increased significantly.

Jekyll and Hyde

Within a few days in late summer/early autumn the mood and attitude of colonies in the apiary changes completely.

During a strong nectar flow the bees single-mindedly pile in the stores. They alight, tail-heavy, on the landing board, enter the hive, unload and set out again. There’s a glut and they ignore almost anything other than bingeing on it. Inspections are easy. Most bees are out foraging and they are – or should be – well-tempered and forgiving. 

Laden foragers returning ...

Laden foragers returning …

But then the nectar flow, almost overnight, stops.

Colonies become markedly more defensive. They are packed with bees and they’re tetchy. There’s nothing to distract them, they resent the intrusion and they want to protect their hard-won stores 2.

At the same time, they quickly become more inquisitive, investigating any potential new source of sugar. If you shake the bees off a frame and leave it standing against the leg of the hive stand there will be dozens of foragers – many from nearby colonies – gorging themselves on the nectar.

If you spill unripened nectar from a frame they’re all over it, quickly forming a frenzied mass – probably from several different hives – scrabbling to ‘fill their boots’.

They also closely investigate anything that smells of nectar or honey. Stacks of equipment, empty supers, hive tools, the smoker bellows … anything.

Robbing

And it’s this behaviour that can quickly turn into robbing.

The foragers investigate a small, dark entrance that smells of honey … like a nuc in the corner of the apiary. They enter unchallenged or after a little argy-bargy 3, find the stores, stuff themselves, go back to their colony and then return mob-handed.

Before long, the nuc entrance had a writhing mass of bees trying to get in, any guards present are soon overwhelmed and, in just a few hours, it’s robbed out and probably doomed.

This is the most obvious – and rather distressing – form of robbing. Wasps can do almost exactly the same thing, with similarly devastating consequences.

Prevention is better than cure

Once started (and obvious), robbing is difficult to stop. About the only option is to seal the target hive and remove it to another apiary a good distance away.

Far better to prevent it happening in the first place.

The best way of preventing robbing is to maintain large, strong and healthy colonies. With ample bees there are ample guards and the colony will be able to defend itself from both bees and wasps. Strong colonies are much more likely to be the robbers than the robbed.

For smaller colonies in a full-sized hive, or nucleus colonies or – and these are the most difficult of all to defend – mini-nucs used for queen mating, it’s imperative to make the hive easy to defend and minimise attracting robbers to the apiary in the first place.

The underfloor entrances on kewl floors are much easier to defend than a standard entrance and small entrances are easier to defend than large ones. ‘Small’ might mean as little as one bee-width … i.e. only traversable by a single bee at a time.

Smaller is better ...

Smaller is better …

You can even combine the two; insert a 9mm thick piece of stripwood into the Kewl floor entrance to reduce the space to be defended to a centimetre or two. If – as happened tonight when returning wet supers to the hives – I don’t have a suitable piece of stripwood in the apiary I use a strip of gaffer tape to reduce the entrance 4.

Gaffer tape is also essential to maintain the integrity of the hive if some of the supers are a bit warped. Wasps can squeeze through smaller holes than bees and the quick application of a half metre along the junction between boxes can save the day 5.

The poly nucs I favour have a ridiculously large entrance which I reduce by 90% using foam blocks, dried grass, gaffer tape, wire mesh or Correx.

Correx, the beekeepers friend ...

Correx, the beekeepers friend …

Don’t tempt them

Finally, reduce the inducement robbers – whether bees or wasps – have to investigate everything in the apiary by not leaving open sources of nectar, not spilling honey or syrup, clearing up brace comb and ensuring any stored equipment is ‘bee proof’.

You don’t need to inspect as frequently at this time of the season. The queen will have reduced her laying rate and colonies are no longer expanding. With no nectar coming in they should have sufficient space in the brood nest. There’s little chance they will swarm.

If you don’t need to inspect, then don’t. The ability to judge this comes with experience.

If you do have to inspect (to find, mark and clip a late-season mated queen for example 6 do not leave the colony open for longer than necessary. Any supers that are temporarily removed should be secured so bees and wasps cannot access them.

Wet supers

If you’re returning wet supers after extraction, do it with the minimum disruption late in the evening. These supers absolutely reek of honey and attract robbers from far and wide. Keep the supers covered – top and bottom – gently lift the crownboard, give them a tiny puff of smoke, place the supers on top, replace the roof and leave them be.

Returning wet supers

Returning wet supers …

In my experience wet supers are the most likely thing to trigger a robbing frenzy. I usually reduce the entrance at the same time I put the wet supers back and try to add wet supers to all the colonies in the apiary on the same evening 7.

I generally don’t inspect colonies until the supers are cleaned out and ready for storage.