Beekeeping - Short and Sweet

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Episode 81: Feeders for Beehives Oct 04, 2019

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 81 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. This week I’m looking at feeders for getting those all important stores into our colonies in time for the coming Autumn and Winter.
Catch up with more of my beekeeping journey by checking out the continually growing content list on my Patreon page www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

Welcome back everyone to another podcast and a special hello to everyone studying at Penn State University over in the USA, particularly, hello to my daughter Beth who’s studying at Penn State and who I’ve not seen since last Christmas although with Skype and FaceTime it sometimes feels like she never went away. Hi Beth, stay tuned cos I know you’re desperate to hear how I’m going to be feeding my bees this Autumn!

Before I get into the detail of the feeders here’s this weeks beekeeping update, a quieter week last week, colonies appear to have realised Summer is over and are settling down in preparation for the months ahead, not a single queen cell to be seen in any colony inspected and all of them appear to be queen right at long last. I did spend a hot sunny morning with Pete cutting away brambles from a neglected tractor at the Alpaca apiary. The tractor sits at the entrance to the apiary but for various reasons it hasn’t been used for a few years and Pete has had his eye on it for a while so I suggested to the owners they might like to move it on and that’s why Pete and I spent an hour cutting away brambles and nettles to reveal the tractor in all it’s glory. I have to say, I wouldn’t mind have a run around in it myself to cut down some of the nettles and thistles that have grown so high this summer, some of the thistles are six feet tall! I think they’ve done so well because the apiary also happens to be beside the alpaca poo pile, plenty of fertiliser feeding into the ground so everything is looking very lush.

Anyway, the plan is to get the tractor working again, it currently has a dead battery, and to then get the nettles, thistles and brambles around the apiary all chopped down before Pete makes off with the tractor, then at least I might be able to get a mower in and keep on top of it. The apiary also happens to be the last remaining orchard area of the old farm that once stood here and it’s full of pear trees, I’m hoping that if I can clear a few more trees we might get a crop of nice pears for next year. Maybe I’ll be allowed to have a drive of the tractor too, if that happens I’ll be sure to get the camera running as it’s likely to end badly, probably knocking hives and feeders full of syrup off stands!

With that thought in mind I should turn my attention to the main topic of today’s podcast that of feeders and feed for the bees in the Autumn. I guess firstly it would be useful to discuss why we feed at all during the Autumn months and it is fundamentally as a result of removing a honey crop from our bees. For me, it provides an income, albeit relatively small compared with many commercial bee farmers, and as such is an important part of my beekeeping practices. I know there are many hobbyist beekeepers who leave a super full of honey on their bees to overwinter and that’s fine, if you are one of those beekeepers then a lot of what I’m discussing simply won’t be relevant as you already have food stores set up on your hives. For other beekeepers who do want to take a honey crop from their bees for personal use or for friends and family it will probably mean reducing the amount of available food stores for your bees to what remains in the brood box unless of course you have had a good year and want to remove maybe just one or two supers and leave one behind for the bees. As with many tasks and processes in beekeeping there are many ways of doing things and provided you’re not reducing the bees to a level where they may starve out I don’t think any one method should be thou

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Episode 80 August Questions and Answers Sep 27, 2019

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Episode 79: Microscopes, What3Words and Pizza Sep 20, 2019

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 79 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. I’ve got lots happening this week, wasps robbing, starving bees, an emergency location system and it’s pizza night at the beekeeping group.

I recently posted a 60-second video to my Patreon page showing some wasps raiding a very weak colony, so weak in fact that the bees could do nothing to prevent the robbing. The colony was in fact a drone laying queen colony and was one I had decided to unite but the wasps got in first and fast! Within a week of checking them, they were all but dead and the wasps were on every frame stripping it bare.

The question then comes of what to do with the hive, I think I’ve mentioned before about leaving it, as removing it runs the risk of just having thousands of wasps suddenly finding themselves without a location to rob and moving on to the next unsuspecting colony, so that’s what I’ve done. I had the same situation at another apiary, the wasps do seem to have enjoyed a very good year this year, I suspect it was the very early start that we all benefitted from. Anyway, at this other location, I decided to shut the entrance and was going to remove the hive but at that time was suffering from a rather sore back so left it in place. When I returned a week later, I found that the wasps were able to squeeze through the varroa mesh floor and get inside. They were amazingly small wasps but even so, I was surprised that they were able to get in. I had decided to remove this colony from the apiary instead of leaving it because all of the other colonies were very strong and I don’t think the wasps would have had any chance of getting in at all. And this is a good point to dwell on and mention, particularly for beginner beekeepers, there are lots of books out there giving advice and even more so-called expert beekeepers giving even more advice and sometimes it can be difficult to see the wood from the trees, but no two situations will be exactly the same, or at least very rarely the same, and making a decision as to what to do can seem quite confusing. The advice I would give is to do nothing, well, at least to start with. If you’re unsure as to what you should do just pause and grab a drink, have a sit down and think about what you’re actually seeing, take on board all the words of wisdom you’ve read and advice you’ve been given and set it against what you actually have in your apiary and then make a choice about the course of action you what to take and the reasons why you’re doing what your doing.

You won’t always get it right but at least you will have had a good think about it and arrived at a reasoned decision. If it doesn’t go to plan, add it to the growing list of things you’ve tried, save the experience for the next time you’re confronted with a similar situation and give something else a go.

Still, on the subject of wasps, I’ve decided I’m not going to use any wasp traps anymore, of any sort, in fact, I don’t think I’ll use any traps of any sort, I’m thinking here of Asian Hornet traps as well.

I did put out a couple of wasp traps this year but they seem to gather in a wide range of insects other than the targeted wasps, it appears I’m killing a whole range of insects that really don’t deserve to be killed and as I’ve mentioned before, strong colonies don’t suffer from wasp problems. The reason for not using hornet traps is the same, and I’m not able to visit my apiaries on a daily basis to check them so it makes the exercise pointless really. I think I have more chance of spotting an Asian hornet hawking in front of the hives than catching one in a trap. It’s just my decision but I would say that most beekeepers would probably do better concentrating on making their colonies stronger than setting out traps to catch the Autumn wasp population along with a myriad of other innocent bystanders!

All the colonies that needed treatments now have the Apivar strips in them, I

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Episode 78: Cut Comb Honey, Tarts and Uniting Colonies Sep 13, 2019

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This week I’m in the honey room preparing cut comb and chunk honey, cleaning up after extraction week and I’ve also been in the kitchen cooking up a fabulous Honey, Taleggio Cheese and Red Onion Tart so keep listening for the recipe.

I’ve definitely seen a change in the activity within our colonies this last week, the local forage has all but disappeared and quite a number of our bees are now heading into urban gardens to seek out the strange and the unusual for those last few drops of nectar and tiny bundles of pollen.

One of the most unusual plants I’ve seen honeybees foraging on here locally is a giant spike of a flower which must measure at least three metres tall and is the thickness of a telegraph pole. It turned out to be a tree Echium, it was huge, if you get a chance to take a look online then do, it was enormous. It was actually at a local garden centre which specialises in exotic plants and while many of our native plants such as bramble are all but finished a lot of these plants seemed to be in full flower still. A real blessing for many different pollinators.

I’d like to plant one of these giant Echium’s but I don’t think my garden or wallet will take the strain, maybe I’ll stick with native varieties, Vipers Bugloss being the most well known I suspect.

It’s meant the bees are currently chasing around finding tiny amounts of forage and waiting for the Ivy to flower, I’ve actually seen some Ivy at the allotments apiary almost in flower, certainly, the buds are very swollen and ready, it won’t be long I’m sure. This presents a challenge to the bees and beekeeper where it is in large quantities. It’s a much needed Autumn, nectar and pollen source for the bees and they do really well on it until the temperatures cool down and at that point, the Ivy honey granulates solid in the comb making it quite difficult for some colonies to utilise effectively. In some colonies, it can form a solid block preventing bees from move over or around it to get to liquid honey. And this is where beekeepers who heft and don’t notice the hive hasn’t really become lighter through the winter find the bees had a full brood box of solid Ivy honey but starved.

Not all colonies struggle with Ivy and some seem to not only work it well but thrive on it through the colder months. It can also provide a late Autumn surplus for the beekeeper to harvest, I know a lot of beekeepers dislike the taste but actually, I find it a really nice flavour, strong tasting with a slightly medicinal finish, that sounds like a wine tasting! One trick you can use to reduce the strong flavour is to either blend it with other honey or leave it in the bucket for a few months when the strong taste seems to mellow somewhat. Either way, I really like it.

Back to this week though and some of my colonies have become quite grumpy, in fact, horribly grumpy, so much so I would class a couple of them as “double glovers”, it’s an expression that refers to the need to put on two pairs of nitrile gloves instead of the usual single pair. I made the mistake of picking up some supers for extraction without putting my boots on and cracking the supers off the clearer boards really wound them up and you just know they’re going to find the one vulnerable place you’ve left exposed! After several minutes of collecting supers with bees stinging my ankles I looked like I was walking barefoot across sun-baked sand, hopping and cursing as I went, funny now, but at the time, not so amusing!

The colonies will calm down again quite quickly, it’s that sudden loss of forage and this immediately followed by the beekeeper removing surplus honey that seems to get them a little feisty. We have the remaining treatments to put on this week, as I mentioned in previous podcasts we’re using Apivar and this needs to go in the hives after the honey has been removed hence the slight delay in some apiaries as we remove supers for extraction.

As we sorted through

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Episode 77 - Summer Extraction Time Sep 06, 2019

Show notes

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 77 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet.
Who’d have thought we’d be extracting honey so soon, the Summer season has flown by and I’m heading into the honey room to get set up to extract the Summer supers over the weekend? Listen on for a rundown of my extraction set up and how I extract from over sixty colonies in a room that measures just 3 metres square.
Check Out my Patreon Page HERE
Equipment discussed in today's Podcast:
Stainless Steel Tables
Scales
Apimelter
Brush Uncapper
Extractor
Double Strainer
100kg Settling Tank
Honey Creamer
Bottling Machine

Before we head into the honey room I wanted to say a big thank you to Craig from Jedburgh, one of our Patreon supporters who very kindly drove down to Norfolk this week to spend a few days helping out and inspecting bees. Craig is new to beekeeping and has been absorbing all or my videos and podcasts on Patreon and offered to lend a hand for a few days so not wanting to turn away any help I swapped around the workload a little so we could get over to the workshop and clean up the rather large stack of frames and boxes that needed cleaning instead of extracting honey.

A lot of the boxes are left over from the early season oilseed rape extraction where we had to cut out the comb and honey as it had granulated in the frames and couldn’t be extracted in the normal way. This leaves lots of frames that need to be roughly scrapped and tied into bundles before being boiled and cleaned ready to take fresh foundation in the Spring next year before going back out onto the hives. We also scrape out the supers and scorch them lightly as part of our ongoing disease management and this also entails removing frame runners and either washing them before replacing or if they’re too badly damaged we replace them. I think I might have mentioned before that I’m switching my super frames over to Manley frames, these are the straight, wide sided frames instead of the more traditional SN1’s or SN4’s, SN1’s are the narrow straight sided frames for supers and SN4’s are the Hoffman style spacing. It’s interesting that there are so many different types of frames that you could use and each beekeeper no doubt has a favourite. The same applies to the frame runners in the supers, I’ve always used castellated runners with set spacing for ten frames although I have tried eleven and nine frame runners. The point here is you start of using frames with foundation that have eleven frames meaning the frames are placed closer together and hopefully the bees draw out the foundation perfectly straight before progressing to ten frame runners and finally nine frame runners thereby getting more honey per frame which ultimately means less frames to extract.

The trouble with this is if you have more than a few supers it can get a bit confusing when you think you’ve got ten frame spacing and it’s eleven or nine. Add to that the need to get everything organised and in it’s prope

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Episode 76: Thoughts for August Aug 30, 2019

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 76 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. August has arrived and it’s time to start thinking about jobs that need to be completed in order to prepare the colonies for the colder months ahead.

Another week and it’s been a period of changeable weather, a few more thundery showers mixed in with some bright, warm Summery days, fairly typical for the time of year really. We seem to have moved on from the heatwave and I don’t think we’ll see temperatures of that order again this Summer, never say never of course but the next few weeks look like being “Unsettled” as the weather presenters on tv would say.

The ongoing saga of the newly mated queen that was attacked and recovered to mate and start laying eggs continues. I inspected the nuc a few days ago and found the queen had settled down and was laying, but not as rapidly as I would have hoped and there were a couple of frames that had plenty of space but no eggs. I actually spotted her and watch for some time and she wandered around the frame of empty cells dipping her head into an occasional cell but seemingly unimpressed with it walked on without laying. She did this for several minutes and I didn’t see her lay a single egg. Now, this could be down to several reasons but on the very next frame, I found a partially drawn queen cell with a growing larvae inside and on the next frame a sealed queen cell. Both queen cells were in what would be traditionally viewed as supercedure queen cell positions, about a third down from the top bar roughly central in the frame. It then becomes a guessing game to decide what the bees are up to. Is there a problem with the queen that isn’t visible to me, has she an issue in laying eggs, there were certainly eggs in cells so she hadn’t stopped entirely and they were definitely fertilised eggs producing workers. Sometimes we just have to accept the bees know best and let them get on with it. So I took the decision that indeed the bees know best and that these were in fact a supercedure cells and not swarm cells and left one of them to see what happens. I posted a video of the inspection to my Patreon page so do take a look at it there.

I also discovered a potential problem with some of the other newly emerged virgin queens last week. These were the ones we’ve been holding back in the hair roller cages as part of the Nicot system. It was time to release the queens from the cages and having experienced the attack on the first queen when I used the sugar syrup dunk method I decided to simply plug the end of the cage with fondant and let the bees gradually eat their way through to release the queen. Well, I checked last weekend and to my horror, the cap on the end of the roller cage, which is permanently attached to the cage by a small tab, had managed to curl back round and block the bees from getting to the fondant. This obviously meant the queen couldn’t get out either so I took the decision to release them onto a frame by uncapping them and running them down onto the brood frame. It worked fine, fine in all cases except one. This particular queen was in a super hurry to get out and no sooner than I’d opened the end of the cage, she was out, wings beating furiously, and in a flash, she was gone! She took to the air and disappeared over the blackberry bushes. I did that, desperate, childlike jumping in the air trying to catch her with my hands kind of move but she was too fast and was gone. It must have looked quite comical looking back at it. Oh well, these things happen.

The remaining queens all released without incident so I’m anticipating there will be eggs and young larvae the next time I inspect. Not like the earlier season matings which had been very protracted and in a lot of cases unsuccessful. I’ve mentioned it before but this year has seen a lot of Drone Laying Queens again but predominantly from the Spring matings, the Summer bred queens have all mated successfully

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Episode 75: Summer Heatwave and Varroa Treatments Aug 23, 2019

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 75 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

I’m sat in my office preparing this week’s podcast in 32 degrees heat which for us beekeepers here in Norfolk in the UK is somewhat uncomfortable but as I gradually melt my thoughts are turning to Late Summer Treatments in preparation for the coming Autumn and Winter months ahead. I’d like to share with you my plans for treating my bees against varroa and talk a little about preparing my bees for the colder months ahead.
Veterinary Medicines For Honeybees can be found listed HERE
Thorne Beekeeping Supplies for Apivar Varroa Treatment
Check Out my new weekly podcasts each week as they are released here

It’s been another interesting week of beekeeping, the hottest so far this Summer and it’s seen me heading out super early to carry out inspections before dashing back to shade and shelter away from the burning sun. It’s no over-exaggeration to say it can be quite dangerous being out beekeeping in such conditions and while I understand many beekeepers tend their bees in these kinds of conditions on a regular basis when you’re not familiar with this kind of heat and humidity it can catch you out quite quickly. Dehydration being the number one problem I think, so having plenty of drinks has helped. Of course, if you only have a couple of hives to inspect you can delay inspecting until the cooler part of the late evening or perhaps get up a little earlier and get started before the sun gets too hot. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, inspecting from 6:30 in the morning until about 10 o’clock or thereabouts. By that time the heat is really starting to hit home and I struggle to see the bees through the sweat in my eyes! Even with the 70’s style bandana, I struggle so it makes sense to just stop and go back another time.

Most of my colonies will be fine if left alone, not many are attempting to swarm now so I’m happy to leave them an extra day or so.

You might recall from last week’s podcast that I had to reduce a virgin queen from a queenless nuc colony that set upon her and would have surely killed her if not for my intervention, I popped her back into the hair roller cage with a plug of fondant and crossed my fingers in the hope she would be uninjured and able to be accepted, get out and mate and settle into building a colony of her own. Well, I went back at the weekend and had a look fully expecting her to be either dead or too seriously damaged to be able to mate but I was very pleasantly surprised to see that not only was she alive but she had indeed been out to mate, had successfully returned and was already laying eggs by the frame load. It must have been a very quick mating from being released from the cage, especially when compared to quite a number of queens this year who seem to have taken forever to start laying. But I’m so happy she survived and I’ll now need to move them over to a larger box so she can continue to build the colonies strength.

In other news, my queen mother that was donating all of the eggs for my queen rearing program disappeared last week, she finally got the better of me and swarmed. It’s the first few weeks I’ve seen swarm cells in that colony and thought I had removed all of the swarm cells but obviously missed one. I can’t be too disappointed as she was a yellow dot queen and it was the first time this colony had tried swarming in almost three years, I guess I must have become complacent in thinking they were never going to swarm. The good news is, I’ve been able to raise several batches of queens from her so she lives on in her daughters, all that remains now is to assess how these queens dev

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Ben's Swarm Question S2:E28 Aug 09, 2019

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 74 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet.
Catch up with the latest episodes HERE

This week I’m following up on a question posted by one of our Patrons regarding swarm management and general inspections through the active season. If inspecting your bee hive gives you a feeling of impending doom each time, stay tuned and I’ll hopefully give you some pointers to make the whole task more relaxed.

Before we get into the detail of Ben’s question I thought I’d recap on another busy week. Queen rearing has been interesting this week, we had half a dozen emerged virgin queens trapped in the Nicot hair roller cages that needed to be moved into queenless nucs and I attempted a new method of introduction which involved liberally covering the virgin queen with sugar syrup and simply letting her run onto a frame whereby the workers would get stuck into the sugar syrup and start cleaning the new queen thus accepting her and not attacking her.

This is the first time I’ve attempted something like this but the benefits of a successful introduction means saving a few days compared to a normal caged introduction. Having set up the nuc as queenless the day before I did as instructed and pretty much covered the queen in syrup, bless her, she really was covered, the syrup ran down onto the frame where the workers immediately started cleaning it up. I took this was the opportunity to run the virgin queen onto the same frame in the middle of the syrup and sure enough, the workers immediately set about licking the sugar syrup off the queen and generally cleaning her up. Success, I have to say I was feeling pretty smug about the whole operation and particularly glad that we had chosen to capture the exercise on video to post to the Patreon site for everyone to see.

That was until about twenty seconds after I ran the queen out of the cage and into the syrup. It all seemed fine but then one worker took exception to this new queen in their presence and started harassing her, first the worker climbed all over her and then started curling down her abdomen to try to sting her, I left it for a couple of seconds longer as it was only one worker but this worker obviously didn’t like her proposed new queen because when she couldn’t get enough purchase to sting her she started to bite her and it became more and more vicious and frantic. Then another worker decided to join in and that for me was enough. I wasn’t going to stand by and watch them attack my beautiful new virgin queen. The problem was the instigator of the attack had now got such a strong bite of the virgin queen's wing when I picked up the worker the queen came with her. I actually had to walk away from the nuc and spend several seconds encouraging the worker to let go which she did eventually and I was able to get he virgin queen safely into a cage for her own protection.

Now as I said, I’ve not attempted this before so it’s all been very new to me. Having considered everything I did, I have come to the conclusion that firstly, the nuc was far too large for the introduction of this virgin queen in this manner and secondly maybe I should have left them queenless for a longer period of time before trying to introduce a virgin queen who’s pheromones are not as strong as a fully mated queen, who knows. Suffice to say, the rest of the virgin queens for introduction were put into cages and introduced in a more traditional way. I’ll be back to check on them over the weekend so we’ll see if they’ve been released and accepted or not.

It’s been the last push to getting supers on colonies where needed, always a tricky proposition as I don’t like giving them too much space now we’re heading to the end of the Summer nectar flow. I want the bees to fill every last space in the supers they have before they move on to another one otherwise they’ll have supers half-filled and u

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July's Beekeeping Questions and Answers S2:E27 Aug 02, 2019

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 73 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

It’s our monthly Questions and Answers session today so stay tuned for some cracking questions and hopefully my helpful replies.

Before we get into the questions my weekly round-up has the distinct taste of disaster about it and not really about beekeeping! As you may have seen by the pictures I’ve posted, the Ranger pick up has had yet another major malfunction, this time it’s the clutch. I was driving along quite happily, had to change down a gear and that was followed by a bang and very rough grinding sound and feel as if I had missed putting it into gear properly. So I took it out of gear and it wouldn’t go back in. I pulled over to the side of the road and discovered a puddle of what I guess was clutch fluid beneath the engine bay. It’s beginning to feel like I’m rebuilding the truck this year, anyway, I was lucky to be able to get the truck transported back to the local garage where it remains currently waiting to have a new clutch fitted. Another major hole in my wallet, oh well.

I must get back to the queen rearing apiary by the weekend though as I have six developing queen cells in one of the queen rearing colonies and they will be well capped and getting ready to emerge. The last thing I want is for those to emerge and destroy each other before I get a chance to sort them out. As with most things in queen rearing, once you start the clock ticking you can’t easily put everything on hold.

First up is Simon Rice, who asks

When queen rearing with larvae transfers, how do you stop the wax builders from creating burr comb between and around your queen cells please? I have had a number of attempts to raise queen cells this summer and each time they have enveloped the queen cells in this way.

Thank you.

Hi Simon and many thanks for your question;

This is an all too familiar issue when queen rearing and I’ve struggled with this problem myself including this season where I had three perfectly viable queen cells completely encased in brace comb. I spoke to a fellow queen rearing beekeeper who suggested putting a frame of foundation in a couple of frames away from the queen cells to give them something to draw out and the last time I tried it they worked the foundation and not the queen cells, so it might just be the answer! Give it a try and see how you get on.

Next up is a question from Ben Hoen who says,

For me as a new beekeeper, this year has been hard. I overwintered all three of my hives, but two swarmed early in the year when I was at work, and then both threw after swarms too while I was away. One of those did not successfully re-mate so it is hopelessly queenless currently, and the other I am waiting to find out if it mated successfully.

It would be helpful to get a general description for swarm management. For example, how often do you inspect the hives? How thorough of an inspection to do you make? (every frame, or just by tipping the box up) Do you shake the bees off the frames during an inspection, or do you find you can do what you need while still having a frame covered with bees? Other than queen cups, what are you looking for? If you find any queen cups do you knock them down? Is there anything else you can do to reduce the likelihood of swarming? For example, if you learn to "give them more space" do you find that swarm pressures are usually eliminated? Finally, on this last point, can you outline some of the methods you rely on to "give them more space"? Thanks!!!

Wow, Ben, that’s quite a question, and one I’m going to save for next week. You ask some really important questions and it would take up an entire podcast to go through all of your questions with the fullest of answers. So, all I would say is, be patient, hold on until next week and

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Another July, Another Beekeeping Jobs List S2:E26 Jul 26, 2019

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 72 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. It’s July and the final month of our Summer nectar flow, the bees are busy filling Supers and we’ve been hit by another bout of CBPV. There are jobs that need attention for this month too, so keep listening for this week's updates.

Welcome back to another weekly podcast and we somehow find ourselves in July and what is for me the final month of our Summer honey production. I’ve moved all of the bees back to their permanent apiary sites and were in the process now of assessing colonies in preparation for the Autumn shutdown. It might seem a little early to be thinking of the coming Autumn and Winter but believe me, it will soon be here and if you’ve not got yourself prepared those precious few weeks in the late Autumn will become a panic as you try to treat and feed bees to ensure a successful Winter period.
If you're interested in submitting honey samples to the National Honey Monitoring Scheme check out their website here

There are, of course, jobs to do this month too but they all lead to setting up colonies to survive the darker months and ensure strong colonies for next Spring.

I was visited this week by a fellow beekeeper from Australia was explaining that they have active bees foraging for around 11 months of the year, imagine that! To have flying bees pretty much all year round and no really cold months seems on the face of it a perfect scenario but I’m sure it brings its own challenges. This past week has also brought some interesting beekeeping letters through the post, I recently signed up to the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology’s National Honey Monitoring Scheme, looking at their website for some details to share I found their introduction pretty much explains exactly what they are doing.

The National Honey Monitoring Scheme aims to use honeybees to monitor long-term changes in the condition and health of the UK countryside. However, we need the help of beekeepers if this scheme is to work. Initially set up in 2018, the Honey Monitoring Scheme is a long-term programme that uses advanced analytical techniques to identify the species of plant pollen present in honey samples. This will tell us what bees are feeding on in different parts of the country and at different times of year. This information will help us identify possible threats to bees linked with floral resources.

The CEH website goes on to explain what the scheme will do:

State-of-the-art analysis: using DNA metabarcoding and high precision mass spectrometry of honey samples
Sample archive: for future research developing new analytics, such as disease detection
Provide feedback to participating beekeepers
Generate robust scientific data to inform future policy decisions

So I received a submissions pack which contains a couple of tubes that they need filled with honey samples and from that they can identify exactly the plants my bees have been foraging on. What’s is really exciting is that they will share this information with me onece the testing has been completed. Due to the size and complexity of the project I won’t get the results for some time but as soon as I do I will share them with you. If you’d like to take part in the National Honey Monitoring Scheme do check out their website www.ceh.ac.uk and look for the link to the relevant page, I’ll leave a link in the podcast notes to help direct you to their site.

The other letter I received was from a university student called Amy who is carrying out a third year dissertation project involving Varroa mites and was a request for samples. The project is looking into genetic diversification of Varroa and haplotypes within the species, that’s mites with a distinct mitochondrial DNA. It seems there is some

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