President’s Ramblings – December 2024
The end of another year and Christmas is almost upon us.
With any luck your hives will have survived the latest storms. The next job in the apiary, apart from clearing up the fallen branches, etc., is to do our winter Varroa treatment using oxalic acid. The guidance always used to be to treat in early January, but with winters tending to be milder it would be better to treat towards the end of December. This would probably work better because there should be no sealed brood.
A month ago I read a news article about adulterated honey. During October 30 samples of honey were tested. 5 samples were from local honey producers and the rest from supermarkets. All the local samples were found to be genuine, but 24 of the remaining samples were found to be adulterated with some form of sugar substitute. This would indicate that almost all supermarket honey is not honey but contains large amounts of other substances. Is it any wonder that they can sell it so cheaply! I also read that demand from commercial beekeepers to supply honey to the packers has gone down because the packers are buying large quantities of cheaper imported “honey”.
I thought that would be the end of the story, but since then I have learnt that the honey class has been axed from Apimondia because of concerns over adulteration of honey. What a sad situation when even beekeepers can’t be trusted to supply genuine honey!
We can’t do much about this, and it reminds me of the case unearthed a few years ago with Manuka honey. It seemed that in the UK alone we annually consumed more manuka honey than was produced in New Zealand!
It used to be that the only way to check the authenticity of honey was to examine the pollen grains. Back in the early 1960s my introduction to bees was at school. My science teacher was Rex Sawyer, who after leaving the teaching profession, when grammar schools were closed, went on to research pollen identification at Cardiff University. He wrote books about pollen identification and was involved in a number of legal cases over proof of honey origins. I understand he was involved in a case involving honey from the Wirral that was suspected of containing some Australian honey. It was found to be genuine Wirral honey as there are Eucalyptus trees in Ness Gardens.
Pollen identification is an interesting aspect of beekeeping for anyone with plenty of time on their hands! A few years ago a jar of my honey was tested by trading standards. The honey had been extracted at the end of the summer, but the test results said the it was typical in Spring honey from this region.
We’ve almost reached the end of 2024 and what a year it’s been. It was a very poor year for honey production due to the weather. I’ve heard many stories of starvation and colony losses. So far the winter has been mild, and if that continues perhaps more colonies will survive the winter. Just keep an eye on the level of stores in the hives. When doing your Varroa treatment have a quick look at the frames either side of the brood cluster. If you see sealed stores then they will probably be OK. If the frames are empty then you may well have to feed them some fondant. Wait until the beginning of March before feeding sugar syrup in a contact feeder. If you want, you could feed with a fondant containing pollen such as Candipolline at that time to stimulate early colony expansion.
All that remains is to wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope that next year is a bumper beekeeping year.