President’s Ramblings – September 2024

Somehow this year we’ve managed to reach the middle of September.

Hopefully all your plans for preparation for winter are well in hand. Varroa treatment should hopefully be completed by now and feeding well underway. With any luck wasps shouldn’t be a problem this year – I’ve hardly seen any, but have heard of one beekeeper who has had problems. Remember to keep the entrance as small as possible, feed in the evening and don’t spill any syrup around the apiary. When feeding make certain the hive is bee and wasp tight, not forgetting that they might get into the top of the hive and into a Miller feeder. That’s why I like the English feeder – it has a well sealed lid and it covers all the holes in the crown board so it doesn’t really matter if the roof isn’t bee proof.

How much feed will they need?

The answer really depends on what strain of bee you have. Our Native black bee may overwinter on as little as 25lb of stores whereas Italian or Buckfast strains may need as much as 75lb. A single national brood box will hold about 55lb so a good local black bee colony will not need more than a single brood box more prolific bees will need brood and a half or even double brood to store sufficient stores for the winter.

When should you stop feeding?

Answer – once you think they have stored sufficient to survive the winter. If necessary have a quick look into the brood box and assess how many frames are filled. Don’t look to find the queen or look for brood as the queen may already have stopped laying and there may be little or no brood to see, and then you will be worried about whether the colony is queen right! Don’t leave a feeder on the hive with feed left in the bees may take the food down, but because the temperatures have dropped may not be able to process it and seal it. This unsealed food will pick up more water and ultimately will ferment. The bees eating fermented honey will get dysentery. By feeding too late into autumn you may unknowingly be killing them with kindness.

One last suggestion,

if you intend leaving honey on the hive, don’t forget to take off the queen excluder so that the bees, including the queen, have access to all of the hive. In the spring you can reorganise the hive and put the queen excluder back in.

Maximise survival

I always liked to maximise the chances for colonies to make it through the winter by ensuring they are as strong as possible. Small colonies may not be big enough to survive, so it might be best to combine weak colonies – one large colony has a much better chance than two small ones! Make certain that hives are watertight and mouse proof. We will get storms this winter, so think about tying hives down – particularly with WBC which are particularly prone to the roof blowing off. A strap round the hive will stop the roof blowing off, but also if it does get blown over it will all stay together and the bees will probably survive.

This year?

At this time of year we always try to judge what sort of year it’s been, and this one has certainly been mixed. We hardly had any prolonged warm, dry and windless periods so it is no surprise that beekeepers have reported difficulties with queens being mated. As far as the honey crop goes most beekeepers agree that it is poor this year, probably in the region of about 50% of previous years. Heather crop looks as if it will be poor too – no surprising with the weather that we’ve had.

My comments last month on the lack of butterflies have been confirmed by Butterfly Conservation, who this year recorded the lowest numbers since their count began 14 years ago. In spite of this Neonicotinoids, which were banned in 2018, have again been approved for use on sugar beet. This year the insect decline is thought to have been made worse by the wet spring coupled with the late arrival of summer heat. Dr Marc Botham of the UK Centre for Ecology said 33%of species had shown a significant decline in their abundance on monitoring sites in UK over the past 48 years. “it’s quite simple really – there’s not enough habitat and what is there isn’t good enough” he said.

On that depressing note, that’s it for this month.