A Beekeepers Journey – ‘You Will Get Stung!’ – Part 7

Well, I have an apology to make as I promised that the next edition of the blog would be with you in June. Just where did that time go?

If you remember from the last blog, we were lucky to catch 2 swarms from the village, but this grew as we actually caught another 2 to make it 4 swarms. This enabled us to set up 4 hives at our apiary by the second week in June.

Now being very thorough beekeepers, we named each hive after the place where we caught them in the village:

1. St Rumwold Swarm
2. St Peter & Paul Swarm
3. Sally’s Swarm
4. Mystery Swarm

This was done to enable us to digitally record our hive inspections via an app on our phone called PSK Beekeeping. One of the important jobs as a beekeeper is to maintain a log of the hives for DEFRA purposes as we are actual livestock holders. A hive inspection allows us to check the strength of the hive, what our next actions will be to manage the hive and look for any disease or abnormalities. This is all logged to give us an understanding of how our colonies of bees are doing.

As we are all aware it has been a very hot spring and summer, this again was a very different year to last year for our bees as the ‘June Gap’ came earlier and lasted longer.

The June gap is a temporary shortage of nectar and pollen for bees and other pollinators. It happens in early summer when spring flowers finish blooming, but heavy summer blossoms have not yet opened. During this time, high bee populations face a sudden drop in food.

This meant that even during this hot summer we have had to help our bees by providing them with both sugar syrup and fondant feed. Due to this phenonium we did not have enough honey to extract any to sell this year

We are now in the process of getting the hives ready for the winter period. This will entail:

1. Feeding extra sugar syrup & fondant (until the start of September)
2. Completing Varroa treatment (August x 2)
3. Moving the ‘Super Stores’ below the brood box on St Peter & Paul (August)
4. Changing old hives for new hives (August)

What else happened?

1. The community group had a table at the local village fair where we had a live observation hive for everyone to see the bees at work.
2. The first member of the group to be stung happened in August, with a massive 5 stings from a very feisty hive – Mystery Hive!!

What Next?

• We have a new shed for the Apiary, so we plan to get this built in October, this will help with our growing equipment needs.
• We will be replacing a queen in the Mystery Hive as this colony is very aggressive and this comes from the dominant queen. We will buy a mated queen and introduce her to the colony in the spring next year.
• We will be offering Apiary space to experienced beekeepers who would like to keep a maximum of 3 hives in the allocated space.
• A mentor scheme for new members will be put in place.
• There are a couple of winter talks we have been asked to complete for the local Gardening Club and the Over 50’s club
• Our AGM will be held in March next year