Here Comes Spring 2023!

I’m not admitting to being slow on the uptake, but most things in my life tend to be one step ahead of me these days; it must be the recent high temperatures (any excuse…). That fact is definitely true of the bees, but they are several strides in front when it comes to planning.  Forget about already having the Christmas shopping done, they are thinking about next Spring and how the colony is going to build up. As beekeepers we can help them with these preparations, and Autumn is an important time for assessing the health of the queen bee, the size of the colony and the amount of stores they have gathered. 

Once the summer crop has been harvested (remembering to take only the surplus honey that has been stored in the upper box on the hive, the super), we check that there is sufficient honey stored in the brood box (around 20kg). We check our notes to gauge the age of the queen as a colony headed by a young queen (one hatched this year) is more likely to lay eggs later in the year, allowing more time for ‘winter’ bees to be produced. One school of thought is attributing a percentage of winter colony losses to older queens, and so now beekeepers are beginning to replace queens before they go through a second winter (if the bees haven’t already superseded her). Winter bees are produced towards the end of the season and live much longer than their summer sisters, one reason for the longer lifespan being that they don’t have to work as hard as the number of foraging hours is much lower. They also have well-developed fat bodies – cells of fat, not chubby bees! These fat bodies are collections of cells that form thin sheets in the abdomen, and contain higher levels of vitellogenin, which serves as a nutrient storage of protein used to produce brood food and royal jelly*.

The bigger the winter colony is, the more likely it is to survive until next Spring. Too small a colony and the bees will struggle to stay warm, and may not be mobile enough to move to the stores which results in isolation starvation. This seems particularly cruel when there is plenty of food, there just aren’t enough bees to move ‘en masse’ to reach the honey. The other thing that we check for is the level of varroa mite infestation. The varroa population will have been building up during the summer, reaching its peak just as the colony moves towards winter, so the late summer treatment is arguably the most important varroa treatment of the year. Beekeepers in the northern hemisphere have learned to live with and deal with varroa in their bee colonies, using a variety of treatments with relative success, so it’s interesting to note the recent news from Australia. Over 1,000 colonies of honey bees have been euthanised following the discovery of varroa mites in colonies north of Sydney. The Australian Department of Primary Industries has defended its actions in attempting to maintain the varroa-free status of the country, as the implications for the honey bee industry and agriculture are huge. In the short-term, destruction of colonies may seem overly drastic, but if varroa can be kept from gaining a stronghold then vast numbers of colonies across the country may be saved.

All of this splendid preparation work, helping our bees to help themselves, will hopefully result in colonies coming through the winter, strong and ready to start foraging as soon as the spring warmth returns. Then the season will begin all over again, and we have to be ready for swarming, as that’s what a strong colony is thinking about from November onwards!

Have a good one!

Amanda