As the beekeeping season draws to a close you’d like to think that those people ‘of beekeeping age’ (according to The Guardian*, they are “ripped, rugged, with a confident bearing, and have a certain ease in their skin”), could finally think about putting up their feet for a few weeks. Far from it! It’s true that the work involved in keeping bees is less intensive over the winter months, but it is still important. Bees are living creatures, not toys to be packed away until next year, so they need to be looked after even if you don’t actually see them very often.
After the honey harvest, typically for us in September, we treat our colonies for varroa mites, and carry out our final disease inspections to ensure that our bees are as healthy as possible going into the winter. We assess their food stores, and if we feel they are a little low (happily very rarely), we’ll feed them sugar syrup that they can store. In a typical French hive, a viable colony requires around 18-20kg of food to see it through until the Spring when the foragers can start again to gather nectar and pollen in earnest. So, by checking the frames for capped honey and nectar, and by hefting the hives to feel their weight over the following weeks, we can ascertain whether or not they have enough to live on.
