Busy Buzzies!

Without a doubt, September is our busiest beekeeping month – there is so much to do! Don’t get me wrong, Spring wasn’t particularly idle; we had our work cut out managing swarm behaviour and ensuring our colonies were healthy and thriving, but late summer presents other challenges.

A Dadant hive ready to harvest

The bees are very aware of the equinox and reduced hours of daylight, so the race is on to ensure they have foraged for enough nectar to turn into honey for their winter stores. Of course, this is when we turn up, smacking our lips, ready to pinch this honey.

However, we are very careful to only harvest the surplus honey, the honey that has been stored in the separate ‘super’ box above the main hive (in our vertical hives like the one in the picture). Sometimes there isn’t very much to harvest, especially if the weather has been bad, so we just have to accept that there won’t be any for us. We will check the brood box to see if there is honey stored there, at the top of the brood frames and all over the frames at the outer edges of the box. If there doesn’t seem to be much (perhaps due to the bad weather or Asian hornets preventing our foragers from doing their jobs), then we will offer them some food in the form of sugar syrup which they can take and store. A colony of bees in a 10-frame French Dadant hive typically requires approximately 18-20kg of food to last until next year so by ‘hefting’ the hives (lifting and weighing) we can assess if they have enough.

To make things a little more complicated, these numbers and processes change, depending on what type of hive the bees live in, with some providing a healthier environment from the get-go for our colonies. We have five different hive types here at 13 Bees and it’s always fascinating to see which colonies fair better during the winter.

Amanda and a Warré hive and Kevin with our horizontal Layens hive

On a warm late summer/early autumn day it seems strange to be thinking about temperatures close to zero, but this is what we have to do to help our bees prepare for the months ahead. We will check that the hives are in good condition as, if anything needs replacing, now is the time to do it. We are still able to open the hives and check for damage, rectifying it while we have the opportunity to do so.

a 2023 red-marked queen

The future of a colony of bees depends on the queen being healthy and fertile – no baby bees, no next generation. By autumn the queen’s laying rate will have been decreasing for several weeks, from a peak of around 1500-2000 eggs a day, as too many mouths to feed in the winter would deplete the stores too rapidly. The eggs that the queen lays in the autumn become what is now known as ‘winter bees’, a special caste of bees that are physically different from their summertime sisters and have longer lifespans. We used to think that the bees that were in colonies over the winter lived longer simply because they didn’t have to work as hard. No foraging or flying would conserve their energy. However, it’s now been discovered that the winter bees are given a pollen-scarce diet compared to summertime larvae which means they develop extra fat reserves, changing their metabolism and enabling them to live for six months instead of six weeks. It’s important that the colony recognises that winter is coming and instructs the queen to stop laying drones and begin to create female workers that will be fed this different diet. The winter bees will eat the stored honey and keep the colony warm during the winter by ‘shivering’ their bodies. When the queen starts laying again, slowly at first, the winter bees will feed the new larvae which will pupate into the bees that will replace them in the Spring.

So, all of the above means that one of the checks we carry out is to ensure the queen is healthy and young enough that she will survive the winter. By now we would hope that our colonies will have recognised a dwindling queen pheromone from an older queen and will have superseded (replaced) her, and we have noticed that several of our 3-year old queen bees have been replaced by younger models. Hopefully these new queens mated well and will have long and fruitful lives, and we can check this by noting how much brood (eggs, larvae, and pupating bees) there is in each colony. If there are any doubts then we can replace the queen by procuring a newly-mated queen from beekeeping colleagues or breeders. It may seem harsh but it will ensure the survival of the colony.

Once everything has been checked and we are satisfied that our bees are ready for winter, we can sit back and enjoy the rest of the sunshine! What do you do?