Beekeeping and Occam’s Razor

Looking back on bee-related articles that I’ve written during the summer months, it’s no surprise to me that they all deal with similar themes: honey, queen bees, and swarms. This year is no different in that the work is the same as ever; we are marking new queens (blue this year), checking that the foraging bees are bringing in plenty of varied pollen for the ever-increasing amounts of brood, and dealing with swarms. We have been pro-active with our swarm control methods this season, especially with the colonies we are raising in Dadant hives – read on to find out about the bees in the Warré hives! It seems to us that there are more swarms around this year, or perhaps the general public is more aware of them, as we and other beekeepers have been contacted a lot more than usual with requests for help where unwanted bees are concerned. Sadly, we haven’t been called to any ‘easy’ swarm captures. Instead the calls are usually from homeowners who have bees in the chimney or under the eaves which makes removal very difficult. However, recently we did enjoy doing a good old-fashioned ‘cut-out’ of a nest that had been built between a window and the shutters, and we managed to not only find the queen but re-hive the colony back at base.

New Bees and Newbies

It’s summer already, although I don’t know why this surprises me as every year I exclaim at how quickly time passes. The winter months seem interminable but as soon as spring is here it’s practically summer! I recently read a piece about how, in countries in south and south-east Asia, the New Year is celebrated in mid-April instead of January. This makes sense to me as January is a difficult month with limited hours of daylight and miserable weather; far better to celebrate new beginnings when everything is springing to life, the sun is shining and we can hope that things will turn out well.

All We Can Do

Here we are, then; the clocks have gone forward and I am reminded of an old rhyme from my school days: “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the lawnmower iz?!” However, this month, as beekeepers, we have more important things to do than cut the grass. Hopefully the temperatures are now consistently high enough for us to open the hives and carry out the first inspections of the year. We did everything we could do to help prepare our colonies for the winter, and so now we are looking forward to finding that it was all worth the effort and our bees are fighting fit, ready to face the challenges ahead.

Off We Go Again!

Winter is almost behind us, the Spring equinox approaches, and the extra hours of daylight quicken our pulses as we look forward to warmer days. March is a nervous month for beekeepers as we are close to being able to carry out gentle hive inspections and discovering quite how our bees have fared since we last saw them in autumn. If we are lucky we’ll have some balmy weather with ambient temperatures in the early teens, just enough to allow the bees to take cleansing flights and begin foraging for early pollen and nectar.

Observations and Optimism

So, 2024, what a year, eh?! How to describe it? I don’t think I’m alone in thinking of it as ‘wet’, and figures released by the UK Met Office, and Météo France, would agree. September was the wettest calendar month in Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire since 1836 (1), and in Paris it was the wettest year since 1886 (2). Beekeepers were presented with a set of problems – and blessings – caused by the excessive amount of rain in the first half of the year, and will take this experience into consideration for the future.

The intemperate weather caused issues with colony increase: swarming behaviour was curtailed, queen matings were compromised, and foraging was limited due to a dearth of nectar. All of these facts have meant that in some areas across the country there has been a poor honey harvest and colonies have not achieved the optimum sizes required for successful over-wintering. However, what has been tough on the bees has had a similar effect on their nemesis, the Asian hornet, and so (with a sigh of relief) beekeepers have not had to deal with the usual heavy predation from these invaders. Trapping mated Asian hornet queens in the autumn before they hibernated was therefore of utmost importance, and we now need to be ready to trap any survivors emerging from hibernation as soon as Spring arrives.