Some Like It Hot!

So, yes, it’s been a bit warm for quite a while now….the understatement of the
summer! The sustained high temperatures have posed a real challenge for bees and
beekeepers, as well as pretty much every living thing. The heat has dried up the
nectar in plants so pollinators have had to search high and low for food, and we’ve
noticed that the flowers that are still blooming (wisteria, buddleia, hollyhocks) are
covered in butterflies, bees of every variety, wasps etc.

The June Gap 2026 - No, really

British beekeepers have long been aware of what is called the ‘June Gap’, a few weeks in the year when you may need to feed your bees simply because the amount of available forage is momentarily reduced. This is due to the Spring flowers having died off and the summer flowers not yet fully blossoming, just at the point when colonies are increasing in size and there are lots of mouths to feed. It can affect the amount of surplus honey that is available for the beekeeper to harvest at the end of the summer, as the bees will not store the nectar they are collecting, opting to eat it now.

New for Old

Spring is a time of rebirth, renewal, and regrowth in Nature, and this of course includes the honeybee.
Having survived the winter, bee colonies are now increasing in size, with queens typically ramping-up their laying rate to 1500-2000 eggs a day. At this time of year, some of these will be drones, the males produced to mate with virgin queens from other colonies. It’s also the beginning of the swarm season, when colonies make the decision to split with up to 40% of the bees plus the queen flying out to a new home.

April was an extremely busy month; the weather was perfect, and forage for pollinating insects was plentiful, so we received several calls to collect swarms.

The Three E's

Easy, effective, and economical…what’s not to like when talking about swarm control methods?! For a couple of years now we have used the Demaree method (I agree, it should be Demareee!) to manage the swarming behaviour of our bees with the added benefit of increasing the honey production of the colony in question. The
knock-on advantage too is that colonies that have been managed in this way seem to survive the winter months more successfully.

Rain, rain, go away…

…Come again another day – maybe overnight during the inevitable heatwave in July, please?! We’ve had quite enough of this wet and cold start to the year, thank you. During the winter months our primary concern is how we can best protect our bees, with insulation and ventilation being of supreme importance. Damp is actually a worse problem to have than cold, as mould and bacteria can thrive and lead to colony health issues. Hives can become damp when condensation forms due to the humidity caused by the bees’ breath meeting cold surfaces (e.g. the underside of the crown-board). It’s astonishing to learn that a colony of bees can produce up to 26 litres of water over the course of the winter months! Even though bees are experts at controlling the temperature of the colony, beekeepers might need to take measures to help provide a healthy environment.

Catch One, Prevent Thousands

Even though it may seem early to be thinking about protecting our bees against Asian Hornets, we’ve

learned over the years that being prepared is (almost) everything. As the daylight hours lengthen and the temperatures hopefully rise, we’ll be on the lookout for emerging Asian hornet queens. 

Microscopes and Melissopalynology... what does a pollen grain look like?

Before ‘hayfever season’ begins, and while there is still frost on the ground, let’s talk about pollen. Pollen is a key component of bees’ lives, so we find it an interesting topic to research. It’s often seen
on the legs of our foraging bees, and our cats who come in from the garden in the spring and
summer with a fine dusting of it on their fur. Plus, of course, anyone sensitive to it will begin to
sneeze and/or get itchy eyes.

Pollen is vital to our world; every year thousands of different species of plants produce millions of
pollen grains. These are designed to be specifically distributed to reach their female counterparts
and so help proliferate the species. Thanks to Robert Hooke who invented the compound
microscope at the end of the 17 th century, the true nature of pollen was seen for the first time, and
instead of it simply being a fine dust, the grains could be individually identified. 

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.

When is honey too wet?

This year has been unusually wet and as a result has caused lots of problems for beekeepers and especially for commercial honey producers. The problem was one of timing – the flowers blossomed but the rain also fell, meaning that by the time the bees could fly out, all the nectar had been washed out or the flowers had died off. The extra humidity has meant too that honey this year is proving to be too ‘wet’. The rule of thumb is that the moisture content of honey must not exceed 18%. 

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.

Changing Seasons

We are all aware that our climate is changing, and you only have to think about weather patterns over

the past few years to understand the uncertainty this causes. Whatever you do, whether it’s working with crops or livestock, renovating a house, or planting your garden/veggie patch, you need to know what to expect from the weather. Current scientific thinking states that more ‘extreme weather events’ are likely to occur in the near future, along with dramatic rises in air and sea temperatures. All of this will have, and is already having, an effect on life on earth, and as everything is interconnected, the challenges are complex.

Calm down, calm down! Or, please don’t be stroppy with me…

At last the warmer weather is with us, plants and flowers are flourishing, and the beekeeping season has well and truly started. All of our bee colonies came through the Spring successfully and have grown exponentially in the past few weeks due to the abundance of forage, higher temperatures and relative lack of predators compared to previous years. (To be honest, the Asian hornets don’t usually become a problem until later in the summer but for now we are enjoying their absence around our hives). There are more insects appearing in our gardens, which we see as a positive, but we are often told by people that they don’t like bees as they are frightened of being stung.

Don't Panic!

 ‘Melissaphobia’ is an intense fear of bees, which can be overwhelming and cause great anxiety. One
way to combat this panic is to learn more about these insects and hopefully come to manage feelings of stress when encountering them. We often meet people who have attended our afternoon taster sessions because they’re not sure how they will react when surrounded by thousands of bees. Maybe they have always liked the idea of keeping bees but before they commit to the expense of buying the equipment and taking on the care of living creatures, they want to experience being near a hive. In turn, we don’t want our bees to be disturbed by scared students, so we take good care to explain what is going to take place and what to expect. The students get a similar briefing…! It’s much easier to be brave when wearing protective clothing and often people will say “Oh, it wasn’t as bad as I thought, it was so fascinating I forgot to be scared”, a win-win by our reckoning.

This Season’s Fashions

 

Anyone who keeps bees knows that at some point, hopefully ‘later’ rather than ‘sooner’, (but almost never ‘never’!) they will be stung. Honey bees are not usually aggressive, but they are sensitive to being disturbed, and can quickly feel threatened by the presence of anything that distracts them from their work. Their reaction is to defend the colony and this often includes deploying their stings. It’s not true that all bees die when they sting – if they can retract the barb, the mechanism by which the venom is delivered, they’ll live, but often the barb is fatally ripped out of their bodies. Being stung therefore isn’t great for the bee or the person being stung and so it makes sense to disturb them as little as possible and for us to wear adequate protective clothing when we do want to be working with our bees.

Keeping Busy

“It must be a doddle being a beekeeper in winter, there’s nothing to do!” such is the kind of remark we often hear, but, au contraire, the winter months give us a chance to catch up on lots of jobs. We also still have to care for our bees to ensure that they survive the ‘downtime’ and emerge in the spring as healthily as possible. Just because we don’t see them as often as we do between March and October, that doesn’t mean we can forget about them.

It’s important to ensure that our hives are sound, secure and waterproof, and we have to check for dampness under roofs and on crownboards after any prolonged period of bad weather. If there are any stretches of particularly windy weather then we often place bricks or large stones on the hive roofs to weigh them down, and we know of beekeepers who have hives in exposed positions where strapping them to the stands is a common requirement.

Ready for some R&R?

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.