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.

Problem: Too Much Honey!

We hope all our readers have been enjoying a relaxing summer without too much to think about, where all the decisions have been easy ones to make. It goes without saying that we have been as busy as our bees, checking that our colonies are healthy.  Even the very hands-off approach of just observing their comings and goings can tell us that they are doing what they are supposed to do: making more bees and making honey! We are pleased to report that our colonies are thriving and have been foraging on the abundance of nectar-rich plants in the area. For the first time since we have been beekeeping in France, we moved one of our colonies to another location to help some farmer friends with pollination. The fact that they have hundreds of hectares of sunflowers was also a deciding factor in our participation in ‘transhumence’. It’s an activity carried out by many commercial beekeepers, where hives are moved to different areas so that pollination is improved and different types of honey can be produced. Our colonies usually provide us with ‘miel de fleurs’, mixed flower honey, as we grow lots of different plants, but the colony that we have moved will be making sunflower honey, a first for us.

When Plan A actually works!

Earlier in the summer we collected a few swarms of bees that did not make for easy work!  We might share a few of the stories once the scars have healed but for now we'd love to share a positive story (it helps with our therapy 😂😂😂).  Last month, on a sunny morning, we received a call from a couple who had noticed a large group of bees in one of their plum trees. We asked them to send a photo so we could assess it and yes, they were right, a swarm cluster had formed on a branch. It was almost text-book in its size, shape, and position, perfect for collecting and re-homing in a hive.

Santa Baby...

If you know of a budding beekeeper and they have been extremely well-behaved this year (or just not too naughty) then perhaps you’ll consider buying them something bee-related for Christmas. You could also treat yourself instead of waiting for someone else to get the hints you have been dropping for the past few weeks….!

Here are some gift ideas:

A starter kit, consisting of a hive plus frames, a beesuit, gloves, a smoker, a hive tool, a brush and a queen clip. New beekeepers will welcome starter kits which contain all they will need (minus the bees) to set up an apiary, along with the protective clothing that is a must-have. There is a school of thought that advocates ‘bare-handed beekeeping’ but this is espoused by people who have dealt almost exclusively with stingless bees and who are lucky enough not to react badly to bee venom. We would always advocate that you protect yourselves as well as you can, which means wearing a veil and gloves as a minimum.

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. 

Bees and Brambell's

We’ve recently been in conversation with a UK-based beekeeper who is studying for exams in Bee Health, studies that appear to involve for the most part killing bees so they can be dissected and examined. Not very healthy for the poor bees involved, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking  a few eggs, as they say…

Of course, we want the best for our bees and it has been interesting to hear about the new research centred on pest control, and the recent ideas around how to identify and treat for certain diseases. As in France, the same in England, with last year seeing an increase in the number of outbreaks of European Foul Brood, a disease that can lead to colony loss. The effect of varroa mite infestation also appears to be more insidious than first thought, with the mites being vectors for several different diseases that can deplete a colony of bees over time.