The Dead of Winter

The beekeeping season has started and I've not posted for a while, been very busy with sales of my propolis and lip balm products. I've also made a Facebook page to help publicise my online sales, if you fancy a look it's over here: Hivemind Heavy Industries by Hull Bees.

12th March, 2014, sunbathing weather for some.

In early March I noticed Bumble Bees sunning themselves and beehives starting to appear in fields heralding the start of activity for bees and beekeepers alike.

Beehives ready to pollinate a field

Towards the end of 2013 we were told to expect the worst winter in 60 years, so I was expecting something along the lines of The Day After Tomorrow, albeit a little less crap than that 126 minutes of pure disaster. With that in mind, the winter I mean not the movie, and the poor year that was 2013 I'd decided to give the bees a huge amount of emergency stores using candy boards, a method which I gather isn't particularly common in the UK. Basically each hive was given about 7 kilos of white sugar formed into a huge sugar lump, a third of a pattie of pollen substitute and an extra entrance near the top of the hive. This meant that if the bees ran out of stores wherever they were in the hive they would have food directly above them -if it's too cold bees will starve to death rather than breaking the cluster to go get food stored elsewhere in the hive. The top entrance is for in case the main entrance at the floor of the hive gets blocked with dead bees. It turned out that like The Day After Tomorrow the much touted worst winter didn't really get off the ground either and save for a few freezing nights it was probably the mildest winter I've seen.

Lighting up my smoker and grabbing my hive tool on 15th March I decided to give the hives their first inspection. Whipping the lid off of Hive3 the sugar appeared to be intact but I could see the bees had
been taking the pollen substitute. In the picture below the dark area is empty space left where they've taken the yellow substitute. They need pollen for rearing brood so I figured that's possibly a good sign.

They've been nibbling.

This was the hive holding the captured swarm and was expected to be the weakest of the three colonies. When I removed the candyboard and I was able to see just one seam of bees. Not great, but the queen was already laying so I'm hoping she'll be able to ramp up worker numbers in the next few weeks.

Only one seam in Hive3

I did a very brief inspection and found they had a lot of stored food left over -probably on account of the mild Winter -that and the small population in this hive.

That's a lot of stores for Spring

They obviously weren't going to need feeding. In August this hive had had 4 seams of bees so that should mean a lot of dead bees somewhere. After the Winter of 2013 the hive floors were deep in dead bees but this year was very different.

Let the bodies hit the floor..

Removing the brood box to check the floor it was obvious that the bees had done a pretty good job of disposing of their dead sisters over the mild winter. With the floor cleared and swiftly blowtorched back on went the brood box, crownboard and roof.

Hive 1 and 2 both had about 4 seams of bees left in each and plenty of stores. As well as taking the pollen substitute they'ed also made a start on the sugar and had been making tunnels above the seams.

Hive1's Candyboard, slightly chewed.

Hive2's Candyboard, not much pollen substitute left.

There was some brood and eggs visible in both brood boxes so the Queens were getting into the swing of things. Getting the bees out of the tunnels in the candy was a bit tricky and involved a lot of shaking, brushing and the judicious application of smoke. There were more dead in Hive 1 & 2 than in Hive3 but that was to be expected given that there were larger colonies, but still nothing approaching the numbers of the previous year.

Dead On The Floor

Having removed the candy boards I knocked out the sugar into a large tub which I brought into the house giving my housemate the impression my bees had spent the Winter refining white sugar. :) I put it in an upstairs room to dry out in full sun and I shall probably be using it to make syrup later in the year.