Lessons from the Active Season

Introduction

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For some traditionalist beekeepers their year ends around now with the last summer days. It’s not like that for me. Beekeeping’s a never-ending continuum and I’ll be carrying on with the work – sorting and cleaning equipment; making foundation; preparing frames; counting varroa; watching colonies; reading and writing about bees- till I open a hive again in 2027. And my year will start on 1 January when I’ll be putting my goals for the new year down on paper and reviewing past achievements and less successful events to avoid repeating mistakes.

Today I had a day off from childcare and other family things so I sorted all the shallow super frames. Those to reuse are stored in large airtight containers and the ones that have seen better days will be rendered down in my steam cleaner on the next suitable day. Same with brood frames.

Honey Harvest

I’ve called it a day with harvesting and all the honey the bees make from now on is their own. They are still working the phacelia field and the seemingly never- ending Himalayan balsam down at the river. The phacelia has been flowering for nearly two months.

It hasn’t been one of the most successful seasons in my apiary. This is partly down to my own management strategies, experimentation and of course the weather. Have to blame the weather too! Last year, four productive colonies brought in 344 lbs total spring and summer honey between them, and this year three productive colonies brought in 110 lbs mostly spring honey.

Apiary Synopsis

What happened? Well, I decided to let three of the five colonies do their own thing and swarm. Two sent out afterswarms and I prevented the third from doing that. Unfortunately, the new queen’s mating times coincided with terrible weather and cold rain impacted the outcomes. Two colonies eventually got mated but quickly superseded their queens. They had long brood breaks which have probably helped Varroa destructor (varroa) levels remain low and below treatment thresholds. But, of course, the workforce was much reduced and so they have only made enough honey for themselves over winter.

One of the colonies got CBPV (chronic bee paralysis virus) which Alan Baxter covered well in the last blog post of two weeks ago. Because the queen had reduced egg laying and there was a poor brood pattern and lot of chalkbrood, I euthanised the colony to reduce the risk to the other colonies that are not as widely spaced in the apiary as I would prefer. https://www.beelistener.co.uk/honey-bees/chronic-bee-paralysis-virus-cbpv-by-alan-baxter/

One of the upsides of having such a quiet apiary with fewer inspections has been no defensive behaviour to date and no nasty intimidating buzzing near my face when I hang out the washing.
Hive Six is an interesting one. It didn’t swarm last year and the current queen emerged in 2024. They didn’t swarm this year either and I know this for sure because there have been no temperature spikes recorded in my BroodMinder sensor system. Despite maintaining a busy workforce over summer, their total August varroa drop is low and below the treatment threshold. Last year the total August drop was 921 while this year it has been 414. I believe that by not having varroa treatments the colonies have been pressured to increase their hygienic behaviours. I’ve found lots of cappings and 104 immature female varroa mites, that will not have mated, over August. There have been around 9 chewed pupae.

Sacbrood Virus

Another colony with a new queen is not doing as well as I had hoped. Again, varroa levels are below the treatment threshold, but the colony has a bit of sacbrood virus which is transmitted by varroa. I’ve seen a lot of chalkbrood over the month despite the brood nest temperature being maintained within the normal range. The bees are uncapping and removing the sick larvae and I am hoping that the colony will recover and survive winter. I’ve been counting the chalkbrood mummies too and they have reduced through August which warmed up in the second half of the month. https://www.beelistener.co.uk/?s=sacbrood+virus

At the moment, all the colonies are queenright though I had to unite the remaining spare nucleus hive with one queenless colony that was superseding their second new queen of the season. I’d been planning to keep a spare queen in a nuc over winter. That’s me going into winter with four colonies.

Swarms

During swarm season, a swarm came in over the hedge from another apiary into my bait hive. I gave it away to a new beekeeper who was keen to have a second colony. He asked me to mark the swarm queen which I did. I also kept the swarm for ten days to make sure that she was laying and the swarm was doing well before I handed it over to the beekeeper. After an inspection at the new location when the queen was nowhere to be seen, the colony went downhill and only drone eggs and brood were seen. Attempting to save the colony was a time-consuming endeavour for everyone involved. Several frames with mainly eggs were introduced regularly to introduce brood pheromones to try and turn off worker egg laying and get a new queen started from one of the new donated fertilised eggs. The colony did make a new queen from a frame of eggs, but it still hasn’t successfully requeened and it is too late in the season to do anything with a much reduced and hopelessly queenless colony that now has chalkbrood. The beekeeper fed this little colony and did the best that could be done at the time. Sometimes swarms are a mixed bag–they might be great and do well, or be more trouble than they are worth.

Goals

Based on this season, these are things that I shall do next year:

• Let the bees send out a primary swarm but control subsequent afterswarming
• Keep all the swarms/splits from my own apiary and take some to an out apiary to avoid overcrowding at home (thank you to Louise for offering a space in her large woodland, some of which has been cleared for an orchard)
• Continue monitoring and recording daily varroa drops on all colonies for a third year
• Raise queens from the best stock with resistant traits
• Overwinter at least two nuclei and sell surplus in spring
• Give away my bait hive and not collect swarms from outside my apiary
• Reduce commitments outside my own apiary