November Roundup

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Ask The Expert

5 reasons why you don't feed bees syrup during the winter

1. The change in temperatures between night and day can cause syrup containers to drip cold syrup onto the bees.
2. Syrup has more water in it than honey and bees will burn excess energy trying to remove the additional water.
3. Sugar syrup will be very cold during the winter, and if the syrup is too cold, the bees will be unable to drink it.
4. Syrup can mould easily if the bees do not consume it quickly, rendering the syrup undrinkable for the bees.
5. Cold weather may keep the bees from getting to the syrup, leaving an open window for other insects to eat the syrup.

Beekeeping Blog

November

This month in the apiary has been much as expected: cold and quiet! It is always the time of year when we breathe a sigh of relief after the busy active season and then we look at all the other jobs we have got to do and start thinking about how we’ll manage to get it all done by March!

Early in the month, the bees were fed fondant to keep them going through the first part of winter. It was about 13°C when we went out to feed them, so some were actually flying. To avoid disturbing them, we simply placed the fondant on the top of the crownboard with an eke for height, instead of going into the hive and placing the fondant directly on the frames, which is what we would normally do to decrease the distance the bees have to travel to get to their food.

Over the course of the month, with cold spells and then not-so-cold spells, we have had to be careful to make sure the bees have enough food to get them through. We can’t simply rely on the one piece of fondant to get them through the whole of winter. The cold spells may stop the bees flying but as soon as the temperature increases, they may start flying again (as they are today while I write this) and therefore consuming more food. This just means that we have to keep an eye on the amount of stores the bees have and treat each hive accordingly.

Once we get some prolonged periods of colder weather, we will be looking to treat the colonies with Oxybee. This treatment is most effective when the colony is broodless and so waiting until we can be fairly sure the queen has stopped laying and the brood has hatched means we stand the best chance possible for catching as much varroa as we can.

Another task we will hopefully be undertaking this winter is to move some of the hives that we never managed to get into our ‘square formation’ onto another apiary site within the Thorne grounds. There has been a large area of wildflowers planted so we are excited to get set up and start the new season with another new apiary.

Book Review

‘A History of Keeping and Managing Doubled and Two-Queen Hives’ by Alan Wade

‘A History of Keeping and Managing Doubled and Two-Queen Hives’
by Alan Wade’
1st Edition. Published by Northern Bee books, 2021. ISBN 978-1-914934-16-2. 170 x 244mm, 176 pages. Soft cover. £19.95
Buy: Here

This is unapologetically a book intended for commercial beekeeping, but nevertheless, it contains an enormous amount of interesting and thought-provoking information and ideas for hobby beekeepers too. The early part of the book is devoted to the History of Doubled Hive Beekeeping, and it details the exact method of the Wells Doubled Hive. As early as 1890, a Kentish beekeeper called George Wells discovered that he could achieve astounding honey harvests by running two colonies together. I found this early part of the book fascinating, even though the very notion of ‘doubling’ a hive in this way was completely new to me. In fact, the Wells’ method entails running two colonies, barely separated from each other by some form of divider or excluder, so that the workers from both colonies contribute to the honey crop in the shared supers. This method would be capable of almost doubling the honey crop, though it is very clear that the method is extremely labour intensive as both colonies must be strictly managed. Apparently, it was discovered almost by accident when George Wells was let down by a purchaser: ‘Then in 1890 Wells reserved one of his overwintered doubled hives to supply a queen to a local beekeeper. That beekeeper never turned up and Wells, faced with managing a very powerful doubled hive, further experimented by overlaying the double-brood chambers with a large queen excluder… He topped this doubled brood nest with a shallow honey super to accommodate the surplus bees… To his surprise, the colony proved exceptionally productive…’

Excellent, clear diagrams accompany the text, and it would be an unusual beekeeper who didn’t find this promising method exciting. However, Prof. Wade is far from being contented with just letting us know the history of the method. In fact, this historical section of the book is the beginning of a fascinating voyage of discovery - fraught, I should say, with difficulties and set-backs. The Wells’ method and similar developments in the USA were very popular for a while early in the twentieth century, but they required very highly skilled beekeepers to succeed. A horizontal version was developed as well as the enormous tower of boxes which is shown in the photographs of the Well’s method. Wade comments that recently, ‘like George Wells, keen to get the most honey possible from a few well-kept hives, rather than a sea of hives… Canberra Region Beekeepers doubled queen setups.’ So the reader is early made aware that the book is actually based on real beekeeping experience, and indeed that the depth of historical research was entirely practical for Prof. Wade and his companions in Australia.

The contrasting method developed in the States by E.W. Alexander (Bee Culture April 1907) is explained in the next part, and it became very popular in Britain as well. This involved two queens in one hive, but with a honey store between the two brood areas. I think this is the method which is usually tried by beekeepers who find themselves with excess queens. The Wells’ method, by contrast, was really founded on the need to manage swarming, which is of paramount importance in both methods. Again, Wade provides clear diagrams along with the historical account, and I feel any beekeeper would be interested in the whole account.

However, this is not Prof. Wade’s end point - he and his group in Canberra are actually running two-queen hives, and the next three sections of the book build up to this achievement. Working in the 1930s and 40s, the Farrar brothers in the States managed two-queen hives in very tall towers of boxes. The chapter gives interesting information about the exact equipment the Farrars used to achieve very high yields, and the photograph of their hives on page 74 shows an apiary which is more like a city of tower blocks than any apiary I could ever have imagined. From all of this research and experimentation, the Farrars developed the Consolidated Brood Nest Two-Queen Hive, which clearly required a level of beekeeping skill and devotion which is completely beyond the range of most hobby beekeepers. However, the last part of the book on Two-Queen Hive Management, as practised by the Canberra Beekeepers, is notably less labour-intensive and Prof. Wade claims that hundreds of colonies can be managed on the Canberra system without requiring a huge army of beekeepers. This is clearly a very attractive idea for commercial beekeeping, but the high skill required to run hives by this method would be likely to intimidate beekeepers with a

less favourable climate than Australia. I confess I was pretty well dumbfounded by a diagram showing a double brood chamber with two queens separated by an excluder, with a separate entrance above the excluder, and a pile of supers for the double colony to work. I remain in awe of the operation which could achieve this extraordinary management. In sum, then, I found this book most interesting. It is clear and direct so the beekeeper reading it would have no difficulty in understanding the methods, problems and solutions which are described. However, I cannot in all fairness recommend this method for us in our damp and chilly islands, at least for ordinary hobby beekeepers. But by heaven, this book makes you think!

- Review by Mary Montaut, editor of The Irish Beekeeper (An Beachaire).

Bees for Development

Your donation will be doubled today!

Bees for Development is raising funds to bring beekeeping to more people who really need it through the Big Give Christmas Challenge. Civil unrest is adding to the many challenges faced by people in Ethiopia, and bees give a resilient return for people and nature through all conditions. If you are making a donation to a good cause, now is the very best moment to do it: all donations from now until Tuesday will be doubled by our generous Champion donors.  Please be quick! Please donate before noon on Tuesday 7 December using this Big Give Form. And you can see more about the work you are supporting here,
Thank you

National Honey Show

Our committee are already working on next year’s show. We aim to offer something exciting and different each year. This year we had some entertaining new classes. So do browse the schedule, which is still on the website. There’s bound to be an interesting project to work on through the long winter evenings to enhance our display of competitive classes at next year’s show.

Lectures from this year's show are under preparation for release on The National Honey Show YouTube Channel

The first of these, 'Reading a Hive' by Kirsten Traynor is now available to view.

Future lecture videos from the 2021 show will be released at 5.15pm (UK time) on the first Friday evening of each month. You can set YouTube to remind you, and while waiting for the next video browse the extensive portfolio of ‘how to’ videos and lectures from previous shows.

We hope you will enjoy the videos and look forward to seeing you at next year’s show: 27 to 29 October 2022 at Sandown Park Racecourse, Esher, Surrey, UK.

Upcoming Events

• Winter Sale: starting from 27th December online and 4th December by phone