December

December is normally a fairly quiet month and this one has been no exception. The bees are really hunkered down now, not wanting to leave their warm, cosy hives and who can blame them. It has mostly been dreary and wet here in Lincolnshire, unfortunately typical for this time of year! However, we did have that extremely cold snap where everything froze and we thought we were in for a really cold and hard winter. We thought that actually this might be a good thing for the bees as they would cluster properly over a long period of time and be ready and raring to go come spring.

However, over Christmas things warmed up so we took the opportunity to get out and check on the stores inside the hives. We found that the bees were mostly still clustered, like the one in the photo, but that a lot of them needed feeding again! We feed fondant at this time of year as we find the bees take it a lot easier than syrup and it is also much less messy.

Another small job has been to double check that no treatments have been left on the colonies as this is a huge contributor to developing mites that are resistant to treatment. We hadn’t, but it is always a good idea to check!

We mentioned last month that we would be considering an oxalic acid treatment in December but with the weather being as it was, so mild and then so very cold, we held off. Early January is still a good time to treat, and we like to make sure the mite numbers are knocked back early on so that the bees have a good spring build up. We will probably use Oxybee as this is very easy to use and apply, but we’ll decide for definite at the time.

January will therefore be time to do our varroa treatment but also to start planning for the year ahead. The beekeeping season seems to come around so quickly when the start of the new year arrives, and we like to be prepared (somewhat!) so we anticipate that this will also be a month of planning.