July has been a scorcher here in Lincolnshire, with the hottest place in the UK recorded just a few miles away from us in Coningsby, at a whopping 40.3°C! Just look at how much our lakes have dried up here this month!
This has obviously had an effect on the bees as they not only struggle to keep the hives at a constant, optimum temperature, but they have also had to deal with less forage. The wildflowers have come out at the apiary and the bees seem to have been foraging but the high temperatures must have caused them to dry up because there seems to have been a bit of a dearth in nectar. They are collecting a small amount but there is definitely not a flow on. Therefore, the bees have been fed just to keep them going through this spell of extreme heat.
As you can see from this photo, we also have to contend with other species at this time of the year, namely wasps which are beginning to cause trouble in the apiary, as they always do! Any spillages of syrup are quickly found by the wasps and robbing bees so we have tried our very best to avoid this, but sometimes it just happens!
This is also an example of what not to do – leave a gap in the boxes, especially at this time of year! Other bees and wasps will find any little gap and exploit it to get to the food inside the hive. This was a simple case of a frame not fitting inside the hive properly.
Beekeeping hours have had to be either really early in the morning or really late at night, not only because of the early sunrise and late sunsets, but mostly because of the uncomfortable and frankly dangerous conditions of beekeeping in extreme heat. Despite the vented veil, it quickly gets unbearably hot inside a beesuit so to get anything done in the apiary this month we have had to work really hard out of normal hours.
For August we really hope that we do not see the kinds of heat we experienced this month, or ever again in fact! It will be a time of looking at the size and state of each colony to determine whether it needs to be united with another in order to make it through the winter. Here’s to a cooler August..!
