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.