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Beekeepers Blog - September 2021

Beekeepers Blog - September 2021

The September edition of our 2021 blog. Written by the beekeepers here at Thornes.

This month has been mostly consolidating what we have done over the season and setting the bees down for winter.

They were fed syrup earlier in the month when it was still nice and warm and we could tell that it was not only the honeybees who were hungry, but also other species such as this bumblebee! It actually flew straight into the feeder as we were pouring the syrup in so we quickly scooped it out and let it recover on the grass with a bit of syrup.

The bees have been busy collecting every little bit of nectar, honey or syrup possible, as you can see here where two brood boxes were merged into one for winter and the separation caused some nectar to be revealed:

One of the other main jobs we did this month was also to treat the bees for varroa. We chose Apivar strips as these are not only simple to introduce into the hive, but they are not temperature dependent (handy at this time of year) and it is a long treatment time, meaning we don’t have to keep going in the hives just to sort out the treatment. The less we can bother the bees unnecessarily, the better.

During our rounds this month, as always with beekeeping, not everything always goes to plan and the hives aren’t always in tip top condition, as we would like. We noticed in this colony here that there was a small amount of sacbrood. This virus can be exacerbated by an overload of varroa so we have our fingers crossed that the Apivar will help with that and that next year the sacbrood will be kept to a minimum. You can see here a couple of pointed heads, the classic ‘Chinese slipper’ shape within the brood there. It is not normally a big problem, but it is something we like to keep an eye on.

In addition, we had an instance of brace comb gone wild! This hive had an eke that must have got stuck after the last feed (you can see it is stuck in the roof here) and so the roof will have had extra space in there that we did not see. As a result, the bees decided to come up out through the top of the crownboard and build their own comb in the roof. This is rather frustrating as it is a silly mistake and just another job we have to sort out but it is amazing to see what the bees can do when left to their own devices!

Finally, we always like to see the other wildlife that the lakes apiary in particular has to offer and this month, as we were having a much-needed drink sat in the car, my beekeeping friend shouted, ‘Look at that!’ and something scurried across the grass so fast towards the hedge that I didn’t even see what it was. We scrambled out the car to inspect and we came across the world’s fastest hedgehog! You can see how quickly it was moving by its blurry little leg!

The bees are starting to wind down, however we will still have plenty of jobs to do next month such as putting mouseguards on, continuing to tidy up the apiary and making sure the bees have plenty of food.

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