At the beginning of this month, I treated all the hives that needed it with our new product Oxybee. It was a very simple process, making a cold job a quick one. Firstly, I warmed the bottle of oxalic acid in some warm water, added the two sachets to it and shook it all up. Then, using a syringe, I administered 5ml of the mixture to each seam where bees were present. Luckily, most of the colonies were all clustered up inside the hive so treating was no problem. Some were not quite so tucked away, like this one in the picture, but the process was still very quick and easy. As you can see from the numbered frames, this was a nucleus from earlier in the year. If you look closely, you can see that the newer, outer frames have been drawn, which shows the colony did expand to a full-sized hive. Now, it is clustering back to around 6 frames, which will hopefully emerge in spring as a strong and healthy colony.

As we head into February, I will heft the hives to make sure they have enough stores and may start thinking about giving them a small slab of Nektapoll. This will give them a protein boost which may just help them to get going at the beginning of the beekeeping season. Other than that, making sure the cabin and all the equipment needed for the year ahead is ready will be the main job!