What a wet autumn we are having here in Lincolnshire! This November we have barely seen the sun, just grey, drizzly skies and fields underwater. The ground at the apiary has become totally saturated as you can see from the picture here! As the water does not seem to want to shift, we will just have to take care down in the apiary and keep an eye on the hives.

Regardless of the weather, one of the main jobs this month is to heft the hives, meaning we give them a quick lift from the back and sides. This is so we can determine whether the colonies need feeding yet and if so, how much. It has been decided to feed them early December as they feel heavy enough for now but may need a helping hand soon. We always take the roofs off before we heft as they tend to weigh a lot and can mar our judgement of how heavy the hive actually is. We also have to account for the difference in weight of a double brood and a single brood hive – the double brood might just be heavier because of the extra box, not because it has any more stores in than a single brood. It takes a while to get your hand in, which is why it’s worth hefting throughout the season. This gives you a good idea what heavy really is!

While there are fewer jobs to do with the bees at this time of year, it has been a good opportunity for us to reflect upon last season’s work. One area that has slowed us down this year is the apiary layout. We have decided to change it from a linear apiary to having sets of four hives in a square. This will be easier on our backs as we can take roofs on and off and place them on the adjacent hive instead of on the ground. It will also help with the issue of drifting and with our new system of taking nucs from the hives next year. It will be a big reshuffle because lots of slabs need laying and the hives will have to be moved into place. This could take some time (and a bit of manpower) but it will be a huge improvement to our apiary and we are very much looking forward to working with it next season.