January is not actually a quiet month in the beekeeping calendar. It is not long till spring and there are many things to get ready for when the weather warms up. Things can get pretty hectic very quickly if you are not prepared and the bees won’t wait for you. On a sunny day (when the temperature was not too cold) I had a quick check on the hives to ensure they have enough stores for the winter and to make sure all is well. Its only a very quick inspection – just looking under the lid, as opening the hive causes the bees to lose heat which they have to make up by using stores. I took out the Varroa mite medication as it has done its job. Beekeepers should treat their colonies in the Autumn against the pesky Varroa destructor mite otherwise the colony will be overrun and collapse and die out before the next spring.
Varroa destructor (Varroa mite) is an external parasitic mite that attacks the honey bees Apis cerana and Apis mellifera. The disease caused by the mites is called varroosis.
The Varroa mite can only reproduce inside a honey bee colony. It attaches to the body of the bee and weakens the bee by sucking fat bodies. In this process, RNA viruses such as the deformed wing virus (DWV) spread to bees. A significant mite infestation will lead to the death of a honey bee colony, usually in the late autumn through early spring. The Varroa mite is the parasite with the most pronounced economic impact on the beekeeping industry. Varroa is considered to be one of multiple stress factors contributing to the higher levels of bee losses around the world.
The strips kill off the mites without stressing the bees too much. The weakened mites then drop off the bees, through the mesh floor of the hive and on to the ground below where they cannot do any harm to the next bee generation in the spring. I also treat my bees with a sugar / oxalic acid solution (its a natural acid produced by Rhubarb) once in winter. The bees can tolerate the mild acid but the mites are more susceptible and are killed. Thankfully I have not lost a colony to the Varroa mite yet.
The next January job which starts next week, is to build the new wax frames the bees will live on next spring. I replace the frames every to encourage the colony to build clean, new comb and reduce the risk of disease. It takes a full weekend to assemble all the frames required for 10 hives.
The honey collected from the hives has at last been jarred and labelled, apologies for the delay this year. The heather honey crop was very good and I had to let it settle in the honey tank over the holiday to remove most of the air bubbles, before I could jar it