The honey for this year has now been harvested, and I have now set the bees up for the winter. This means reducing the hive space down so they have less area to keep warm and its easier for them to keep water-proof. Removing un-used layers and honey frames saves them from lots of extra work. I had 2 colonies that were looking a bit weak, so these were united with stronger colonies. Now the honey is removed I treat the colonies for the pesky varroa mite, which if left, will overrun the colony and slowly weaken and kill it over the winter. The mites are vectors for various viruses and diseases. The bees are now getting a good feed, of any honey that was left over with the weaker ones getting a good sugar solution to make sure they take on enough stores to last them through the winter months where there is no food to forage on.
August
The main flow of honey for the summer has now stopped and it is now the time of the year to harvest the main crop from the hives. Its was a hard days work to remove the frames of honey (minus the bees) and ship them to a safe “bee free” place for extraction. 
I go through each frame and inspect it to check the honey is ready before it is taken off the hive. More importantly, half the crop is left behind for the bees so they have enough stores to sustain themselves.
The following weekend the wax cappings were removed (We use these to make beeswax candles later in the year) and the honey was spun from the frames using a hand cranked extractor. This is a laborious job and makes everything very sticky. Once extracted our honey is passed through three sieves of ever smaller mesh to remove any wax. The empty frames are now back on the hives for the bees to pick clean (and to fill up again in September when the heather flowers)
The honey then is left in a settling tank for a week. This allows all the fine bubbles that are introduced in the spinning process to float to the top. (these are harmless, but give the honey a slightly cloudy appearance). You can see in the photo on the left all the mini bubbles that have surfaced. All that is left is to tap the honey into jars and add a label.
If you are interested in purchasing a jar of the 2019 Summer crop please contact us.
July
Well what a change, July has been kind with the weather and things are going well for the bees. The busy “beekeeping” part of the year is now over, (The swarming season is drawing to an end) . I had to pick up a couple of late swarms from various places and it seems everything has been pushed back this year. Collecting the bees this late makes it harder to get enough food for them to survive the winter, so I will monitor their progress and feed them if they look weak.
The next big job will be to harvest this years main crop of honey. My stock of honey to sell is running very low at the moment, (thank-you to all the people who have bought a jar), it enables me to keep going buying next year equipment and to continue keeping our valuable pollinators. The hives have been rapidly filling up throughout this month so hopefully there will be a reasonable crop. I tend not to look inside the hive too often at this time of year, as every time you go into a beehive it takes them a few days to repair any damage you cause. Its more of a case of leave them alone and let them get on with it during this month. I only intervene when something is wrong or needs immediate attention.
You can check the the state of the hive by giving it a gentle lift to check the weight. (this is called hefting) a good strong colony will have a nice heavy hive of honey, The weaker ones will be lighter.
I have been busy teaching beekeeping at Blackhorse Apiaries over the spring, it a great place to learn if you want to get started with bees.
In the next few weeks I will take off the honey from the hives and then comes the sticky process of getting the honey out and into jars. More on that… next month.
June
So it is now June in the apiary and while we have had our fair share of rain and stormy weather the bees are doing really well. Some of the colonies got to the swarming stage and have been split. This produces the colonies for the next season and prevents the hive from swarming. So we are now up to approx 15 individual colonies.
The hives have been filling up with honey over the past 2 weeks and there is an opportunity to take some honey off the stronger colonies. So with the help of my young assistant we removed and extracted some of the excess honey.
This is not the main crop of honey from our hives (This comes later in the summer) The spring honey was spun out of the combs, filtered through multiple sieves and left to settle for a week in the settling tank. (this lets any bubbles rise to the top) The left over honey was given back to the bees,
Our spring honey has now been jarred and labelled and is ready if you are interested.
Contact us for details.
May
At last the weather has warmed and things have been very busy. The bees have been building up their numbers and the warmer weather has given them a chance to get out and start collecting nectar and pollen. The queens are now starting to ramp up laying eggs and they are producing up to 2000 new bees a day. The colony population is increasing rapidly, and once it reaches a certain point the bees will start to think about swarming.
The old queen bee up and leaves (taking half the workers with her), she leaves behind her daughter who will hatch and take over the job of producing new bees. 
I am on the British Beekeepers swarm collectors list, which means if a swarm is spotted locally I get a call to pick it up and rehouse the bees. This month has been a bit manic with swarms popping up all over the area.
So far…..
3 from Bagshot,
1 from Ravenswood Roundabout.
1 from Farm Road. (near Tomlinscote)
1 from Mychett.
As well as a few calls about bumble bees, and wasps. The bees are housed in a small travelling box before they are taken to the apiary, checked for disease and housed in a nice new des-res hive.
April
Spring has started to appear in the apiary. The hawthorn has started to blossom, and things are starting to wake up. It’s a crucial time of the year for the bees as they need to get out the hive and start foraging but the weather can make this difficult for them.
The temperature needs to be above about 13 degrees for the bees to get out, and it has been hovering around that temperature during the afternoons. The danger is that the colonies food supply is low as they have depleted the winter reserves, and survival is dependent on if they can maintain enough food supplies until spring really arrives. I will be keeping an eye on their food reserves and top them up if required.
Things now start to get busy in the beekeeping year. This weekend I extracted the wax from the old frames from last season, this will be processed later in the year to make beeswax candles and polish. I have made up more frames so the bees have some spare accommodation when they decide to swarm in the coming weeks. Regular hive inspections will commence as soon as the temperature is constantly above 13 degrees and we will be on the lookout for when the bees intend to swarm.
Until then I am repairing any equipment that needs looking at, and waiting till the weather warms up.
March
An interesting month so far, I have left the bees alone as we are now back to the usual spring weather of howling wind and rain. I have made up some more wax frames and done some repairs on hive parts that needed fixing. I was about to relax and then I got a phone call from Charterhouse school in Godalming. Apparently the headmaster was having some work done on one of the old fireplaces at the school and when they lifted the floorboards they found this lot hiding underneath….
It seems some extra students had taken up residence. The school had already called a pest controller who had correctly identified them as honeybees and quite rightly did not want to spray them, so they were looking for a solution that allowed their fireplace to be renovated and for the bees to be saved. I packed some kit in the car and went over to have a look, and hopefully come up with a solution. Getting bees out of buildings can be difficult at the best of time and it mostly depends if you can get to them easily (which often you can’t). The bees had set themselves up between two joists in the space between the ground and first floor and were using a gap in the wall for access. After a quick inspection I removed some floorboards to see just how much comb they had built. (this gives me a good idea of how long they had been there and how big the colony was). As you can see from the photo the nice person who built the old floor had numbered the boards.
So I started to pull them up, 3, 4, 5, 6, hmmm seems to be quite a big colony, 7, 8, 9 and we eventually get to 12 floorboards removed before I get to the end of the comb and nest. (there was now half the floor missing from the room).
It took all morning to carefully cut out the old comb, collect the new comb onto frames and place them in a transport box and fill up the holes to prevent the bees re entering the floorspace and setting up home again. They are now house in a new hive down on the Apiary and are being checked for disease before becoming full members of the Heatherside Honey Club. The headmasters room is missing a floor, covered in honey and wax and looks a lot worse than it started. – I will leave that job to the maintenance team.
The amount of comb was quite outstanding, and they must have been there for at least 3-4 years, maybe more. The ladies had to be moved as the headmaster needs his fireplace sorted and they had not passed any of the entrance exams !! no free lessons I am afraid, and they are much better off in a hive with a bit of care, rather than an old school floor.
February
February has been a busy month again at the apiary. The strange warm week of weather (UK record for February) put the bees into overdrive. Thinking spring is here, they broke their winter cluster, ventured out from the hive looking for pollen and nectar. The problem with this is there is not the usual food sources available. Hopefully we wont have a really cold snap as that could prove a bit of a disaster.
I took advantage of the warm weather to do a complete frame change. I removed all the old frames from last season
and provided the bees with clean wax foundation for the coming year. This keeps the risk of disease down (and provides me with a supply of beeswax to make candles.) I had a quick look through the colonies and checked the health of the bees and topped up their food supply as it is not really spring yet.
The bees look well with all colonies surviving the winter so far. One of the hives is looking a little weak, but I am hoping a good supply of food will maintain them until I can change the queen in the spring.
In one of the hives I got lucky and spotted the queen. (I was not looking for her, but her majesty decided to make an appearance) which is always a welcome assurance things are well.
The other hives all showed the presence of eggs and larvae so this tells me they all have a functioning queen.
Roll on spring.
January
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