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 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 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