NEWSLETTERS &
SEASONAL TIPS
It’s Spring, the most important time for beekeepers and all those jobs you saw and put off during the Winter are now there and ready to haunt you! Ignore them and you will all most certainly have a lousy season beekeeping or you can get on top of the situation and will stand a moderate chance of having a successful year, IF (that’s a big if by the way) you have a plan! More on the plan later, but let's look at where you need to be with your beekeeping by now.
By now you should have had an equipment review. What equipment do you need and where will it come from? Have you got sufficient frames and wax and have you spent dark Winter evenings making up frames ready to wax the day you want to put them in the hive? How is the super situation, are they clean and bee proof, have you enough and how are your hive stands? All of these items need attention now because later you will find dealing with these things more difficult. For instance replacing a hive stand in Spring is routine, in Summer when the hive is full of honey and bees it’s a really difficult job!
Have any of your colonies died-out and if so why did they die? DON’T leave the hive on site unless the entrance is closed because if your bees died of disease and you haven’t closed the entrance, then you are spreading the disease to every visiting bee. Have you made an assessment of why they died? The possibilities could be Varroa, disease, starvation, cold and damp or Queen-failure or something else.
Varroa is becoming a really big problem for beekeepers because of resistant mites. Once upon a time life was easy, you bunged in a couple of plastic strips and hey-ho the mites went away, but no more!
So do you use something else to control Varroa and if so what do you use? There are three things that you need to find out as soon as you can that will come in handy later.
The "when" by the way is the most important point, because if you treat in the Spring the drones have a higher sperm count just when they need it, treat in the Summer and you will contaminate your honey crop, and Autumn is too early for Spring - but better than not at all. While words like "rock" and "a hard place" come to mind, you MUST have an idea how you will cope with Varroa this year or you will be an ex-beekeeper quite soon!
Following on from why did your bees die; if they died of starvation we won't tell anyone – honest; but how are the rest of your bees by the way? Heft the hive on one side, does it feel light? You can feed bees all year round but they will only take what they want, however in Winter you must feed with inverted sugar. Honey is inverted sugar and so are products like Ambrosia which is between £17 and £20 a big tub. Alternatively you can buy a Jar Attachment Feeder for £1.48 from Thornes to feed honey and these are really handy especially if your bees are at the bottom of the garden.
The other reasons for your bees dying? Cold damp and queen failure can be covered another time.
Now back to the plan. Have you got a plan for this season? For instance, the plan for the Hagley & Stourbridge branch apiary is to replace all the worn and damaged equipment to make up ten hives and to pay for this by moving three or four of the hives to areas where honey production is good. This plan will carry over into 2008.
Your plan could be to not let your beekeeping get out of hand and to limit your hives to five or increase honey production to 100lbs per hive or produce section honey or breed Queens or move your apiary around to get the best of the micro climate.
What ever your plan is, the season ahead will be the better for it. Having decided on a plan you next need to decided what it will take to get there and what you will need to do this. The “what” could be help or advice, money, a helping hand to lift hives, or even more hours in every day!
Review the plan as you go along to make sure that you are meeting your goal and readjust if need be, but most of all, enjoy your Spring beekeeping what ever happens!