August 2026
At last some Honey in the Supers by Alan Riach
I took off several full supers in the last week of July. The bees were on the Rosebay willowherb (Chamaenerion angustifolium), and thistle was also being worked, and, of course, good old Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), a much-underrated bee plant. Honey extraction showed that the bees had been on the Lime trees (Tilia sp) with frames full of that lovely light green lemonade-tasting honey.
Quite a few EMBA members have taken bees to the heather this year, so let us hope the weather holds and the heather yields. There is a Heather Picnic planned for Aug 23rd at 2pm. The nearby hives won’t be opened until the picnic is finished and everyone has gone, but some protective gear would be useful in case the bees get inquisitive. There are cattle on the hill, but they are very quiet Highlanders and a Shorthorn bull. Just don’t get between cows and their calves.
We have a guide document on the website for taking bees to and returning from the heather, which majors on hives boiling over with bees and plenty of space and ventilation during transport – at least one empty super and a mesh travel screen with varroa tray out and roof off. This is especially important with Poly hives, which have very close roofs.
Although I have not seen many swarms this year, there have been a few lately. Many of these will be casts (secondary) swarms and will need lots of feeding if they are to survive winter. The main aim is to get these to draw sufficient comb for storage of winter stores. Feeding 1 to 1 allows the bees to immediately metabolise the feed and turn it into wax. If fed winter strength syrup (2 to 1 sugar to water by weight), they will have to fetch water and dilute the 2:1 to 1:1 before they can metabolise it – not a problem in Scotland but will take a bit more time. Once they have drawn sufficient comb, 2:1 can then be fed, say from the 1 st week in September.
Most of the new queens should now have started laying, but keep an eye on the brood. Some queens may have struggled to get mated properly in the poor weather conditions earlier in the year. As mentioned previously, new queens in very populous colonies can take weeks before they start laying (5 or 6 weeks is not unusual). However now that the flows have started again, eggs should now be appearing. If eggs don’t appear, remember the classic test for queenlessness – from a queenright colony, insert a frame that has eggs or up to two-day-old larvae (just beginning to show segmentation). Remember to shake it free of bees (especially free of the queen). If the colony is truly queenless, they will create queen cells on the inserted frame.
Time to start thinking about harvesting honey and preparing the bees for winter. The bees often have honey spread about the supers, some sealed, some not. It is risky to extract unsealed honey, although if it doesn’t come out of the cells with a good horizontal shake, it is probably ok. Check with your refractometer anyway. It should ideally be below 18 or 19% water content (20% max for selling) (23% for Heather). If there is lots of uncapped “wet” honey when you are clearing the supers, consider “double extraction”. Place frames in the extractor without uncapping the sealed cells and run the extractor briefly (and not too vigorously). The unripe honey will fly out quickly. This process is very quick as you simply load the extractor, run and remove the frames. Drain the unripe honey from the extractor and feed it back to the bees as winter feed. Keep track of which apiary the honey came from and don’t risk the spread of disease by returning honey (or wet supers) to different apiaries; ideally return to the same hives from which it originated. Now uncap the frames as usual and extract the sealed honey, which will be well under 18%.
The following honey removal caution is important. Some colonies put most of their summer honey in the supers with little in the brood chambers. Such a colony, if denuded of all the supers, is then in a very vulnerable position and must be given its winter feed immediately. It is easy to lose such a colony, especially if it is very populous.
You may be starting to provision for winter feed. How much? The normal guidance is that a colony should have around 18 kg of winter feed including their own honey. Note that is about 14kg equivalent of pure sugar since about 20% of their stores is water. I usually find that it requires syrup (made up at 1kg of sugar to 0.55 litres of water) using about 9 or 10 kg of sugar. If using proprietary inverted syrups, you may need about 12 litres as it is about 25% water. The proprietary feed this year is coming in 16kg poly bag boxes (about 11.8 litres). Buying proprietary syrup is convenient but expensive. However, even if they don’t take down that much, you can safeguard by leaving 2.5 kg fondant above the feedhole – they likely won’t touch it until February, but it is an easy-to-see indicator of the state of stores on a hive. If you have remnants of old fondant, you can use it up by turning it into winter syrup - 1 kg fondant to 0.4 litres of hot water.
The SBA practical exams are now ending, and it is good to see several EMBA members having entered for the Basic Beekeeping exam and for the Intermediate Practical. I’m sure many of you will be waiting impatiently to try a Module exam on Nov 14th. The Nov diet offers 2 supplementary modules (M4 Plants and Pollinators and M9 History of Beekeeping) as well as the standard modules. The call for applications will appear in the September Scottish Beekeeper, but I believe the application Jotform is already open on the SBA website
Once you have obtained your BB certificate, do consider helping new beekeepers as a way of repaying some of the effort that members put in to help get you going. You can do this by mentoring others and helping at the EMBA Apiary, and helping at the Beginners Course when it starts in the Spring.
We get quite a few queries from schools regarding beekeeping and in order to address these in a more structured way, the EMBA committee has a Schools Officer, John Gall. If you get any queries from schools, please do let John know at schools@edinburghbeekeepers.org.uk
EMBA is again arranging bulk orders of jars, syrup and fondant this year. The committee will circulate to you when they have negotiated prices for jars.
I hope that your bees are now settled and industrious and that your honey harvest will be abundant.
The committee appreciates feedback and new ideas for future activities, so do let our secretary, Sarah, know of anything you think that we could add to the EMBA activities.
