February 2025
February – Wakening up and big breakfasts - Alan Riach's Newsletter
The snowdrops and aconites are out, the crocuses are on their way and the lengthening daylight hours are causing the queens to increase laying and that means just one thing - more food consumed. The temperature in the brood area of the cluster has to be kept at approximately 34 C, only made possible by an increase in the consumption of food stores.
Check that there is still sufficient fondant (or sugar bags) over the feed hole on the crown board. Colonies with high populations e.g. those that were at the heather, even with significant amounts of heather in the brood box and augmented with 10 litres of syrup, may have consumed significant amounts of food. A lump of fondant or a bag of sugar is a great stores (or lack of) indicator, you can quietly remove the roof and check the fondant level without disturbing the bees. However, always wear your bee suit and veil as bees can be very “guarding” in winter.
If you have run out of fondant, don’t panic, wetted bags of household granulated white sugar are perfectly suitable (make a 2 cm hole in the large side of the bag and pour in 200 ml of water to stop the sugar running out). Some people put the fondant directly over the frames above where they see the bees, but this is only necessary for very weak colonies, normal colonies are quite capable of getting to the feedhole in the cover board and it reduces the risk of fondant dripping down though the frames and potentially swamping the queen.
We could still have lots of cold weather and wind, it is a fact that most people can take bees through winter - it’s getting them through a cold Scottish spring with chilly East coast haars that’s the real challenge.
Ensure your hives are secured with a ratchet strap, ones with a stainless ratchet buckle last longest but are about £25. Straps with zinc plated buckles can be had for about £5. Ratchet straps can apply sufficient force so that even if blown over the hive will stay assembled. However, tensioning straps sufficiently with polyhives tends to deform the roofs unless a piece of strong plastic angle is glued on the roof edges.
Hopefully you have all checked for varroa levels and treated where necessary. Maggie Mowbray located an interesting YouTube talk by Professor Stephen Martin of the School of Environment and Life Sciences, University of Salford, on Varroa resistant bees. See https://youtu.be/rxHZVQ_tWEQ The video demonstrates the sophistication of varroa as a predator – when they land on a bee, they can mimic the bees chemical pheromone scent within 3 hours so that sister bees in the dark of the hive do not detect it. Prof Martin concludes that there are now population pockets of bees able to deal with varroa – not wipe it out but keep it at manageable numbers by interrupting its reproduction cycle. This resistance is contained within the epigenetics of the queens (so called hygienic queens) - genes are activated within these queens which cause them to produce hygienic workers capable of disturbing the varroa’s reproductive cycle. However, he concludes by advising that we must still monitor and treat if necessary.
Now is the time to plan for the new season, get your equipment ready. Prepare some extra brood boxes with foundation frames in readiness for artificial swarming and check that the queen excluders are clean and in good order with no “queen leakage” areas due to bent wires, smallish queens need no excuse to squeeze up past a bent wire and they are experts at finding them. Make sure that you have sufficient supers ready, remember the bees need plenty of super space when the spring flows start as they need empty cells to ripen and dry the nectar as well as cells for storage. Overcrowding is one of the main reasons for bees to start thinking of swarming. Supers have two purposes – to store honey and to provide space for expanding colonies. Decide on your swarm control methods. We’ll cover this in March or April’s newsletter but for diary planning a 7 day inspection is required – 10 days is feasible if the queen is clipped and remember if you are going to be away for extended periods during the swarming part of the season, you can artificially swarm a colony that has not yet started to make queen cells, albeit the best queens are produced from queen cells started when they are ready & early artificial swarms may try swarming again later in the summer.
It is worth writing a few notes about what you want to achieve in the coming season - increase the number of colonies in the coming season, decrease the number, produce some spare queens for Nucs to sell, plan to migrate to farm crops or to the heather.
If you’ve now had bees for a year or two, you should plan to sit your Scottish Beekeepers’ Assoc. (SBA) Basic Beekeeping exam this year or your Junior Beekeeper if you are under 16 (even if under 16 you can sit your BB if you prefer – one of our more famous young members, Blair Henderson chose this route). You don’t even have to be an SBA member for these exams as the SBA wants to encourage as many Scottish beekeepers to take these exams as possible. When I took over the job of SBA education officer in 2012, I was asked what my ambition was for SBA education. I answered that it was to get all Scottish beekeepers through their JB or BB because that would lead to a substantial increase in the quality of beekeeping in Scotland. That belief and ambition still stands.
Have a look at the “Going for the Basic” document. The exam usually takes place in your own apiary or in the EMBA apiary and is usually arranged to take place between mid-June and end-August. You can apply on the SBA website up to 9 th April (£25). Quite often some of the more advanced EMBA members hold some mentoring classes, but this is dependent on time availability. Check with our membership secretary Fiona Dagge-Bell.
The EMBA education group are starting to plan the Beginners course for 2025 which starts on the last Wed of March. Fiona is co-ordinating this year and there is a link for registration on the website. There will be one or two “woodwork” evenings this year, assembling frames and advising on assembling flat-pack hives.
We had a successful AGM on 8 th Jan and we welcome new President Alastair Merrill and Vice President Clive Long and new committee member Clare Kerr. As promised at the AGM our secretary Sarah emailed notes on 10 th Jan with bio info. on the Committee members. Feel free to contact your committee.
The committee appreciates feedback and new ideas for future activities.
