February 2026
February – Hungry Times and New Life - Alan Riach
The lengthening daylight hours will be causing the queens to think about increasing laying and that means - more food consumed. When brood is being produced, the temperature in the brood area of the cluster has to be kept at
approximately 34C, only made possible by an increase in the consumption of food stores as that is the only way that the bees can produce heat.
Check that there is still sufficient fondant (or sugar bags) over the feed hole on the crown board. You may find that some colonies have emptied the fondant which was put on at Christmas, especially the colonies that went into winter with high populations e.g. those that came back from the heather. Even with significant amounts of heather in the brood box and augmented with 10 litres of syrup, the large populations have obviously been active in the mild winter and had to consume significant amounts of food. 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 2cm hole in the large side of the bag and pour in 200ml 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. You may have noticed that sugar prices have increased to over £1/kg. No doubt due to increasing energy costs – sugar prices can be influenced by petrol prices – when petrol (or gasoline) is high, the Brazilians start using their sugar to produce ethanol for the American gasoline market and Europe (including UK) has now introduced E10 petrol (10% ethanol). The EMBA group that arranges the purchase of bee feeds works hard to get good deals and will keep you informed when they are about to place an order.
We could still have lots of cold weather and 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 (fogs) that’s the real challenge.
As mentioned last month, now is the time to get your equipment ready for the new season. 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.
If you are making up new equipment and are not the best “IKEA instruction follower” don’t fret, ask on the WhatsApp EMBA General Bee Chat and someone will come to your aid. There is usually a frame making night associated with the Beginners Course and anyone can come along to that and if you have queries on how to assemble boxes bring them along.
It is worth writing a few timeline planning notes in preparation for the coming season. Do you want to 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 and/or decide to guide your bees towards Varroa resistance.
If you’ve now had bees for a year or two, you should plan to sit your SBA Basic Beekeeping exam this year. You don’t even have to be a SBA member for this exam as the SBA wants to encourage as many Scottish beekeepers to take this exam as possible. The current exam fee is £35 or if you are under 16 you can sit the Junior Beekeeper exam for free. Check it out on the SBA website at Exams/Basic Beekeeping. 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 13th April. Quite often some of the more advanced EMBA members hold some mentoring classes, but this is dependent on time availability.
You can also apply to sit a SBA Module (Theory) either in written form (at an exam centre) or Online via the Inspera system. These do however require membership of the SBA. Perhaps a little bit late for considering the 21st March
modules (last application date 9th Feb), but there is another diet on 14th November.
The EMBA education group are starting to plan the Beginners course for 2026. Fiona Dagge-Bell is co-ordinating the course. We also want to encourage members to take the modules and are planning a study group for Module 5 - please do get in touch if you might be interested in studying for this module secretary@edinburghbeekeepers.org.uk
The EMBA AGM on 26 th Jan was well attended and a revision to the EMBA Constitution was implemented. Two new members were elected to the committee, Katy Lavery and Blair Henderson. Stephen Readman replaces John Jeffreys as treasurer and Carrie Gooch is standing down as Apiary Manager. We are having to leave our current apiary site, SASA have allocated a new site some little distance away. Maggie Mowbray, Carrie and their teams are facilitating the move please do look at the WhatsApp group if you would like to come and help on 7th February or email secretary@edinburghbeekeepers.org.uk
The committee appreciates feedback and new ideas for future activities. Alan Riach
