January 2025
Days Getting Longer - Newsletter from Alan Riach
The shortest day is past, and the lengthening daylight hours will be causing the queens to think about laying a few eggs. This means that the temperature at the centre of the cluster will have to be raised to 34C, only made possible by an increase in the consumption of food stores. Well worth having a kg or two of fondant over the feedhole or a kg bag of wetted white granulated sugar (make a 2 cm 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. It also means that 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. Check that the mouse-guards are still secure and that you have a ratchet strap in place – we are still likely to have some wild winds to contend with.
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 that’s the real challenge. Don’t panic if you run out of fondant, wetted sugar bags are quite sufficient.
For those using an oxalic acid formulation for varroa control, that should all be done as oxalic works best in a broodless period. In some parts of the UK we are seeing signs of hygienic bees appearing, that are able to keep varroa levels suppressed to liveable levels, and indeed the Cuban bees which had a 97% wipe out when varroa hit Cuba, now need no treatment, but don’t take any chances, keep checking and treating when necessary until our researchers are satisfied that our honeybees have fully evolved varroa resistant strategies. Honeybees evolve faster than just about any other animal due to their gene shuffling (crossover) abilities, but it still take some time.
Now is the time to get your equipment ready for the new season. Prepare some extra sterilized 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 escape paths. 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.
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 Nucleus to sell, plan to migrate to farm crops or to the heather. Leave-alone beekeeping tends to produce queens from “swarmy” colonies, so think carefully from which mothers you produce daughters.
