July 2025

Peace and Calm by Alan Riach

Although new queens were appearing early this year due to the exceptionally early season, there may still be young queens not yet laying. Six weeks after emergence to first eggs appearing is not that unusual. It never ceases to
amaze me how good, honeybee colonies are, at avoiding becoming queenless. However, if you think a colony is queenless, remember the classic test – insert a frame with eggs and young larvae. If they are truly queenless, they
will draw queen cells. They can make a queen from larvae that are up to 3 days old (six days after the egg has been
laid), but the younger the better.

The Canola (edible oil seed rape) was very bounteous this year and when it is flowing strongly the bees sometimes forget to read the books and first-time round they construct queen cells from larvae, the result being that sealed
queen cells appear 5 nor 6 days after your previous careful inspection. I have only seen this in high-flow Canola conditions. I had 3 colonies performed this trick this year and found sealed queen cells on one of my 7-day inspections. Fortunately, the queens were still there in two of them and so I was able to Pagden. The 3rd colony had departed to pastures new. An excellent year to demonstrate the vagaries of Scottish beekeeping – by the 15th May I
had taken off more honey than I did for the whole of 2024. The Canola flow although plentiful did stop rather suddenly and bees don’t like abrupt switch-offs. This lead to a week or so of very grumpy bees, leading to much
discussion about regicidal actions on queens. However, allow week to ten days of grumpiness in such conditions before taking any action. Explain the reason to neighbours who may be being bothered.

Many areas have had a severe June Gap and feeding of queen-producing splits was necessary.

Time to start thinking about preparing for the heather. The heather moors require really populous colonies, and the Pagden swarm prevention method chimes well with this requirement. The old queen in the artificial swarm can be
removed and the colony united with the new queen colony. New queens are desirable as they continue to lay later on in the season keeping up the numbers of hard worked heather gatherers.

The bees should be on one brood box and by populous, I mean “boiling over” with bees. Preparing for the heather requires some outside of the normal rules of colony assembly. Place a frame full of stores at one end of the brood box (as an emergency food source in case of bad weather on the moors), then place a couple of frames of young brood next to this frame. Then place more frames of young brood next to the side of the box at the opposite side of the brood box with the emerging brood and laying space in the centre. The placement of the young brood towards the sides is to prevent the bees starting to place heather honey in these outer frames and to encourage them to place it up in the supers.

If you have no brood frames full of stores, then place a full sealed super frame in the centre of the first super as an emergency food source, but mark it with a drawing pin, so that you don’t later confuse it with frames of heather honey.

Since Ling Heather honey is thixotropic (jellyish but can be made liquid for a few minutes by needle agitation before returning to the jelly form), I usually sell my heather honey as cut comb, a 227g carton of cut comb heather often selling for approximately the same price as a 454g jar of blossom honey. Cut comb feels better in the mouth if you allow the bees to draw the comb. I place a 2cm strip of thin foundation along the top bar (held in place with the wedge but glued in place with a run of melted wax). After cut-combing the completed frames of sealed honey, I press any remnants left. I also press any badly formed combs.

The normal time to go to the Ling heather used to be the start of the grouse shoot (12 th Aug), but the heather has been earlier than that in recent times, so target end of July. The Bell heather (a non-thixotropic blossom honey with a beautiful port wine colour and distinctive flavour) will likely be yielding by the early part of July.

I’m sure EMBA will arrange a Heather Picnic this year. The heather picnic was always a wonderful season end event, visiting the heather moor site, inspecting the grumpy bees (bees on the heather are always a bit tetchy), retreating a safe distance, lighting up the Primus stove and having a picnic. I can almost already taste the wonderful sandwiches, apple pies and honey cakes that I’m sure will appear.

Some of you may have ended up with an overabundance of colonies. Uniting with the paper method is the most foolproof method. Choose which queen you want to keep either dispatching one to that great apiary in the sky or setting her up in a poly Nuc to take through winter. Place paper on the top of the lower broodbox and make a few slits with the edge of the hive tool and place the second colony on top. There is a tendency for the paper to blow off just as you are placing the top box. Use two bulldog clips as weights hanging on the paper one either side of the hive to keep it in place.

We have a healthy number of applications this year for SBA Basic Beekeeping (BB) certificate. The candidates I have examined so far have been well up to the mark and we must thank the EMBA mentors for preparing them, so a big thank you to Carrie Gooch our Apiary manager and the leads for all their work in getting beginners up to speed.

Thanks also to our new examiners, two of whom are EMBA members, Carrie Gooch and Saskia Gavin, both initiated into examining this year. If you have not sat your BB, we would encourage you to do so next year.

A big thank you also to all those who stewarded (and competed) in the Honey Tent at the Highland show. Your efforts are much appreciated by the SBA and the Highland Society. And of course, a special thank you to Jill Tidman supported by Andy Anderson and others who had the onerous task of preparing the local association Display entry which deservedly won.

I hope that your bees are now settled and industrious and that your summer honey season will be abundant.