June 2026
June – Beware the June Gap by Alan Riach
I expect a few of you will now be patiently waiting for tardy new queens to start laying. New queens in very populous colonies can take weeks before they start laying (4 or 5 weeks is not unusual), and of course, if the summer flows have ceased, the bees are not keen to allow new mouths to be produced. Hopefully, most of the swarming will now be past, but keep checking anyway.
If you find queen cells, then carry out an artificial swarm there and then. If, for some reason, you can’t (lack of equipment or time, e.g.), you could knock down all the queen cells. However, that will only buy you a little time, as they will then construct queen cells on 3 or 4-day-old larvae. These will be sealed in 4 or 5 days. Occasionally, they will swarm a day or so before the first cell is sealed, so you need to return and do your artificial swarm in the next day or two. In extremis, you can put a queen excluder under the brood chamber. They may try to swarm, but without the queen following, they will return. However, this trick is risky, as when you do open up the hive, they may instantly swarm – an exciting but somewhat inconvenient event.
For those of you in Canola (Edible Oil Seed Rape) areas, you should consider taking off some of the honey before it crystallises. At this time of year, it is usually safe to take off frames that are not fully sealed, but do check the moisture content. It should be below 19% (must be under 20% to sell legally). When harvesting frames that are not completely sealed, hold the frame horizontally and give it a good shake over the open super. If wet honey or nectar flies out, then the frame is not likely safe to harvest. However, it is safer to check with a Honey refractometer. These measure the % of water in the honey. Most of the Canola honey I’ve just removed was unsealed, but read 17% water content.
Do equip yourself with a Honey Refractometer.
There are two types available – conventional optic type and new digital type. The digital types are very expensive (upwards of £200), and the optical ones work just as well and cost around £25 depending on supply (some come with calibration fluid, but all are pre-calibrated). You place a smear of honey on the optic screen, hold the refractometer up to a bright light so that the light is falling on the optic screen and view through the eyepiece. You will see a calibrated screen with a dark section above and a light section below. Where the two sections meet, read off the water content %. Please note that you must purchase a honey refractometer as only they will be calibrated for testing Honey. Get a temperature-compensated one – look for the initials ATC (Automatic Temperature Compensation). When using, ensure that the honey has settled and is not aerated. Honey in the comb is ok for testing.
A potential danger at this time of year is the “June Gap”. This is a period when the early summer flowers have come and gone and the mid to late summer flowers have not yet come into bloom. When it occurs, it is particularly dangerous for the colonies as they have large populations with many mouths to feed and nothing coming in.
A good indication that a Gap is in process is that there is hardly any activity at the front of the hive, and the bees will have ejected most of the drones – they won’t waste precious energy searching if they can’t smell nectar.
If the flows stop, keep an eye on your bees – remember the all-important F of FEDSS (Food, Eggs, Disease, Space and Swarming). If you think the colony has run out of food (nothing in the supers and very little in the upper corners of the brood frames), then remove the supers and apply a feed. 4 or 5 litres of thick syrup (1kg sugar to 0.6 litres of water) or apply a 2 kg lump of fondant. The June Gap may only last a week or two.
An adult bee needs about 10mg of sugar per day, so a really strong colony of 50 thousand bees could use about ½ kg per day (about 650 gm of honey or fondant). In a June gap of 7 to 10 days, they could therefore need 6kg of honey or fondant. I remember a very strong colony emptying an almost full super (estimated weight 10 or 11kg) during a severe June Gap some years ago. You may be lucky and have some farm-grown Phacelia nearby.
Time to start thinking about preparing for late summer flows. With luck, the lime will yield and if yielding strongly is a flow capable of filling a super in 10 days, so make sure you have supers available. Lime honey is high in fructose and stays liquid for a long time, as well as being one of the tastiest honeys, pale
green with a gentle taste of the old- fashioned limeade lemonade. However, even if the Lime doesn’t oblige (I usually get good lime flows about 3 or 4 years in 5), then there is sure to be bramble and rosebay willowherb (fireweed).
