November 2025
Alan Riach – All fed and ready for winter.
The bees have been busy on the ivy up until recently and a good thing too, as the pollen gathered will still be relatively fresh in the early spring when the colonies are desperate for protein. Pollen is a proteineous (meaty) substance and doesn’t keep that well so the fresher the better.
The colonies took a lot of feed this year as the brood boxes were relatively poorly provisioned due to the lack of late summer forage (apart from those that were at the heather). I fed about a third more syrup than usual in order to get them up to weight for winter. For those of you not yet confident of the “hefting” method, you can devise a simple weighing system see Data Sheet number 21 on the SBA website -
https://scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Hive-weighing-method1.pdf
Time now to plan your next season’s beekeeping. What happened in the 2025 season?
Write down some notes as an aide-memoire and refer to them during the 2026 season.
Could my swarm control have been better? The bees were rather restless last season and even those that Pagdened (a normally fairly foolproof system), complained about some of the Pagdened (queen present) parts still wanting to venture forth. Consider using queen excluders under the brood box next season. Have you a spare queen excluder or two. Queen excluders don’t have to be expensive. You can make a quite adequate excluder with only a 10cm strip of slotted sheet excluder in the centre of a ply crown board. This gives plenty of space for the workers to move to and fro.
Did you have a severe June Gap last season? These seem to be becoming more severe in Scotland. Pay particular attention to F part of FEDSS (Food, Eggs, Disease, Space & Swarming) in mid to late June and if necessary, remove empty supers and feed. You can often determine how severe the June gap is by looking at the hive entrances. The colonies are very populous by June and if there is no nectar flow, flying is severely restricted – the bees realise the seriousness tens of thousands of mouths to feed and no nectar income. Plan for a possible recurrence in 2026.
Do you need extra equipment? Keep an eye on the suppliers’ end of season sales.
Are you thinking of going to the heather in 2026? If so, plan to have really populous colonies by the 2nd or 3rd week in July. A good method of achieving this is to Pagden a colony in late May and ensure that the new queen colony has plenty of food to build up and expand through the summer. Then in the 2nd week of July unite the two colonies back together headed with the new queen or perhaps with the mother queen if she is only a year old. Keep the spare queen in a Poly Nuc with a small colony (Poly Nucs survive better through winter), it will of course need feeding for winter. The unite should give you a colony boiling over with bees and a young queen more inclined to keep laying late into the season, which is what is needed for the heather.
Why not plan for taking some of the SBA exams. Everyone that has kept bees for a year or longer should take the SBA Basic Beekeeping exam, (BB) an over the open hive exam with some follow up oral questions.
Also consider taking an SBA theory module. There are two diets of these in March and November. The next diet is March 21 st 2026. The November diet (14th Nov 2026) will also include a Plants and Pollinators module (M4). These modules really consolidate your beekeeping knowledge, and you can participate even if you have not yet taken your BB.
The last practical task for 2025 may be a Varroa treatment prior to Christmas using an oxalic acid trickle or vapor method. Remember to use adequate PP equipment, especially if using the vapor treatment method. However measure the mite load first and don’t treat unless you have to. You should use the calculator devised by Prof Steve Martin and his team at https://www.varroaresistant.uk/mite-calculator/ This considers the time of year and your monitoring method. There has been quite a lot of publicity concerning varroa resistant queens and indeed there are areas where they are established. However, don’t assume you have resistant bees until you learn how to decide whether this is the case, so keep treating until you are sure you have resistant bees, but don’t treat unless the calculator says you should – over treatment is bad for the bees and bad for your pocket.
