October 2025
Preparing for Winter by Alan Riach
You will all have your honey off now and will have struggled to extract some of it as the bees went long distances this year to the heather (3 or 4 miles) as the heather was yielding and the bees had struggled to get a decent harvest of
late summer flowers. The EMBA honey press which can be borrowed by any member, will have been busy. No excuse this year for a lack of entries in the heather-blend class at the honey show.
The bees should all be fed by this time and sitting confidently with 18kg of food onboard. Beginners are always advised to “heft” their hives to ensure that they are sufficiently heavy, but knowing what a reasonable heft is, needs some experience. It is not too difficult to weigh hives using a luggage weigher and a piece of stiff 3mm fence wire (or a M6 (6mm thread diameter) 1m long, screwed rod from your local Toolstation serves nicely). See Technical Data Sheet number 21 on the SBA website - https://scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Hive-weighing-method1.pdf
A reasonable weight for a typical wooden single broodbox Smith or National hive would be 28 to 30 kg. with floor and roof. 26kg would be a bit light. If the colony is on double broodboxes, with e.g. 8 + 8 frames 30 to 33 kg. 28kg would be a bit light. Polyhives, could be a bit lighter due to the reduced weight of the equipment (approx. 4 or 5 kg less)
If you decide that the hive is a bit light, it is now rather late to feed liquid syrup as the bees will struggle to dry it after this time, leaving a risk of fermentation, so place a couple of kg of fondant on the crown board over the feed hole. Placing here, rather than directly on top of the frames prevents fondant softening and running down between the frames which might endanger the queen. A reasonably strong colony will have no difficulty getting to the feed hole especially as its usually in the slightly warmer spring that they run short of food. The bees may still get some ivy nectar and pollen which is valuable for early Spring usage.
Generally, there has been a lack of summer honey due to the summer flowers coming and passing so quickly. However, the heather in the Pentlands did yield reasonably well this year.
Apply your mouse guards now. The metal strip ones with 9mm holes are most convenient and to avoid the fight with map pins whilst wearing your gloves use my method of pre-pinning. Map or drawing pin pierced thru the mouse guard before you don your gloves, wrap a piece of tape round the pin (point of pin piercing the tape) and guard to keep the pin in place. You can then simply push the taped pin into the hive without having to carry out a hopeless search for displaced pins in the grass. If you use a wood or plastic entrance block, ensure that the slot is less than 8mm high as any larger and a mouse can deform its skull and squeeze in.
Strap down the colonies with ratchet straps, as even if a hive does get blown over or knocked over by farm livestock, the bees will usually survive if the hive parts stay together.
Show time is here again. Do please support our local HONEY SHOW, 8th Nov at the Eric Liddle Centre (more information to follow soon). You can access Technical Data Sheet no. 26 on the SBA website which gives advice on entering shows.
https://scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Preparing_and_Exhibiting_at_a_Honey_Show.pdf
Also, consider investing in a set of grading glasses if you are going to show regularly and a bright LED torch (it is amazing what you see when you shine it onto the surface of your jar of show honey). Another very worthwhile investment for showing and general honey storage and marketing purposes, is a refractometer to determine the water content of your honey. It is illegal to sell blossom honey over 20% moisture content (or over 23% for Ling Heather honey). I wouldn’t waste money on the very expensive digital devices, a good optical version is quite adequate, and these are available on ebay or Amazon for about £15, but remember it must be designed for testing honey. Get one that is ATC (Automatic Temperature Compensated) but remember the refractometer and honey should be at the same temperature when in use. It is worth checking the calibration. Professional calibration fluid is expensive but it’s worth checking your refractometer against one with a known accuracy. A rough check can be made using a good quality cold pressed Canola (Edible oil seed rape) oil. It should give a reading of about 23%, but unfortunately edible oils will vary in water content and thus are not ideal calibration fluids.
Also consider entering the Scottish Smallholder’s Festival at Ingliston on 18 th October. There are only a few classes, but the show makes for an interesting visit, and our show convener Karen Stevenson is organising an EMBA bee exhibit with honey for sale at the show.
If you have a super with granulated honey, perhaps from Canola (oil seed rape) or clover, then nadir it, i.e. put it under the brood box. The bees will use the crystallized honey in the early Spring whilst the queen is busy establishing brood in the brood box above it. You can then remove the empty nadired super before the queen has descended downwards as the brood area expands. When harvesting your honey and finally removing the supers, you can also nadir any part filled uncapped supers that you have, and the bees will most likely take it up into the brood box – bees prefer to have their winter stores above the brood nest.
Good luck to all those sitting an SBA Module exam on 15 th November. We have all the invigilators, markers and moderator lined up.
And, as Christmas is approaching, time to start dropping hints to the family about “useful beekeeping items”. You are after all helping them with that difficult task of finding gifts.
A very big thank you from Peter Shaw and the Bulk Jar Order team for everyone being so helpful, and cheerful and collecting their jars on time! It was a challenging task but everyone rose to the challenge and hopefully got what they wanted.
