Getting ready for winter

Today I finally took off the feeders from Beatrice and Adele hives.  They still had some sugar syrup in them but the bees had completely stopped taking the syrup.

I took away the reduced entrance blocks and replaced them with mouseguards except for Connie hive.  I need Charles to make some holes so I can attach the new mouseguard with drawing pins.  I am not fitting any plastic this year because although I have green woodpeckers locally I had no trouble with them last year so I am just going to monitor carefully.

I checked on Connie hive and bees are busy but the fondant I have put on is still there so they may be taking some of it.  I will heft the hives soon and perhaps put some fondant on Adele and Beatrice. There was alot less activity today but it was alot colder.

Hazel Oak School and bees

Today I went to talk to the Headmistress of Hazel Oak school about keeping bees.  This is a special school in Shirley and I know that one of the teachers is very keen.  Hazel Oak have a fab garden where they grow vegetables and keep chickens and bees would be a great addition.

They were several health and safety concerns and we talked about where to keep them and various strategies to keep bees and pupils separate.  I suggested a netting enclosure at the far end of the field with possibly a perimeter fence if more security were required.

It was a really interesting meeting with Mrs Jenkins asking me what would be the benefit to the school of having bees on site and I was busy thinking up all the ways that bees could become part of the school curriculum.  Cooking, environmental studies, history, science, carpentary, politics.  The list could go on and on......

So hopefully by next summer there might be bees at Hazel Oak.

sugar fondant

Apparently some of the beekeepers have started feeding fondant instead of syrup now. There is some concern over winter stores, because the weather is so mild the bees are still foraging, pollen is still going into the hive which probably means that there is brood.  So the bees will be using up their winter stores more quickly and over wintering bees may not last the winter because they have been working too hard.  Taking all this into consideration I have found some fondant in the back of the cupboard and I have put a wodge of it onto Connie hive in case their supplies are down.

All three beehives have had the best part of 4 gallons of sugar syrup each but you can't be too careful.

Varroa gard, Feeding - Still!

After the meeting on Monday night I decided to double check the feeders, Roger had warned me that the covers over the weir get stuck and the syrup doesn't flow well.  One cover had got stuck and I gave it a bit of a clean and replaced it.  I noticed that the syrup level is going down so the bees are still taking it and I decided to leave both feeders on Beatrice and Adele since the weather is still so mild.

I had put varroa gard on Beatrice since they had a huge varroa count.  I decided to put some more in but hadn't really thought through how you would get the polystyrene trays out of the hive once they were empty!  I tried poking them out with a stick but only succeeded in getting the bees really annoyed.  So I just pushed another tray in with 75g of varroa gard in it and on the way back down the garden retreating from the irritated bees it occurred to me that I should attach a wire of piece of string to the tray so that I can remove it with out poking things into the hive and upsetting my bees, one of which accompanied all the way down the garden giving me an almight telling off.

The bees are bring a very pale yellow/cream coloured pollen into the hive, so there is still brood being produced which explains in part the varroa levels.  Must check what has pale yellow pollen at this time of the year - probably ivy.