Blogs 2025

Members can submit their Blogs to the webmaster via email

The views, information & opinions expressed in our Blogs are solely those of individual members

---

July

Buzzing with Excitement: Bees and Honey Weekend at Manor Farm
Tucked within the River Hamble Country Park, the historic barns of Manor Farm are cherished by families enjoying the best that of the Hampshire countryside. For beekeepers, this pastoral setting takes on a whole new meaning every summer as it hosts the Bees and Honey Weekend, organised by the Fareham and District Beekeepers’ Association (FDBKA), this year held on 5/6th July.

Bounded by the New Forest to the west, Portsmouth to the east, and the Meon Valley to the north, FDBKA brought together an enthusiastic team of beekeepers, volunteers, farm staff, and the public for a weekend of education, fascination, and hands-on experiences.

The Perfect Setting for Pollination
With its traditional layout and countryside charm, Manor Farm offers an idyllic backdrop for celebrating the vital work of bees and pollinators. The farm’s existing relationship with FDBKA has created a natural synergy: hives on-site serve as practical training tools for the Association’s Winter Beginners Course, and the honey produced is sold under the Manor Farm label. This collaboration reached full bloom during the weekend, with farm staff actively contributing to the event’s success.

A Walk Through the World of Apis Mellifera
This year’s event was designed to engage all ages with a sensory-rich, interactive journey into the life of the honeybee. From the moment visitors arrived, the mission was clear — to educate, delight, and inspire.

At the heart of the exhibit were two observation hives, where curious eyes could watch bees at work and, if lucky, spot the elusive queen amid brood in various stages. Watching guests light up with excitement at the sight of the queen was one of many rewarding moments.

The journey continued with a visual challenge: guests were shown a variety of insect images and asked to identify them as honeybees, other Apis species, or general pollinators. This simple yet engaging task highlighted the importance of recognising the diversity of pollinators vital to our ecosystem

One fascinating feature explained the idea that honeybees can recognise human faces. Using familiar children’s characters, the display illustrated how bees, much like people, respond to visual cues — forging a tangible link between the bee and the beekeeper

Muddy Hands and Sweet Treats
No celebration of pollinators would be complete without some hands-on activity. Young visitors eagerly rolled up their sleeves to make “bee bombs” — seed balls packed with wildflowers perfect for pollinator-friendly planting. This inevitably led to muddy hands and even bigger smiles.
Elsewhere, a scent-testing station allowed visitors to explore aromatic plants and shrubs known to attract bees, while in the craft barn, the spotlight turned to taste. Guests sampled everything from pure, local honey to adulterated varieties, learning to discern quality and authenticity. Tastings extended to honey and mead from across southern Hampshire — a sweet and satisfying finale to the sensory experience

This event was an enormous amount of work for our industrious Manor Farm Working Group and our brilliant volunteer Association members and the friends and family they press ganged: was it worth it? The faces and feedback from the attendees suggest a massive yes and our footfall throughout the weekend exceeded 700.  Despite robust pre-event advertising we were disappointed with that throughput, we could have accommodated five times that number. Therefore prior to next year we need to find a way to promote the event and the environmental message to a much bigger audience.

We would also really like to make the event a celebration of Hampshire beekeeping, rather than just our small area of it.  It would be great to see an assortment of Association shirts in a sort of ‘Apis County Fair’ and I look forward to seeing you there next July.
by Chrissy Day
FDBKA Acting-Chairperson

---

NDB COURSE 2025
The Examination Board for the National Diploma in Beekeeping was established in
1954 to meet the need for a beekeeping qualification above the level of those awarded
by the British Beekeepers Association and is the highest level beekeeping qualification
available in Britain.

The NDB Board holds an annual 5-day advanced beekeeping residential course at
Pershore College. Around 12-15 students are accepted on the courses which run on a
3-year cycle. Up to 4 NDB qualified tutors are always on hand, plus visiting lecturers
from a range of disciplines who are all recognised experts in their fields. This was my
second course, having attended one in 2023.

The examination for the diploma takes place every 2 years and consists of a series of
tests including:

• a written assignment
• a 3-hour written paper
• a portfolio of plants and insects of relevance to beekeepers
• a practical assessment involving bee handling, disease recognition and general
  biology
• a viva voce including a presentation on the assignment and a short
  spontaneous presentation.

The course is intensive with sessions in the classroom, laboratory and apiary all day
and into the evenings. Each attendee has to give a presentation on a subject decided
by the directing staff on an unusual or obscure topic for which a lot of research in
scientific papers is needed. My studies at Cornell University were a big help in shaping
my approach to my allocated topic.

The participants are people of all ages, from all parts of the country and different walks
of life and are either Master Beekeepers or, in my case, have completed all the BBKA
Modules and hold the Advanced Theory Certificate and the General Certificate in
Beekeeping Husbandry. I will take the Microscopy Certificate in November and the
Master Beekeeper Assessment next year.

The old saying that the more you learn the less you know certainly applies to the NDB
Programme; when you are used to being one of the most knowledgeable people in
your local or county beekeeping association, you come down with a bump when you
meet a dozen or so people who know much more than you.

Whether you decide to take the exam or not is up to the individual candidate. The
decision depends on the amount of time you are prepared to spend on building the
portfolio, which involves many hours of meticulous collecting of insects, flowers, pollen
and honey bee dissections – all beautifully mounted and presented to a high
professional standard.

One of the benefits of attendance is the opportunity to meet like-minded people from
all over the country and to share knowledge and experience with them. The contacts I
made last time proved very useful on a number of occasions when I need help or a
contact in another part of the country.

Overall, an intensive, demanding course that stretches your mind and opens new
horizons in your beekeeping life.
by Alan Baxter

---

SUMMER 2025
We’re into July already and the summer flow is full on with Bramble and Lime in bloom. The warm, sunny weather has helped to stimulate nectar production, and plants or trees with deep roots can still find plenty of moisture. Other sources may soon start to suffer from drought stress and stop producing nectar unless we some have rain.

In the Teaching Apiary we have taken off the spring harvest and, I suspect, the beginning of the summer crop. The honey we have extracted is medium/dark in colour with a good nose and a very persistent, complex flavour in the mouth, possibly due to the amount of Horse Chestnut the bees have foraged. When we took off supers of honey we replaced them with empty ones to give the bees space and avoid overcrowding. Any profit from honey sales this year will help to offset the cost of setting up the apiary, and towards the cost of equipment and consumables such as feed supplements, varroa treatment and foundation.

It’s still not too late for colonies to swarm so we are being vigilant during weekly inspections,keeping a sharp lookout for the signs of swarm preparation, creating space for the queen to lay and for the foragers to bring in their bounty. Remember one frame of brood produces three frames of bees and the foragers who are out at work all day need somewhere to sleep at night.

With the threat of European Foul Brood (EFB) on our doorstep in Hampshire we are paying careful attention to apiary hygiene and examining every brood frame for signs of something amiss with the larvae. Collected swarms from an unknown origin are a risk and should be kept away from other colonies until they have a clean bill of health before being installed in an apiary with other colonies. Just as a reminder here’s a shot of an infected comb so you know what to look for. When the disease first strikes there may be only one or two larvae affected and is very easy to miss.

There are a lot of wasps around already. They are normally in the carnivorous stage of their life cycle and don’t start scavenging for sugars until late summer or early autumn, but these are after anything they can get. Wasps can rob out a weak colony very quickly, so we need to ensure that our colonies and Nucs have a lot of bees to fight their corner, uniting weaker units if necessary and reducing entrances to the smallest setting.

We still have time to raise some new queens. An easy way is to do a split from a strong colony into a Nuc. The Nuc will have time to build up a good-sized population before winter. In the teaching apiary we will be doing a batch of grafts on Sunday 13 July and hoping for good weather when the new queens emerge and embark on their mating flights.

Now is a good time to think about uniting weak colonies, to have a big foraging force for the summer nectar flow, and for going into winter. Weaker colonies are always at risk of winter failure, so it is better to have one colony that survives than to have two that perish before next spring.

Varroa populations will be building up at an alarming rate now. We are testing all our colonies using the CO2 method and taking appropriate action to reduce the varroa load if the test result is greater than 1%. Testing for Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) behaviour continues. We have one promising colony from which we’ve taken a split to continue the genetic line. If they continue to show resistance, we will take some grafts and produce more queens with this trait.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the teaching apiary this year so far and well done those of you who passed the Basic Assessment this year.

Good luck with the rest of the season and happy beekeeping!
by Alan Baxter

---

June

MY VENTURE INTO BEEKEEPING
My venture into the world of bee keeping began when I was at Secondary School. It was there that I had the opportunity to make a WBC hive in the woodwork class. Upon completion of the hive my friend’s father allowed me to site it in his orchard at the bottom of Frater Lane in Gosport. My Father also purchased another hive and other equipment from a friend who was giving up keeping bees. My bees seemed to thrive in theorc hard and because of my success, I added two more hives.
It was an ideal place, and the bees continued to thrive in the orchard. All was well for a couple of years until Mr Martin, the owner of the plot explained to me that he was selling the land, and I would no longer have access to the site. I had had three years enjoyment and gained some valuable experience. I left the site and hives intending to return once I had found a new location. When I returned, I was unable to gain access to either orchard or bees, the site was cleared, and later houses were built. My working life then began with other teenage distractions and interests. Sadly, I never retrieved the hive I made at school.
Later in life my renewed interest in bees was sparked off by my plan to take up beekeeping as a hobby. I was heading towards retirement from IOW prisons, where I was a seconded Probation Officer involved in
preparing various reports, group work and risk assessments. I had by then joined the Fareham Beekeepers Association which I have found to have been a very helpful and supportive group.
My involvement with the group has been very interesting, especially the instruction and listening to the talks provided at the meetings. The certificate at the end of my training was an added bonus and pride. It has been interesting helping other members starting up, with me providing first time swarms. I have enjoyed the annual inspection of the Manor farm hives which are in a different setting to my own.
It is quite evident that there are changes in the climate and this, in turn is, having an adverse effect upon the seasons and our bees. The weather boundaries appear to be on occasions less predictable. This must have an effect upon our bees and other helpful insects as well as plants and trees. It has been a particularly difficult year for crop growing farmers. We now see some growers protecting their crops under specially built units with hives installed within them, of course however not all farmers and growers are able to do this.
A similar situation is occurring in our gardens with the need to have more bee friendly plants and flowers
which will help bees in collecting pollen and nectar aiding their survival. It is good that despite the weather the majority of people are lucky to have gardens for the bees to visit and some have hives. It is also apparent that new houses have much smaller gardens. As you will know the new large estate at the north of Fareham will be consumed by a large number of houses, losing the green farmland meadows and consequently forage space for bees in the area.
For me, last year has been a challenging time and despite my best efforts in looking after my bees at the
apiary, the two hives have not survived. On reflection, I believe that it was sadly due to a failed split this
summer. Another lesson and still learning. In the meantime, I have some honey to extract and jar.
by John Gagliardini.

---

DEALING WITH AN AGGRESSIVE COLONY
In early May one of the colonies in my teaching apiary started to display excessive defensive behaviour, following and stinging people for about 100 metres from the hive. I practice a zero-tolerance policy for this kind of behaviour for the following reasons:

• It is very unpleasant for me and for the people who come to the apiary to learn.
• It is bad for relations with the neighbours and members of the public passing by.
• The drones carrying the aggressive gene will mate with young queens from the area and pass on the bad behaviour to other beekeepers’ colonies.

The genetic line from which this colony was raised has so far been faultless. The colonies in my home and teaching apiaries are well known for their gentleness and calmness on the comb.
The queen was bred by me last year and until recently was being considered as an egg donor for queen raising this year.
Apart from genetic reasons, colonies can turn aggressive when there is a sudden end of a nectar flow, when robbing is taking place, when they are invaded by pests, when disturbed by noise or clumsy handling by the beekeeper. None of these conditions were present.
Varroa testing by CO2 produced only one mite from a sample of 300 bees. There were no signs of adult or brood diseases.  
Recently, the Kakugo virus (KV), which was only detected in the brain of aggressive workers of Italian bees by real-time PCR, was suggested to trigger behavioural changes in honey bees^1. My bees are not Italians, but there has been so much hybridisation that it’s impossible to know if there is any trace of Italian stock in their lineage. It’s a long shot, but it could explain the mystery of why a well-behaved colony turned nasty for no apparent reason.

Actions
The actions I took, with the help of leaners in the group, were as follows:

Conclusion  
Both colonies are calm and strong in numbers, building up for the summer flow.  
It was possible to deal with an aggressive colony by:

• splitting up the flying bees from the nurse bees
• killing the drone brood to prevent the aggressive genes from being passed on during mating,
• culling the queen.
• uniting them separately with other colonies.

Reference:  
1. Deformed wing virus is not related to honey bees’ aggressiveness. Agnès Rortais, Diana Tentcheva, Alexandros Papachristoforou, Laurent Gauthier, Gérard Arnold, Marc Edouard Colin & Max Bergoin      Virology Journal volume 3, Article number: 61 (2006) 

by Alan Baxter

---

NEW START FOR 2025
Having lost four colonies in my first year I decided that when I started again this year, it would be with 100% new frames in the brood boxes and used supers. What to do with forty four 14×12 brood frames and twenty odd super frames.  I would clean the frames and recover the wax. Firstly, using my Heath Robinson wax extractor (see Ingenuity page) I stripped  the frames.  Then using the ‘Andy Method’ (2024 Association external speaker on wax cleaning) I rendered the wax and achieved 10LB of wax.  The wife can now have her oven back! Overall cost of all equipment, about £15.
by Tim Cooper.

---

May

TITCHFIELD FAYRE – 4th May 2025
What a turnout today was at Titchfield fayre! We completely sold out of honey within just a few hours!! It was incredible to see so many people interested in what we do and why we do it, especially spotting the queens in the observation hives and watching the bees get to work. We even had a candle rolling activity which everyone seemed to enjoy as well! It was a great day at the fayre getting to meet loads of new people and hear their own experiences with bees, whether it was about their own bees or just bees they happened to come across in their everyday life! Thank you Titchfield community for allowing us to share our stories and hopefully get some of you interested in beekeeping yourself!
by Nathan Palmer

---

April

EASTER BONNET OR CRASH HELMET?

Neither!  And you should be ashamed of not recognising a skep-in-the-making!

This weekend gone was the National Bee convention held at Harper Adams University in darkest Shropshire.  The sous-chef spent a day working on the microscope: pollen and dissected bees.  I started on the skep.  Think of it as a very tight, hard spiral of twisted straw, lashed together with long strands of other plant material.  This is what was used in bygone years to house bees and you might recognise it from various honey labels.  My skep only got as far as the crash helmet stage after 6 hours (and others in the group hadn’t even got that far).  Back home with a sack of thatcher’s straw, I’ll be finishing it over the next week or so.  Nowadays, some beekeepers will use skeps to gather up swarms of bees in the next few months (actually, lots use a cardboard box).  But mine might end up being a cherished family heirloom.

You might have spotted the couple of flowers adorning the not-quite-bonnet.  These are the results of nearly two hours hard labour turning sheets of coloured wax into fine blooms.  I think that those running the course were surprised that even a blind person could manage to make them.  It just goes to show that having no sight needn’t hold anyone back.  On the other hand, nearly half a century ago, I was in one of the tiny Capodimonte potteries in Naples (previous life as a naval officer) where they challenged me to knock up a flower from a ball of clay – Yes, managed it.

It was a terrific event, beautifully organised with special care taken to make sure that I was safe and sound throughout.  Massive thanks to Joyce and her team.  The University features agricultural and associated courses (remember Ruth from The Archers went there) so the food was excellent, the dance band was outrageous and the average age was well over 50.

We also attended several lectures and the renowned Roger Patterson from West Sussex stole the days.  It was a wonderful opportunity to meet fellow beekeepers (Mark and Wendy from Northern Ireland, the brace of vicars from Dorset and so many more that I can’t possibly list here).  A truly wonderful opportunity to meet like-minded people, argue over the finer points of beekeeping and still enjoy each other’s company.  Thumbs up to the British Beekeeping Association for another winner.

by Penny Melville-Brown

---

March

ASSOCIATION COLONY UPDATE
The colony that was kindly donated by David Marsden, a former FDBKA member, has completed its quarantine.  It has been treated with Oxalic Acid for phoretic varroa and passed a health and temperament assessment before being moved to the Training Apiary 10 days ago.  This is the same procedure as for a collected swarm of unknown origin.
An inspection on Sunday 23 March revealed a colony in great need of a complete change of equipment. Many of the brood frames were rotten and broke easily, and the whole brood box was bunged up with propolis, brace comb and honey.
It was decided a shook swarm should be done as soon as the weather is warm enough.

Why Shook Swarm?
Shook swarms are carried out on colonies that need a complete change of comb or have a high level of Chalkbrood infection.  It is also a treatment for low levels of EFB that may be ordered by a Bee Inspector.
The benefit is that the colony starts again in a completely new home that is varroa-free and without of all the debris and accumulated detritus that older comb contains. Shook swarmed colonies are said to take to grow much more vigorously afterwards.
It is only suitable for colonies with at least 6 seams of bees and enough young bees 10-20 days old to draw out the large amount of comb required. A feed of thick sugar syrup is needed, even if there is a nectar flow.  Smaller colonies can be shook swarmed into a Nuc.
Shook swarm can be done between March and July. However, all the brood is lost, so shook swarm should not be carried out in the weeks before the main nectar flow as there won’t be enough foragers to benefit from it.

Equipment

• Clean floor
• Queen excluder
• Foam entrance blocker
• Clean brood box
• 11 frames of foundation
• Crown board
• Rapid feeder
• 4.5 Litres thick syrup
• Roof
• Large bin bag for old frames to be destroyed.

Method

• Move the hive to one side
• Clean the ground underneath of any debris
• Add the clean floor
• Add the queen excluder
• Add the brood box. The flying bees will return to this box.
• Close the entrance with the foam blocker to keep the bees in the box.
• Put in the frames of foundation leaving out 4 frames in the middle
• Go through the original brood box and find the queen
• Cage the queen for safe keeping and keep her warm in your pocket
• Remove the frames from the original box one by one and shake the bees off with a sharp tug taking care not to knock the frame on the side of the box.
• Any bees still clinging to the frame can be lightly brushed or stroked off with the back of your hand or with a leafy twig (not a bee brush which can damage the bees and collect dirt or infection).
• When all the bees are in the new box carefully put the remaining frames in the space and let them sink down on their own. Do not push them down.
• Release the queen onto the new frames. Do not forget and take her home!
• Remove the entrance blocker to allow the flying bees to come and go.
• Add the feeder and syrup.
• Put on the crown board and roof.

Follow-up

• Once comb is drawn, and the queen has started to lay, the queen excluder can be removed.
• They need to be supplied with syrup until all the frames have been drawn out.
• Bees can’t draw comb next to the wall of the hive so the end frames should be turned round once one side is drawn.
• Supers can be put on once all the frames have been drawn out, but not before or they will start to work on the supers.
• Oxalic acid treatment can be given before any brood is capped. The colony will then be practically varroa-free.

by Alan Baxter

February

WINTER & SPRING LOSSES
Many beekeepers suffer colony losses in winter and early spring and wonder what happened. Most losses are avoidable so let’s have a look at some of the common reasons why colonies die out, how we can prevent it and what we can do to help colonies that are vulnerable.

Health
It is important to carry out a full health inspection of the adult bees and the brood after the summer harvest. A health inspection is a visit to the colony in its own right and not combined with other work. Learn to recognise what healthy bees and brood should look like, and how to detect when something is wrong. The BBKA pocket guide on honey bee health is an excellent addition to the beekeeper’s tool kit.

Starvationhis happens when the colony runs out of food and there is no foraging to bring in stores. This could be because:

• the beekeeper was greedy and took all the colony’s honey the previous summer.
• a genetic factor whereby the bees naturally eat a lot of food.
• a mild winter when the bees are very active and need more food for work.
• The queen continues to lay and more food is needed to feed the larvae.
• There are stores but the bees cannot reach them (isolation starvation).

Prevention

• Ensure you leave enough stores for the winter. An average colony needs about 20kg of honey to last until the following spring. That means several frames of capped stores in the brood box and at least one full super.
• If they have less than this in October, feed with 4 litres of thick sugar syrup.
• Remove the queen excluder so the cluster can go into the super and not leave the queen behind to die.
• Heft the hives every 2 weeks and top up with fondant if needed.
• Give pollen supplement e.g. Candipolline and fondant in February to provide nutrition for the larvae and to stimulate the queen to lay.

Varroa
If the varroa load is high it will bring stress on the bees in winter by feeding on their fat bodies and exposing them to fatal viruses such as Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) or Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV).

Normally in winter there is a period of no brood, and the mites cannot reproduce. If the winter is mild and the queen keeps laying, there is no brood break, the mites continue to reproduce in the brood cells and to grow exponentially.

Prevention
Varroa treatment in late summer and in early December, followed by monitoring to check the success or not of the treatment, must be carried out strictly in accordance with the manufacture’s instructions and recorded on VM2.

If the numbers of varroa in summer are too high, the population of mites will continue to grow as the number of bees declines, to the point where the colony is overwhelmed, see fig below:

Graph courtesy of Randy Oliver

Small colonies
If the colony going into winter is small, they won’t have enough bees to look after the queen and to keep the brood nest warm. The queen will die and the colony will dwindle and perish.

Prevention
In autumn, unite weak colonies that have less than 5 frames of brood or put them in a nuc which is easier to keep warm. Give stimulative feeding of thin syrup in September to encourage the queen to produce more winter bees, then thick syrup to lay down as stores.

Queen failure
A colony that loses its queen in autumn or winter won’t be able to replace her with a new mated queen and the colony will dwindle and die.

Prevention
Change queens that are more than 2 years old for a new queen. If the old queens are good ones and you can’t bear to part with them, ‘retire’ them to a nuc and use them for breeding new queens next year.
Always use locally bred queens from stock that is adapted to the local environment. Buying queens imported from another country or a different part of the UK is a recipe for failure.

Nosema
If nosema is present in summer, the bees can defaecate outside the hive and, in a strong colony, the disease will often go unnoticed. However, nosema reduces the bees’ ability to absorb protein, so the bees are weaker and have shorter lives. Come autumn and winter the bees are confined to the hive, the spores spread more quickly, the number of bees is reducing but the nosema spores keep increasing, leading to winter losses or failure to build up in spring.

Prevention
Test for nosema after the summer honey harvest. Send a sample of about 30 bees to a laboratory or a beekeeper who has microscope, for testing. Alternatively, kill a few bees and pull out their intestines with fine tweezers. The midgut should be yellowy-brown, if it’s white and fragile nosema is probably present.

Remedy
There is no treatment. The spores are deposited in the comb, so put them on clean comb using the Bailey comb change for a weak colony procedure, then feed them with 2:1 sugar syrup and pollen supplement and hope for the best.

Equipment:

• Clean brood chamber containing frames of sterilised drawn comb
• 4 Dummy boards
• Queen excluder and eke with entrance block or a Bailey Board.
• Crown board
• Floor
• Contact feeder and 2:1 sugar syrup.

Method: Day 1

• Take the frame with the queen on and place it in the new brood box.
• Remove all frames without brood from original brood box and any supers.
• Close up the remaining frames in the centre of the brood box with dummy boards.
• Put frames of new drawn comb in the new box on either side of the frame with the queen.
• Match the number of drawn combs with the number in the bottom box.
• Close up the space in centre of the new box with dummy boards.
• Put a queen excluder and an eke with an entrance block (or a Bailey Board if you have one) on the old brood box.
• Close the lower entrance.
• Place the new brood box with clean drawn frames above the lower brood box.
• Put on the clean crown board.
• Feed with 2:1 sugar syrup.
• Add the roof.
• Dispose of the old comb by burning.
• Scrape and disinfect by scorching the old frames.

Day 7

• The queen in the upper box should have moved onto the new frames and started to lay.
• Remove the old frame with the remaining brood and return it to the bottom box.
• Add more drawn sterilised frames to the new box and close up with dummy boards.
• Check lower box for queen cells and remove if found.
• Remove any frames that have no brood.
• Dispose of the old comb by burning.
• Continue to feed.

Day 7-28

• Add a few more drawn sterilised frames in the top brood box.
• Remove frames with no brood from the bottom box.
• Dispose of the old comb by burning.
• Replenish the feed.

Day 28

• Place a clean floor on the stand and add an entrance blocker.
• Put the upper box on the new floor and adjust the entrance.
• Add a queen excluder then the super(s).
• Close the hive with the clean crown board and the roof.
• Remove, scrape and disinfect the old queen excluder and upper entrance or Bailey Board, lower brood box and old floor.
• Dispose of old comb by burning .

by Alan Baxter

---

January

THE APIARY IN JANUARY
The days are getting longer and lighter, birdsong is in the air, there’s a growing sense of the earth awakening, reenergised after a long sleep. The winter bees in the darkness of their hives can feel this change and they are starting to prepare for spring. On milder days they will venture out on cleansing flights and to forage for pollen on Hazel, Willow, Snowdrops, early Crocus and Garrya elliptica. The incoming pollen will stimulate the queen to lay eggs and the winter bees will start to be busy again, feeding the larvae and keeping them warm.

During the coldest days of winter, the colony will have formed a cluster around the queen, maintaining a core temperature of about 18 deg C while they are broodless. The bees on the outside of the cluster or mantle, can tolerate temperatures as low as 8 deg C before they fall off and die. However, once there is brood the colony must raise the temperature of the brood nest to 35 deg C. They generate heat by a sort of shivering where they flex the big powerful flight muscles in the thorax without moving their wings.

Temperatures of the winter cluster

Some beekeepers note that their colonies are never broodless which puts an extra strain on the winter bees who must keep the brood nest at 35 deg C and feed the young larvae. They eat carbohydrate in the form of honey or sugar as fuel, so it’s important to check the weight of the hives regularly by hefting to make sure they have enough stores.

Apart from ensuring the hives are secure against the storms, checking that they have enough food, and topping up with fondant if required, there’s not much for the beekeeper to do in the apiary. In the bee shed it’s worth checking any stored supers to see if the wax moth treatment needs to be repeated, and all the usual winter jobs of repair and maintenance of equipment, making up new, or refurbishing old frames with fresh foundation ready for the coming season.
Spring is just around the corner and will be upon us before we know it.

by Alan Baxter

---

JANUARY MEETING
Around 40 people attended our first meeting of 2025 on Thursday 2nd January in Catisfield memorial Hall. In addition to members there were several potential new beekeepers who are soon to commence the FDBKA beginners course.

The main part of the evening was a team quiz where six teams of mixed experience answered beekeeping related questions set by quizmaster Alan Baxter. The 3 part quiz was challenging for most, especially with the tough adjudicating by Greg Young. The Workers team were victorious with a total of 37 points.

We also made some very helpful income from the sale of second-hand equipment – some snatched up at bargain prices by those beginners.

Quotes of some attendees:
“Was great to see so many people there and was nice to see the enthusiasm the newbies had and the welcome they were given.”
“What a lovely evening.  Lots of fun.  Lots of people.  Brilliant!”

by Pete Wilson