Preparing for next year.

November
The bees have finally been forced to retreat to their hives. The temperature has now  dropped to around a maximum of 10 or 11 degrees. Its cold, damp and not beekeeping weather.

Its now the time to start to prepare frames, hives and traps for next years season, which will hopefully start around the first week of March. All that is left to do is to give my 5 framed hives a feed of candy or bakers fondant next month. This slab of sugar should help the smaller sized colonies through the winter. I have fed all my colonies with liquid  sugar earlier in september but its far too late for the bees to be able to dry sugar syrop this time of the year. They can eat sugar candy anytime providing its warm enough for them to get to it.

Winter Jobs

All hives that are empty and have been used should be disinfected by passing a blowtorch flame over the surface of the interior. Not too much though, you dont want a charred interior and to burn off all the lovely propolis that the previous inhabitants have left. This is a great resource if a swarm becomes availible. They are much less likely to absconde if a hive has a good smell . Heating  up  the surface to just see the propolis become liquid is usually sufficient. You dont need a fancy blowtorch either. I use one that runs off replacable  gaz cylinders. Obviously, remove your base and each subsequent part of the hive. The Nicot plastic base is not very blow torch Friendly.  For this you can clean this on bleach and hot water. Also hives are very good at catching fire. Always leave your hive outside to cool off. The environment of "shed world" is such a great place for a fire to start.

Jobs to do around the Apiary

Check around all of your hives for overhanging branches than might tap against the hive. If they become laiden by snow it is surprising just how far a branch can be lowered by the weight of snow.

Here is a picture of my hives last year on 2nd december when we had 35cms of snow overnight. You can see that the shrubbery around was knocking on the hive body due to the weight of snow.

In the next post I will show you how to put dadant frames together, wire them up and fit them with their wax sheet ,ready for the season.. I buy my frames not put together (in kit form). They are cheaper like this and what else would you rather be doing over the winter months?

End of the season

Hello and welcome to Bees in Bittany.

Over the next year I want to try and show all the things I do with my bees, from management, to building swarm traps, hives and 5 framed mini hives. How and when to carry out an artificial swarm , how and when to put on a honey super and how to extract and jar up the honey and many more small things that I could not find out when I started beekeping but just had to learn for myself. I am hoping all these small things will build into a good years blog and someone may find it really useful for their beekeeping practices.

 A standard 10 framed Dadant hive with Nicot Base and mouse guard fitted

The situation Today!
It is technically the end of the year in the beekeeping calender. The bees have been fed and treated against mites, the mouse guards are going up and the bees are stocking up their larders with the now dwindling supply of food from their last remaing source of Ivy. It has been a good start to the autumn for the bees with record temperatures giving the bees good access to Ivy as well as an unusual bonus of flowering green manures planted by the farmers at the end of their oil seed rape and wheat crops. Some rain and good temperatures have unusually brought these in to flower. These usually grow well in the autum but rarely flower due to poor autumn weather. So despite it being a very dry year with a poor summer honey crop the bees are going in to winter in good form. Good strong hives that are well stocked up.
From now on apart from a few winter flowering shrubs, the bees will have to depend on their carefully stored pollen and honey to get them through the winter.

 Typical Ivy plant in full flower attached to a ruined building.