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Alnwick Training Apiary - continued
Alnwick Training Apiary Editorial
A Winters tale
A years work
2004 A year of Swarms and wasps
Get the buzz
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A Winters tale
Location: Northumberland
The weather is beginning to turn towards Winter and the activity around the hives at the Alnwick and District Beekeeping Association Apiary in Northumberland is slowing down.
Each of the 10 hives at the Apiary have been given 8kgs of Sugar made into a syrup solution and fed through a rapid feeder, a fine mesh that allows the Honeybees tongues to gain easy access to the syrup for carrying into the brood chamber.
Activity in the hives is the re-organisation of stores around the centre of the brood nest where the bees will cluster in a rugby ball shape through the centre of the brood nest as the temperatures begin to fall.
Any small holes or gaps around the brood nest are being filled by the bees with Propolis to reduce the problem of draughts.
Fewer and fewer bees are venturing forth although those that do are returning with pollen from nearby Ivy and water from the adjacent stream.
The beekeepers having completed feeding, treatment for Varroa Destructor (a parasitic mite) and covered the top board, under the roof with a layer of foam, can now only wait and watch.
Some concern has been expressed as to whether the hives have sufficient food to carry them through to Spring, and checks on weight will be made at about Christmas to judge whether more food, probably extracted honey, needs giving to the bees.
Because of the proximity of the river all the hives have been lifted to ensure any flooding risk is minimised, further movement of the hives to changed positions for next Spring will now be left until warmer weather to ensure that the bees do not ‘ball’ the queen in protection and risk killing her.
Reflection of the year gone by shows it was a major success, 8 colonies of bees were handed out to new beekeepers and 2 to beekeepers who had lost their colonies to Varroa and are now spread throughout North Northumberland.
10 colonies of bees are now housed at the apiary as a foundation for the 2004 training programme a significant improvement for an apiary started in 2003 with only
4 loaned colonies.
The Winter allows time for consideration of changes to the training regime with a number of training modules to be considered, and a nucleus (small hive) building programme to be started.
The continued mild Winter has as we thought began to run the bees short on stores, hive activity has remained high, so each hive has been fed with a number of frames of honey.
Current forecast of heavy snow in the area has caused us to ensure that hive entrances cannot be covered.
We continue with our hive building and Summer programme planning, with 14/15 trainees for 2004 we need to consider our need to breed colonies as soon as the weather and colony strength permits
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