Time for a reset

Well, that’s another beekeeping year over. The earthworms are still a metre deep under the hardened crust of soil, a couple of sporadic showers of rain doing nothing to soften the ground. Young swallows fledging their nests are stretching their flight muscles ready for the winter holidays to Africa. Let’s hope they feed on a few Asian hornets on their way down there because their parents have feasted long enough on my bees.

The honey harvest here in Kent has been good and the honey is absurdly thick, almost thixotropic. It wasn’t necessary to check the water content, but I did to be on the safe side; it was 12.5%. The downside of this was that it was hard to extract; spinning up the extractor too quickly left honeycomb smashing out of the frames. It was a case of going slowly and sometimes running two cycles of the extractor to get the bulk of the honey out.

Now is when I prepare my hives for the winter ahead. There is no point in trying to take a weak hive through the winter. If it’s just a late swarm that hasn’t had time to develop, I might unite it with another hive. However, if I can’t see any reason, I presume disease or high varroa load and I will euthanise that hive; this way I keep healthy stocks of bees. I find the best way to kill the hive is by putting a burning dish of sulphur in an empty super over the top of the brood in the evening. This might sound a bit extreme and brutal, but it does stop the spread of any disease. Done correctly the bees are all dead in the morning, the hive can be scorched clean, and the frames, wax and bees burnt. Any other hives that are surplus to my needs I move on to other beekeepers now as I don’t want to be bothered looking after them through the winter.

My honey storage shed has been in bad need of a makeover. It is rainproof and very draughty by design so that the winter cold will penetrate to make it as unpleasant as possible for wax moths. Last year I did have an issue  with mice coming in, finding their way into stored honey supers and feasting on wax and frames. I had thought the floor was alright but a slightly rotten timber deck with an air gap underneath just provides safe haven and easy access for rodents. This winter they are in for a surprise: honey money is going towards a nice solid concrete floor. In my wisdom I thought it would be an easy day for one man. Apparently not. It involves tonne bags of type 1, coarse sand and cement and will take a few days. So please God, I know it’s been a hot summer, but could I have a few more days dry whilst all my valuable beekeeping junk is languishing on the lawn?

Now for next year, time to start making up sugar feed. I have a 100-litre honey warming tank which is very handy to mix up bulk syrup: twenty-five-kilo bags of sugar and twenty-five litres of water; let it mix and warm overnight and the job is done. For me the feed is more about encouraging the queen to lay the eggs for the bees that will have to make it all through the winter. The Diutinus bees.

The end of my beekeeping year, for me, is when I have finally managed to clean the honey room floor. Yes, I have a dedicated room, but it still has to be cleaned. After three goes over with soap and mop, it no longer sounds like you are walking over upturned Sellotape, but the floor is finely speckled with more stubborn debris: wax and propolis mostly, and the occasional squidged bee. I had thought to ask my wife’s cleaning lady, but she just said I had to be joking. Plus, my wife pointed out that the cost of that would, in any case, be coming out of the beekeeping budget. The solution was to go over the floor with a steam cleaner; this was very effective at cleaning off the recalcitrant spots. Honey jarred up and floor clean - that’s it, year’s end. 

It must be Christmas shortly.