Plan B!

I received a lovely email from Janet yesterday and immediately sent her back a virtual hug!  Wouldn't it be great to have this step by step advice during certain times of having teenagers?

"Hope yesterday wasn't too daunting with all the bees, you're both doing really well under difficult circumstances, and I noticed how calm you appeared to be when handling the bees.  Many people would have refused to go into such a large hive.

Anyway because I threw a lot of info at you I thought if a did an action plan for the next few weeks it would give you an idea of how to tackle things

1.  Leave the bees alone until you come back from holiday except for watching the entrance for bees bringing back pollen.  If you go into them too much at this stage of them rearing a new queen you may cause her to abscond.

2.  When you return let me know and I'll come up and help you go through them again.  By then you should have new queens in both hives.  If not we have to check for laying workers, but the bees know what they're doing in spite of us beekeepers!!  We will need to mark the queens if we can find them (won't be easy in the big hive) so it will be easier for you to see them when you’re doing your own manipulations. We also need to check their supplies; I suspect there won't be much honey as the swarm will have taken half.  In addition we'll put varroa test trays underneath to monitor the daily mite drop.

3. If food supplies are low you will need to feed the bees in time for them to process it before the weather turns cooler otherwise the syrup will ferment or crystallise and could cause the bees to have dysentery through the winter months when they can't get out.

4. If varroa treatment is needed it needs to be done before the temperature drops below 14 C

5. The equipment you will need to have ready in case we need it is as follows:

• Feeders - one for each hive  (the round plastic ones are good and fit over the hole in the crown board)
• Empty super box - one for each hive to fit the feeders in.
• Varroa test trays - one for each hive ( National size) - you may have got one with the hive you bought
• Varroa treatment - Apiguard or Api Life VAR are good. Two packs are needed for each hive to complete one treatment - Thymol based
• Api eke -  one for each hive.  This is similar to a super but much smaller - about 2 - 3" high which gives space for the Apiguard treatment.  Easy to make yourselves.  The Api Life Var treatment sits on top of the frames in the brood boxes so no eke needed.

This is winter preparation - the start of the beekeepers year!  to ensure you have strong healthy bees going into the winter months and plenty of food to see them through it.  One advantage of the swarming is that you will have young strong queens going into winter/spring for next year.

All this equipment can be bought from Thornes and its not expensive and if not used will store till next year, but it’s better to have it so if necessary can be used immediately.

One other thing I noticed the brood box frames are pretty dirty and need changing otherwise disease will be carried from them.  This is done in the spring when the number of bees is smaller and there are empty frames which can be removed.  Ideally you sort out a system for changing about 3/4 frames a year in rotation so over 3 years all brood frames have been changed.  But winter preparation will include building enough new frames for this (not putting in the foundation until needed).  This can be done through the winter on quiet evenings when we are snowed in and there's nothing on telly!!!"