Episode 411: Sugar Syrup for Honeybees

Before that, though, a little roundup of where I'm at as we reach the end of the month and things start to slow down a little, certainly in terms of inspections.

There's always plenty to be getting on with, of course, but generally around the apiaries, there's not so much to do now.

And that's hopefully good news for the bees.

Let's start with the easy colonies.

Those are the queen right colonies.

Now these don't have to be full size hives.

They could be nukes.

And that might mean a six frame, a four frame, or even a three frame nuke.

I don't have any two frame nukes that I'm planning to take into the autumn months.

So there's no worrying about whether or not they'll survive.

All of the Queenwright colonies have been treated, except for the hives still at the allotment apiary, which is now overdue, and I really must get over there next week and get those sorted.

Again, I'm not panicking.

The treatment will do its thing, and we don't have any high drop rates of mites that's causing me any worries at the moment.

I've only inspected a few colonies in the past week, ones that I felt needed a quick check because of either a question about them being queen right or maybe they were a little light on food.

Either way, everything currently appears queen right and all have enough food to see them through at least a week or two.

Some having so much food, they'll probably go all winter without needing any supplemental feeding at all.

I now also need to collect up all the spare chicken wire that I have in readiness to protect against woodpeckers, particularly over at the farm apiary, where they have always been troublesome.

Don't jump to the conclusion that I'm putting chicken wire on my colonies right now.

That's not the case.

It's just preparation work.

I'll make sure we have the chicken wire ready at the apiaries and use it further into the autumn, and maybe not until the winter months.

I know I'll need to buy some more, so I'm just getting ahead of myself and not leaving it until the last minute, as I sometimes do.

Apiaries have been cleared of most spare equipment now.

There are a couple of locations that are what I would call holding apiaries for some equipment such as supers and spare floors and the like but I really like to get everything out as far as possible and back to the workshop for safe keeping.

In particular the poly hive parts and poly nukes of which we still have quite a number of empty boxes without bees in them.