Beekeeping - Short and Sweet

This week, we have a real treat as I’m speaking with Peter Nelson, Director of Photography for a fantastic Beekeeping documentary called The Pollinators, so stayed tuned to hear what it takes to produce a beekeeping movie and to find out how you can get to watch it.
Check out the movie here:

The Pollinators Movie

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 93 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Another busy week and I’ve been out checking up on the colonies we fed last week. I’ve also had a question about early season colony management so stay tuned for more chat about making a great start to the new season.

Welcome back to the podcast, if you’ve only just found us, you are most welcome and if you’re a regular listener, I’m grateful to you for sticking around. It’s been another wet and windy week, super mild and no sign of any wintery weather at all. The bees have been out flying on regular cleansing flights and apart from a mouse in an unused nuc box, everything seems safe and secure.

We’re currently sat at 80 colonies, a mix of full-sized hives in all shapes and sizes, Nationals, Commercials, Langstroth's and some 14 x 12’s, together with a similar mix of nucs in the various sizes. We have wooden and poly hives and I have to say, this year, we seem to be doing very nicely in the poly hives. The nucs and full-sized hives all seem to be of a decent size and active in the mild weather. I should really carry out a count up of the two material types to give you all a better idea of the exact mix, in fact, if I just visualise the apiaries I can do it now. Currently, we have 8 times full-sized poly hives and 12 times poly nucs. The rest are wooden. We do have more stock of poly hives just no bees in the as yet. I use the Maisemore Poly Commercials and the Honey Paw Poly Langstroth’s. Both are fantastic, we’ve had the Maisemore poly hives longer than the Honey Paw’s and they’re still in excellent shape. In the beginning, I did worry about how long they would hold up and although it’s only been a few years now, they’re doing remarkably well.

The better poly hives are using 100g per litre material and that certainly seems like a substantial weight of material giving a nice feel of strength to the hives. I really must do a weight comparison between a full made up poly hive and a wooden one to show the difference. We’ve been out visiting the apiaries as I mentioned and quite a number of the colonies have been getting stuck into the fondant that we put on last week, smooch so, in fact, that we’re going to have to continue feeding those colonies now until the Spring flow comes in otherwise we risk seeing them starve out and there’s only one person to blame for that. The nucs housed in the BSHoney 2 in 1 nucs have been looking very good this Winter, the boxes are full of bees and the poly material really seems to be helping them, that said, we’ve not had any cold weather yet so they’ve not been truly tested. These nucs have certainly been the ones to gorge themselves on the fondant and we’re currently adding the second bag to most of these boxes.

A couple of the Maisemore poly hives are similarly across the top bars, I posted a picture or two via Patreon and my social media feeds, twitter and Instagram, showing a “nine-seamer”, That’s a colony with bees visible between ten brood frames which adds up to nine seams.

For those colonies, I added a homemade eke with two bags of fondant directly on the top bars. The eke’s are made from cheap roofing batten simply cut and screwed together. The Maisemore poly commercials are about 500mm square so easy enough to sort. The trick is to keep a close eye on them in the Spring or you’ll end up with a really nice 500mm square block of brace comb that will need cutting away from the top of the brood frames and make a nice mess with honey and wax dripping everywhere. I speak from personal experience, of course, last year the bees were away so fast the brace comb seemed to appear overnight!

Once they do start to build into the Spring it’s important to get the eke off and another box on, but more of this in a few minutes. Checking out the other apiaries, and we currently have eight active apiaries, the bees were all looking well and feeding quickly into the fondan

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 92 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Happy New Year, My first podcast of 2020 and a chance to update you on the top bar hive project, Winter feeding and an exciting new collaboration for the coming season.

I know it’s a cliche but where oh where did that year go? And what on earth is happening to the quiet time over this Winter period! It seems we’re now rushing towards the beginning of the beekeeping season and with so much work still to do. Mostly due to my enforced downtime in the Autumn with the bad back but even so, I still see so much work to do and the days are racing past. With the start of the new year, I’ve changed the colour of the podcast title image to reflect this year’s queen colour, I’ll also be changing the colour on the video thumbnails to the same colour and if you’re still pondering what colour that is, well, it’s blue this year.

One of my New Year’s promises to myself is to have a daily jobs list to keep me focussed, and, apart from a couple of minor slip-ups I am still working to the list and adding jobs as I spot them or, as in most cases, remember I need to do them.

Currently, top of the list are jobs associated with the top bar hive, if you’ve listened to the previous podcast you’ll know me and Pete are busy building a top bar hive, something I promised myself I would do quite a number of years ago and to be honest, it’s been a bit distracting and more work than I had anticipated, but I’ll give you a full rundown on that in a few minutes.

I’ve been popping around the apiaries checking up on flooding risks and adding fondant, again more about this task later but I wanted to start the podcast proper with some exciting news for us here at the Norfolk Honey Company in that we have recently agreed to a season-long collaboration setting up an apiary from scratch and installing a dozen Honey Paw Langstroth Hives and accompanying nucs.

As you may know, we collaborated with Paul Beardmore from Happy Valley Honey a couple of seasons ago with some Honey Paw Hives and the manufacturers have been in touch to ask if we would again use their hives to collaborate in a series of videos to last the full active season showing the full range of Honey Paw Poly Langstroth hives and associated kit such as pollen traps.

I’ve been very impressed with the Honey Paw hives we’ve been using that Paul at Happy Valley Honey supplied us so I didn’t hesitate in agreeing to create another series of videos for the coming active season using the Honey Paw hives. We’ll be receiving the hives in flat pack form and I’ll be using my renowned DIY skills to build the hives, in layman’s terms that means glueing them together as I’m sure you’re aware.

Then we’ll be painting them and making up all of the ancillary equipment in preparation for the start of the new season. Once we’ve got them built and painted we’ll be setting them out in a brand new apiary site that I’ve just established close to our Bluebell’s apiary. It’s a lovely site in the corner of an open meadow with great access for the Ranger so we’ll be able to get all of our gear to the apiary without any heavy lifting.

Check out my blog for the full transcript of this week's podcast.

Well, that’s it for this week, thanks for all of your comments and support,

If you’re not yet familiar with Patreon, Do catch up with more of my beekeeping journey by checking out the content list on my creator page www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

Have a great week, and thanks for hanging around until the end of the podcast.

 I’m Stewart Spinks

And that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 91 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet.

Here it is, as promised, Well, I’ve finally started my Top Bar Hive Project by getting into the workshop and watching Pete do all the woodwork! This week I’m discussing what the Top Bar Hive is all about, why I’ve chosen to give them a try and how we’re getting on building our very first hive.

So the Top Bar Hive or TBH as I’m going likely abbreviate it to, is not totally new to me as I’ll explain but I’ve never used one myself to keep bees in and have always wondered what the fuss was all about.

The TBH seems to generate a lot of heated and passionate debate wherever it is used and that in itself is quite interesting to me because as most of you know I’m very much about letting beekeepers keep bees the way they want to keep bees. Whether it be in Langstroth’s or Nationals, Warre hives or Plastic Beehaus constructions, surely it’s down to the individual beekeeper to decide how he or she wants to keep bees and get the maximum amount of pleasure out of it they can.

Now, I’m a beekeeper with a small commercial outfit, barely commercial with around 80 colonies going into the Winter but even so I can’t see myself continuing to be a commercially productive beekeeper if I were just using a Top Bar Hive as my main hive type. I could, of course, be totally wrong and find it works out perfectly so I’m not going to close my mind to any outcome at the outset but I do have reservations about the practicalities of moving bees in a TBH.

Before I get stuck into the nitty-gritty of the Top Bar Hives, In today’s podcast I want to talk about what they are, how they work and think about some of the practical pro’s and con’s of using one. Back at the workshop Pete and I have started to construct our very first hive and it seems to be going quite well. I’ve posted some pictures and there’ll be videos to follow in the next few weeks.

On the subject of videos, I made one of those terrible cock-ups this week, I went over to the workshop at the weekend and we started to prepare the wood for the Top Bar Hive and I shot some very lengthy videos showing, in details, the steps we’d taken thus far.

I got home, had dinner, a glass of wine and started watching the Eagles playing football and while I was watching decided I could catch up a little by uploading the photographs to my google photos account. I didn’t need to upload the videos as I was going to download those to my computer to edit. It looked like I uploaded all the pictures and videos at the same time so, wait for it, I deleted all of the videos from my google photos app. The next morning I sat at my computer ready to download the videos anatomy computer and they were nowhere to be seen!

Yep, I’d deleted the lot! About twenty minutes of HD video. It was one of those, NO, I haven’t, moments. A brief but pointless attempt at trying to recover them and then the realisation that I’m going to have to do it all again!

On the bright side, at least we have another pallet and plenty of wood to be able to recreate the shoot!

Anyway, Top Bar Hives. without trying to sound too patronising, these are beehives, which have top bars for the bees instead of frames. It really is as simple as that. There are a variety of types, which I really don’t want to get into, the internet is awash with claims of who is supposed to have invented them, well, the one me and Pete have created is a version of the Kenyan Top Bar Hive and plans are freely available on the internet and I’ll be posting a blog showing our TBH journey over the coming months and no doubt we’ll post a plan and cutting list there for anyone who wants to follow us.

I’ve been considering why a Top Bar Hive would be so good? Well, for a start it’s a super easy hive to build and as I’ve mentioned we’re using pallet wood which was free, so they can be super cheap. Of course, you can go out and buy a read

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With not many more days left until Christmas is upon us, I thought I would tell you all about my letter to Santa detailing the potential gift ideas he may want to consider. Stay tuned for some very hopeful gift ideas from someone who thinks he’s been good all year.

It has to be said our British weather is so changeable, I’m looking out at another sunny morning but the forecast for tomorrow is of more heavy rain. We have to be grateful that we do enjoy such changes in the seasonal weather, I’m not sure I would want to be stuck waiting for it to rain for months on end and I feel for those people out there who are desperate for a change in the weather conditions they are enduring.

It’s been a very busy week this past week, we’ve had lots of honey orders to get out and as we’re a small commercial outfit we mostly bottle and label as we go, batch processing around 100kg of honey each time. I did have a bit of a panic with my labels, there were several issues and I had to speak with the label printing company several times to resolve the situation but we got there in the end and the labels arrived with enough time for us to get the honey labelled and delivered on time. I do hate being late and not delivering when I say I’m going to, it doesn’t matter if you have the best excuse in the world, if I’ve promised to do something then I really want to make sure I’m not letting people down.

But, we managed to get the deliveries out and continue to push out the orders as we get ever closer to the weekend before Christmas, if you’re listening to this on Patreon on release day, it makes that date just one week away now. I’m heading over the the US to visit my youngest daughter Beth and spend Christmas with her and Paul, her fella and his family. Beth doesn’t know I’m visiting so I’m hoping it’s going to be a nice surprise for her, maybe I’ll get a chance to record a podcast and perhaps a video while I’m away but if not there will be a brief pause between Christmas and the beginning of the New Year. It’s amazing that I’ve reached podcast number 90, creating a weekly podcast has been quite a feat and I hope that it will continue long into the future. I really appreciate the support and comments I get and on that note I’d like to say hello to Bradley Sargent and his partner over in Australia who dropped me a lovely message just last week. Hi Brad, I hope you’re well and I wish you a very Merry Christmas.

I’m out visiting a new landowner later this week to discuss setting up a new apiary for next season, it’s a terrific location and I’m hoping to record some videos of use getting it prepared and bringing colonies over in preparation for the start of next season.

I’m also heading out this week to delivery some Christmas gift boxes to a few of the current landowners who very kindly allow me to keep my bees on their land, without them I’d really struggle to find secure locations and it’s always nice to turn up with a box of goodies to say thank you.

Talking of Christmas gift boxes, I thought today I might offer up some suggestions for last minute Christmas gifts you might want to suggest to family and friends if they’re struggling to think of something you’d like.

Can you believe that top of my list this year was a 3M full face mask and filter set so I can treat my colonies with the Oxalic Acid sublimator in total safety. If you’ve seen the pictures on social media you’ll know I’ve already been given it and have been trying it on for size! I have to say, last year I used a half face, disposable mask and thought that was ok but having now worn a full face mask it feels a lot safer.

So, let’s pretend I’ve been really good this year and Santa is going to be very kind to me. Top of the list would be a new honey room with an extraction line. It’s not too extravagant really, just a small extraction line like the introductory model from Honey Paw, their 40 frame extraction line with a

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 89 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. With winter upon us, it’s time to talk oxalic acid treatments. So let’s look at what it is, how it works and the options available for beekeepers to take care of their bees this Winter.

Links discussed in this week's podcast:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/veterinary-medicines-directorate

Research Paper discussed: Towards integrated control of varroa: 2)comparing application methods and doses of oxalic acid on the mortality of phoretic Varroa destructor mites and their honey bee hosts 

Welcome back once more to my weekly podcast, we’re back on track now after my recent absence and we’ve lots to talk about over the coming weeks as we head into Christmas and the New Year. I reckon we’ve got about 12 weeks before we might be able to have a first sneaky peek into the hives at the start of the new season, somewhere around the middle of March. But of course that all depends on the weather, this year I was looking at giant colonies being moved onto the oilseed rape fields in the middle of March whereas in 2018 we had just seen the last of the snow melt away so if we are able to open hives it won’t be full inspections of course, just a quick look to make sure all is well and the bees have been able to see off the long winter months. I say long Winter months but the time seems to be sprinting through, here we are at the beginning of December, there’s a crisp frost outside, the skies are a pale, Wintery blue colour and for once there’s not a cloud in the sky. What’s that dead pool expression, It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas!

So my last week has been a busy one, I’ve been getting a few large honey orders ready to go out but have been slowed up a little by a lack of labels. I’ve been redesigning labels and trying out a new label supplier, the first batch, a special Christmas hamper label was a great success and so I’ve decided to switch all of my labels to this printers. I’m just waiting for them to arrive and then I have several hundred jars of honey to label and deliver. I’ll probably be out delivering honey as you listen to this podcast if you’re listening to it hot off the press as it were.

The rest of the week has been spent dealing with a lot of online enquiries for next year’s experience days that I run. Lots of beginner beekeepers will be getting a trip to my apiaries next season and I’m always really excited to share my beekeeping knowledge with them and help them start their beekeeping journey.

On the subject of Experience Days, I have a special offer for all of my Patreon supporters.

I’m going to run Experience Days specifically for patrons who have signed up to my $5 or $10 for at least six months prior to the date of the experience day which will be held in June and July.

The dates, which I’ve yet to add to the diary, will be specifically designed to answer question you might have regarding your beekeeping. So depending on the topics you’d like covered we could look at queen rearing basics, more advanced queen rearing techniques, disease inspections, setting up an apiary, honey production, the list is endless really.

The days will include lunch and all refreshments, all you will have to bring is a spotlessly clean bee suit and your wellies or stout boots. They are going to be held at my fishing lakes apiaries where you will be able to see how lucky I am to have such a beautiful location to keep bees.

I shall restrict the number of beekeepers that can attend each day so you can get the maximum amount of time with me in front of the bees and we’ll finish the day with a questions and answers session over a drink and slice of cake. There always ha

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 88 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. It’s never too early to start planning for the new season so this week I’m starting to look at my plans for next year so stay tuned for some new hive plans and some thoughts on what we’ll be getting up to for 2020

Welcome to another podcast, and as I prepare this week’s update I’m looking at some very dull, grey skies outside. We’ve had more rain, although today is dry and we’re settling into that familiar late Autumn, early Winter feel to conditions. Unfortunately, the forecast is for possibly more rain. It would be nice to have a prolonged spell of dry weather now, just to let the land soak up all of the surface water that we have.

Spring always seems such a long way off at this point and although we’ve only just put our hive tools down it seems such a long time ago that we were inspecting bees.

That’s not to say there isn’t work to be getting on with, sometimes, as a small commercial beekeeping outfit, it can seem like there is just too much to do. I find myself in the space between having enough for one person to get on with and needing further full-time support to really move the business forward. I’m sure there are many people out there running their own businesses trying to grow and finding challenges at every corner. I have to say the dreaded back problem has been a constant niggle, improving but always there to remind me not to go too fast. I think I get frustrated knowing I could do so much more but limited in the available space that we have. Time to put some major plans down on paper, and, I guess, if I share my plans and goals with you I might just have to go through with them. I’m even thinking of giving you a monthly update of each of the goals just to keep me focussed. As you are probably aware, I do get distracted quite easily and what was once the number one priority sometimes slips down the pecking order.

So today’s podcast is an opportunity for me to share with you, in no particular order as yet, my thoughts on how to proceed next year to build my business and enjoy the journey at the same time.

So, first up is an overhaul of the Patreon page, I need to improve the way the videos and podcasts are delivered. I think the quality of the videos is pretty good, we have some great camera gear and apart from an occasional out of focus shot, I think we get a pretty good image of what we’re trying to do. That said, I want to create a series of videos for the season, following a particular method or apiary or colony. A kind of “warts and all” reality TV series. I was thinking maybe we could set up a brand new apiary with new colonies created for the purpose, to show how someone might start with just a couple of hives and end up with an apiary of 8 to 12 hives by the end of the season.

Perhaps we should concentrate on queen rearing again as I know this is an area that I get a lot of questions about. I have over the previous few seasons created a number of queen rearing videos but I don’t think we’ve created a full series showing start to finish what happens, the good bits, the bad bits and of course all of the mistakes that happen along the way.

If anyone out there has any thoughts on a video series for next year please do get in touch.

I also want to offer a few beekeeping days specifically for my supporters on Patreon so do look out for news about those on the Patreon website, these will be heavily discounted days for those long term supporters, a way for me to say thank you for sticking with me.

I’ve mentioned before that I want to build a top bar hive, well I think I have just the material to be able to do it now, well, at least part of the material. I was given some very long pallets with some very good looking wood. The pallets are about 3 metres long so I intend carefully breaking them down and using the wood to make a top bar hive. I’ve had some downloa

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 86 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. This week I’m taking a look back at how this season’s beekeeping has been for me personally and sharing my plans for next year as we head into the long Winter haul.

Firstly, this week, I wanted to send my best wishes to all of the beekeepers around the globe currently dealing with the most unexpected and shocking losses of honeybee colonies through flood and wildfires. It’s easy to get caught up with our own struggles in beekeeping and forget that there is usually someone out there having a more difficult time. This month it’s really hit home here in the UK as quite a number of beekeeper have been hit with flooding in their apiaries and have seen colonies swept away in flash floods. Those lucky enough to escape seeing colonies destroyed are looking at apiary sites completely cut off and unable to get to hives. Luckily, it is a quieter time for us and the bees can, for the most part, be left to their own devices, for now, hopefully, the water will drain away quickly and the apiaries will dry out.

Worse still are those beekeepers currently facing wildfires around the world, I don’t know of any specific beekeepers that have suffered losses but imagine having an apiary site in the path of one of those terrible fires. It can only end in the utter destruction of colonies and hives and it must be heartbreaking. If you’re one of those beekeepers out there who has suffered due to these sudden catastrophic losses, our thoughts are with you and if you’d like to chat about your experiences on my podcast please do get in touch.

Here in Norwich, things are very much quieter, we have had long periods of rain but also some sunny intervals, I think there is more rain on the way but I’m fortunate to have my apiary sites in fairly risk-free locations. It’s the time in the beekeeping calendar where not much is happening to be honest. The bees are settled in their hives, still getting out and foraging the very late Ivy and fetching water, perhaps going out on cleansing flights, but other than that the frantic rush of the Spring and Summer are long gone.

For the most part, drones will have been kicked out of the colonies, newcomers to beekeeping won’t mind being reminded I’m sure that the drones are the male honeybees. They really only serve one major purpose and that’s mating with the virgin queens, however, they are needed within a colony generally, it seems they keep the atmosphere mellow and without them a colony can get quite fractious. I’m not sure if there are any scientific studies out there showing other important roles that drones play but their main task is an obvious one.

Thinking about why they would be kicked out through the Winter, I think most beekeepers here in the UK understand that whilst honeybees don’t hibernate in the Winter, like the bumblebees and wasps, they do reduce their activity dramatically, and with the obvious absence of food availability it makes sense for honeybee colonies not to waste their time and resources in trying to produce virgin queens and therefore need drones for them to mate with.

Add to this the demand on food stores and you can see what many colonies kick out their drones in the late Autumn and wait until Spring to produce more.

I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve seen drones in colonies through the Winter months so I think that while the majority of drones get the cold shoulder, there are some that manage to stick around. Of course, I’m not including any colony that has become a Winter, drone laying queen Colony.

So most of the colonies now will be settled down, food stores set aside and we don’t have much to worry about, at least not for a few weeks.

That got me thinking about how quickly the seasons seem to come round and once again I’m thinking about what went well this year and where I managed to mess things up. What can I do to improve on

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 86 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet, The bees are settling down for the long Autumn and Winter haul but here at Beekeeping HQ there’s seems to be more than ever to sort. Stay tuned for the latest update on my beekeeping journey including Trucks, Trailers and Treatments.

Finally, I’m back on my feet and moving around with some degree of ease, this recent bout of back pain and particularly Sciatica has been quite troublesome and I really feel for anyone out there who suffers from back problems on a regular basis. I’m lucky in that it seems to be every couple of years or so and at the moment it seems to hit during the quieter period of beekeeping over the Autumn and Winter months. There’s still lots to do but the timetable isn’t quite so rigid and I have been able to delay a number of jobs until I’m back on my feet. I do still have to be cautious and I get a strange numb feeling in my right foot, it’s a bit like the after-effects of being caught by stoning nettles, once the pain of the sting has gone you’re left with a tingling sensation, well that’s exactly how it feels. It’s so much better than before though so I am very grateful to be back in front of the computer and able to get back to work.

I woke to a crisp frost this morning, it was one of those misty, almost foggy mornings, a real sense of the colder days to come, which I really enjoy, we are very lucky here in the UK to still enjoy a seasonal climate, Warm Autumnal days drift into the colder conditions of Winter and through into the rush of life in Spring and on to the heat of Summer and so it goes round. We love talking about the weather, it is, of course, a national pastime but for beekeepers, it’s so much more than just another rainy day. We worry about the last time we inspected and what should happen if we miss an inspection or we sit and watch the cold, apparently lifeless hive in the middle of Winter hoping we’ve done enough to see the colonies through to Spring. I remember that sense of relief, as several bees flew out of my first few hives on cleansing flights on days when a little warm winter sunshine allows them to fly. It’s at this time of year I question if I’ve done all I can to see my colonies through Winter and into next season. The mental checklist of all the various jobs that needed to be done in order to give them the best chance possible.

This year has been somewhat challenging and I will have to adapt my routine a little but I’m sure we will get through ok. Preparations for Winter started in August. First up was the treatments for the Varroa mite. This year you will recall I used Apivar, the thin strips placed two per hive, hanging between the frames near the brood nest. The Amitraz active ingredient can give rise to the development of resistance in the Varroa so it’s important that it’s removed at the appropriate time. This happened to fall a week or so ago and I was so happy to have the help of Steph and Pete to travel around with me and clean out all of the strips. It’s not a difficult job, just remove the roof and crown board, ease the strips away from the frames, of course, they’ve been well and truly stuck down with wax and propolis but a quick flick with the hive tool releases them easily enough. Gently pull the strips out so as not to damage any bees that may be in the general area and particularly the queen because if she is damaged now there is little hope for that colony and they must be united with another. Removing the treatment strips also gives a chance to look down on the bees within and judge the size of the colonies. As ever, we have a large variation of colony sizes. I wondered how Pete actually managed to get the crown board back on with some of them such was their enormous size yet others seemed to have reduced in size to just a few seams of bees and I’m left wondering if they are large enough to see out the Winter. We have united several colonies so I t

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Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 85 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet, It’s the road to recovery for me and our regular monthly Questions and Answers session for everyone else!

Firstly, Thank you, everyone, for your kind thoughts regarding my back problems, I’m hopeful that things are starting to settle down and normal service will soon be back. It’s been a frustrating period of time for me, and I really appreciate everyone’s messages of support, your patience and also some of those suggested remedies! But enough of my bad back, let’s get straight into the questions.

First up is from Fran Barham

My question is about the Thornes 'Wasp Out' hive entrances.  I have three on my hives right now and they have done a great job to prevent robbing and wasp ingress.  Do you think I can leave these on over winter instead of putting on mouse guards?

Hi Fran,
Nice to hear the Wasp Out entrances have served you well, I’m not familiar with them but checking them out online they look like a piece of plastic conduit channel attached to the entrance block. I guess as long as they’re not affected by the cold weather they should be fine.

The entrance just needs to be shallow enough to prevent the mice from being able to squeeze themselves inside and judging by the images online I think the wasp out entrance will do the job perfectly well.

Eva Loysen

Hello Stewart

My question is about a very full to bursting hive - I'm convinced they will swarm on the first warm day of the Spring, so please could you advise how to prepare for an artificial swarm to prevent this, and how early could I do this? Many thanks and all good wishes.

Hi Eva,
Thanks for the question and it’s nice to see someone preparing for Spring already.

The good news is that you have plenty of time to prepare for Spring swarms next season and although your colony looks huge now there will be a significant reduction in size over Winter and as such the colony will need to rebuild in the Spring prior to swarming.

Keep an eye on them over Winter and watch as they start to develop again in the early months of next year.

Remember also, that colonies won’t swarm until there are plenty of drones around for the new virgin queens to mate with so a really good indication that colonies are getting ready is the early production of drone cells. Talking of which, all the books will tell you the drones get kicked out over Winter but I don’t think that’s always the case, I’ve seen drones in colonies, and no, before anyone out there posts me a message, it wasn’t a drone laying queen! So, keep a careful watch for drones. Having said all that, to answer your question, an artificial swarm simply removes two of the three parts of a near swarming colony, those three parts being the Queen, the flying bees and the brood.

You simply move the old hive to one side, add a new hive, move the queen on a frame with empty cells into the new hive fill it up with foundation and allow all the flying bees to go back to her.

In the old hive, you can no do several things, if there are eggs, you could remove all the queen cells and have the remaining bees produce a new batch, this puts you in control of the timings. Alternatively, you could remove all bar one of the queen cells and let this queen emerge. You could also split the brood down into nucs and give each one a sealed queen cell. I did this earlier in the year this season and produced six nucs from one colony and I’m glad to say that all are thriving and ready for the Winter.

I hope that gives you a flavour of how it works, I do have several videos showing the process and I have a memory jogger pdf that I can post for you to download.

Next up is Robert McDonald

I'm busy planning expansion for next year and working out what I need to buy. Do you bother painting or oiling your wooden hives?

Hi Robert, and again, I’m delighte

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