Local Wildlife

My Bees

by Daniel Woodward.

A Beekeepers Diary - January

Not much happening in the hives at the moment, I spend much of my time tidying up the frames that were used last season and have been extracted. Now is the time to start building my supplies up again. I have Brood Boxes, Eeks, and hives to make so that if I am lucky enough to catch a swarm at least I have something to put them in.

I have been to the apiary today in the hope that I could give my hives a course of Oxalic Acid which is a form of Verroa treatment but the weather although the sun is out the wind is far too cold so I will have to try again next week as this has to be completed by the end of January. The hives all look ok, an odd bee flying in and out but not really much activity.

The hives are not as full now as they would be in the height of the summer as they have gone from 70,700 bees down to about 10 - 20,000 and are all clustered in a ball too keep warm. They have been insulated against the cold and have been fed syrup solution which is part water and part sugar which hopefully will keep them through the winter, due to the weather they cannot forage as it is too cold. This will hopefully be enough to keep them fed throughout the cold spells until they are able to get out and about when the better weather comes.

Apiculture Certificate

I passed my first exam in August 2011 and gained a certificate in Proficiency in Apiculture which basically means that my hygiene is good and the way I look after my bees is good.

Holsworthy Bee Club

I belong to the local Bee Club of Holsworthy, who have an apiary meeting every other Sunday in the Summer and once a month in the winter. The end of the season is our local honey show which unfortunately last October was postponed due to lack of entries, this was re-scheduled for Monday 9th January 2012.

I entered 14 out of the 16 classes and was delighted to win a cup for the most points in Class 9 to 16 which incorporated my Honey Fudge and my Honey Cake for which I was awarded 1st prize, followed by 1 st prize for my Item of Beekeeping interest so for those of you who live in the village and hear banging and crashing going on out in my shed that answers what all the noise is. I was then delighted to go on to get 2nd prize for my cut comb, Chunk Honey and Creamed Honey followed by 3rd prize for my bees wax item which was a skep and 3rd prize for my beeswax cake.

All in all a good evenings work but remember this is a thank you to the bees for without them I would not be able to enter this show.

About me ...

I am a young local beekeeper who has been keeping hives since 2009. I with the help of my Dad have 2 Apiaries 1 containing 7 hives and the other containing 3. This takes up a lot of my time but I do enjoy it. I passed my first exam in August 2011 and gained a certificate in Proficiency in Apiculture which basically means that my hygiene is good and the way I look after my bees is good.

When I go to look at the hives with my dad I have to get dressed up in a white bee suit which consists of a white boiler suit and a hat which is enclosed with a veil. We check the hives every 7 to 10 days to make sure that they have not made any queen cells, because if they have then they could swarm, this means that the old queen will take half of the bees (a hive has at least 60,000 Bees) with her and will find another place to live. You sometimes find them hanging in a tree or a bush which my Dad did when I was in Bristol. Here is a picture of this swarm

Hopefully in the Summer they will make lots of honey, they do this by drawing out wax which is in hexagonal shapes on an oblong shaped sheet of wax, they go out and collect pollen in their pollen sacks which are on their legs and bring it back to the hive and put it in the brood chamber. The brood chamber is where the queen lays her eggs. (She lays over 2,000 eggs per day). Then at night they transfer the pollen from the brood chamber to the super and then they eat it and regurgitate into honey and put it in the hexagonal columns. In the Autumn we extract honey from these hexagonal sheets and this is where our jars of honey come from. Before the winter approaches we have to feed them with a solution of sugary water to help them through the winter and then we batten down the hatches and leave them to go dormant which means they go to sleep until the spring