Wednesday 9th October 2013 ~ Apivar off and ready for winter

Ready for Winter

Checking the queen excluder for the queen before laying it down; today the queen excluder comes off ready for winter. If we left it on then the colony might starve as they would be unwilling to leave the queen in the brood box as they moved up to the super for food.

 

 Winter stores

 

Good supply of honey

 

Checking for the queen and eggs and larvae ~ we found all those

The queen is just at about 10 o'clock from the centre with a rather fade white dot; we wish we had thought to have the marking kit with us to make finding her in the spring easier

Busy bees at their front door

Varroa board out and a quick check

Last week we counted about 300 and this week less than 50

It has definitely been worth treating as we were only counting about 2 a week in the summer if we put the board in and had wondered if we had many.

 Can you see, little red shiny mites; they are nasty little blighters

So our bees have about 50lbs of honey stored for the winter, they have a good core block of brood and the queen is still laying so they should be strong enough for next season. We have increased the size by almost 50% from the tiny colony we received in April. They have pollen stores and reduced varroa. The queen excluder is off and the crown board is in situ ready for any feeding that is needed. The entrance restrictor is in but as the girls are still bringing in so much pollen we are reluctant to fit the mouse-guard yet as the small holes can cause the pollen to get knocked off. The only other thing is to consider making a woodpecker cage; we haven't seen any green woodpeckers here or spotted ones either but expect they are around so will pick up some wire from the garden centre when we are next there.

Later we went for a walk and here 10 minutes from our garden is a dark honey bee on wild asters; we also saw brighter orangey ones which are not ours but we know there is another hive a little way off to the east.