NewGenBees Diary for Autumn 2008

A record of the main events in the Autumn of 2008

At the start of September I put a super on the two hives in my out apiary and moved the two remaing nucs into full size brood boxes just to be safe. By now I was ahead of my original plan to go into winter with three colonies but I was still a little unsure about the two nucs where the bees seemed to be making endless supercedure cells but not letting them mature. The hive first split from my original nuc, the hive with the bought in queen and the hive from my course were doing well. I had done a lot more research on the internet and was favouring the processes used by Top Bar Hive beekeepers in the USA and Europe. Their willingness to follow bee friendly organic principles in their beekeeping seemed to me to be a way forward. Top bar hives allow the bee to make comb of the size they wish rather than following a sheet of foundation manufactured with a slightly larger cell size. Once the Himalyan Balsm started flowering the strong hives started to increase their store rapidly and I became hopeful that the bees may be able to store enough honey for the winter without me needing to feed sugar solution. Indeed I was able to take one frame from the colony in my neighbours garden and two from the best colony in the out apiary. These were spun out in the kitchen at home and gave me eight pounds of honey. Possibly the most expensive honey on the planet but definitly the best tasting and now that it has crystalised into a delicious smooth honey I can get even more onto my morning toast. The weaker colonies in the two nucs were still not happy. One had the original queen who certainly had lost her vigour and the other a daughter of hers that the colony seemed to want to replace but never actually did. So I decided to take them back home and merge the two colonies and let them decide which queen was best and after a week or ten days they seemed to be settled. I have given them some sugar syrup until it came cooler but they seem to be foraging well on sunny days and they brought back a lot of pollen from the last of the balsam and ivy before it got really cold. So I'm going into winter with three strong colonies with more than 35lbs of honey each and a weak colony in the intensive care part of my garden, just outside the conservatory. I'm now looking forward to spring and starting my new colonies off in Warre hives and being able to compare them with my existing Nationals.

Diary pages can be accessed from here by clicking the links below: 2008 Archive Winter 2008 Spring 2009 March 2009 April 2009