Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead Beekeepers' Society

Nov 27.

The grand advantage of modern technology (when it works) is that I can show you what’s going on in my hives. So the date at the top of the article is the date when things mentioned happened.

Ordinarily the bees would be into cluster mode and well left alone but I use glass crown boards so can briefly take off the roof for a quick look. So, this is what I found and the weather was so mild I risked taking of the crown board to photograph. This was a home bred queen last year and developed too slowly to do better than overwinter as a nucleus. If she doesn’t buck her ideas up I plan to replace her with a New Zealand queen in the spring.

In fact there are five seams of bees (for the oxalic acid) but they are down low and at the front where they should be. Also they heft heavy, so all is well .

Both of these are in good nick, both with 5 seams and the bees forward and low in relation to the stores. This is also a good position from which to defend the hive from invading mice which will soon be looking for a snug billet.

This is a full size colony, 6 seams, well clustered, with the bees at the front but somewhat high. Remember they like to work up and back through the stores. Still it hefts heavy so will probably be OK.

The polystyrene hive was a different kettle of fish, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. Last winter it went down to a mugfull of workers and the GM queen, now in her third year. She responded to my nursing with 56lb of summer honey and plenty of progeny. There are currently 8 seams of bees to be Oxalic acided. The result of this was a very light heft and wall to wall bees. It’s too late to split the colony so I’m going to try feeding it through the winter.

I hear from Clive Winslow that Ambrosia doesn’t granulate so I’m going to try to keep some in a bucket feeder above one of my eked crown boards –available to them constantly. The ekes are National size so there is now a large groove around the hive just under the roof and rather exposed to the weather.

The bees are still bringing in pollen and I’m hoping a bit of propolis with it. This, I hope, will let them waterproof the joints around this makeshift mullarkey although I haven’t seen any leakage into the hive and we’ve had our share of downpours. So as not to confuse the bees, l shall Oxalic acid them between the feeds

Maureen and I would like to wish both of you readers a very Happy Christmas and a propolis free New Year!