The Bee Man Blog: January Update

The shortest day has passed, a New Year starts and gradually we edge towards the start of the bee keeping season.
I've been away for a couple of weeks but before we left I checked the fondant stocks on the hives.
In Ravensden 3 colonies out of 10 needed new blocks and in Scald End all needed some more.
Like people, different bee colonies have different characteristics. Some calm, some not so. Despite being a 'non interventionist' job and the temperature being a few degrees above freezing, the Headbanger Bees, Ravensden 3 and Scald End 4 just had to come out to say hello.

The main winter job is treating the bees for the varroa mite with oxalic acid. Not a particularly fun job but it hopefully reduces the amount of varroa on the bees and gets them ready for the spring.
Its done during the winter as the oxalic acid would kill any bee larvae but this is minimal as the queen would have already stopped laying eggs.
I'll be doing this in the next week or so.

Bees on the internet

Honey bees do not hibernate. The Queen stops egg laying, the drones are dead and the colony reduces to about half of what it was in summer. To preserve their food stores they 'ball up' in the center of the hive and try to move as little as possible and preserve heat.
The queen is in the center of the bees and they keep themselves warm by slight fluttering of their wing muscles. Like penguins they take it in turn to be on the cold outside of the ball.
Below is an extract from a YouTube video about bees in winter.

Yet more bees.

Every year Sue asks me if I will be getting any more bees. The problem with this is that its actually quite difficult to control. I'm with Homer Simpson when he says 'if somethings hard to do then don't do it'. So I don't.
Come June time when swarming starts its difficult not to get more colonies. Although I don't broadcast the fact that I could collect swarms for people, some will inevitably turn up and what am I supposed to do with them?
Also for the bees I have now, if I managed to split them during the swarming season I could have up to another 18 potential colonies. It is suggested that after a colony has been split and the swarming instinct goes away, you re-unite the two colonies again and 'let them fight it out' to keep control over the number of colonies you have.
For some reason this doesn't appeal to me but saying that the amount of time and money spent on the bees obviously increases with the number of colonies you have so I will be careful. Maybe.

However I am very keen to populate my beloved Top bar Hive.

So using some of the vast cash reserves built up by North Bedfordshire Holdings in a private offshore hedge fund account from the sales of honey at farmer's markets , I have bought a colony specifically for the TBH.
It is called a package rather than a colony or nuc as it is just a box of bees with a queen in a special compartment and will probably look like this.

The reason I am getting a package is a normal colony comes with the bees on frames that can just be dropped into a normal hive but don't fit a TBH.
I've paid a deposit but it won't be ready for collection until May, perhaps June.
New colonies rarely produce any 'retail' honey in their first year but I'm not bothered as I have no intention of extracting any honey from the TBH anyway.

Markets aren't all bad

Although there is much to dislike about markets - days of preparation, setting up, selling stuff, clearing up, putting stuff away, there are bits that are good fun.
When I started doing markets I would say 'yes' to anybody that asked me to come to an event and I found myself doing an event, perhaps two, most weekends and the thrill rapidly wore off but the emotional scars of the horrors of Sandy Market still remain.
I decided I would only do the markets I like doing although it meant I stopped doing a Market at St Neots where I took the most I have ever taken at a regular market.
So now I only do the quarterly market at Potton and the monthly market at Bromham Mill.
Potton is more urban and Bromham Mill is a lovely environment and they both have a nice atmosphere and there was Carol singing at both markets in December [busy girl, Carol] and there are often musicians playing at Potton.
Having done the markets for a couple of years I now have a number of regular customers who I have got to know and we have a chat about stuff and perhaps they buy some honey.
At Potton I got my first ever Christmas Card from a customer, Matt and Stacey who earlier in the year had a trip out to see the bees and despite me breaking Matt's glasses and him being stung in the forehead within a couple of minutes of arriving, want to have another session this Summer.
At Potton I've also got to know a family that have twin girls and apparently they like coming to the markets and wear the bee badges I gave them.
At the September market their Mum said they had made some pictures for me.