Bees and hive products
We keep our bees with as light a touch as possible.
I have kept bees for several years now and in several locations. We don’t keep any particular type of bee, just our local Cumbrian open mated variant of Apis melifera. Beekeeping is local, very local, typically they forage within a radius of 3 to 5 km of their hive, this leads to a locally adapted bee.
We care for our bees in a similar manner to our plants, with the least intervention we can. After at least 75 million years they know what they are doing. We use Modified British Standard hives with a top space modification, Snelgrove based swarm management and Integrated Pest Control methodology. Varroa are now endemic in the UK so we use bio-technical methods to reduce mite load, encourage our bees to develop tolerance, and only treat if necessary.
The limited foraging radius of a honeybee colony means they are dependent on very localised weather conditions and food supplies. The best foods for bees are nectars, pollen, and honey. We therefore do not take honey from them until they have enough for winter with some spare, and we don’t feed sugar syrup. In some years there is no surplus.
When weather and forage have been good, we have Honey for sale. In recent years we have won awards for its quality. Depending on the exact forage they find it may be runny, or it may be naturally soft set. In a very good year, we can get a small amount of cut comb honey. We also sell wax, and are developing other products. Sales are usually at local Christmas fairs, plant fairs if stock is sufficient, or can be direct to you if you contact us.
2023 Honey Season
A record breaking year on many weather fronts, globally this may be the coolest year we will ever see again, Uk wise we are definitely now seeing the “more frequent and more severe” weather events forecast to accompany anthropogenic climate warming. All in all it was a tricky year for our bees.
Winter ’22/23 was colder and longer that many in the recent past. We had almost a fortnight of unbroken frost and temps down to -13ºC. They were well provisioned with stores in autumn and the cold we experienced counter intuitively reduces their honey consumption. Cold is not a really a problem for bees as long as they stay dry, they cluster tightly in the centre of the hive and gently buzz to generate the 34 to 36ºC heat they require. A greater issue this year was how long winter continued, ultimately all our colonies survived but the extended confinement meant that all were very low in stores by the time the weather broke.
Spring ’23 seemed to happen late and fast. The warmer days allowed the bees out, and with everything seeming to come in to flower at once forage was abundant and the bees began to catch up after winter. This catch up was extended, and most colonies were noticeably late in reaching the level of abundance that triggers swarming. In most cases they were behind by six weeks at this point. Towards late spring it became increasingly dry which reduces the nectar yield of plants.
Summer ’23 , as Spring tipped into Summer the weather seemed to tip into Autumn…cool dull and wet for days on end! When it was warm enough for flying (over 10ºC) it was frequently too wet. Bees will fly in the rain, but not all day every day. Before the deluge started most colonies had undergone swarm control measure which allows for the generation of new, vigorous queens to take the colony in to winter. Queens usually live for about three years so re-queening is required every other year. Some of the newly emergent queens were unable to get out on their mating flights due to the weather and only about 1/3rd mated successfully. Meanwhile the bees, also confined by weather, and now numbering in the mid 10’s of thousands per colony had to consume most of the stores they’d accumulated in Spring to stay alive. This put most colonies back to where they were in late Spring. The Spring / Summer weather suited Aphids & Wasps more than bees. Wasps gorged on aphids, which was great for the garden, but, they managed to complete their yearly cycle quickly this year leaving a lot of redundant worker wasps hungry. Without the carbohydrate normally exuded from the wasp grubs, as usual they looked for other sources. We lost one colony to predation by Wasps. Eventually something like Summer returned and the bees got back to catching up again.
Autumn ’22 was reasonable , but still wet enough to compromise foraging time. Himalayan balsam is an invasive, but welcome late source of nectar for our bees. Especially when our countryside is so bereft of wildflowers. Usually Frost is what stops the Balsam flowering, this year we noted it ran out of flowers well before the first frost.
Across this year our bees have mainly been playing catch up. Some colonies never got ahead enough with this to create any honey surplus to their own winter requirements. A full sized colony requires in the region of 25kg / 50lb to feed it through to spring. Of those colonies that fared better surpluses were low, about 15lb per colony. As the welfare of our Bees is always the first concern we do not remove Honey and feed sugar, we leave them what they need . Honey harvest this year was therefore limited but did include a small amount Cut Comb Honey. To make comb wax bees need to collect and use about six times the quantity of nectar as they do to produce an equivalent weight of Honey. The modest amount of Extracted and comb honey we have will be available at events we attend for as long as it lasts. See our “Where To Find Us” page for details, or Contact us if you are local enough to be able to collect.
2022 Honey Season
Despite a number of historical and extreme weather events 2022 was a reasonable year for our bees.
Winter ’21/22 was warmer than average, and slightly duller. February eve brought some T shirt weather! This warmth can be a problem for Bees, they will not cluster as tightly in the hive and will even fly when it’s above about 10ºC, despite there being no forage to be found. Consequently they use up stored Honey faster than in cooler years. They stayed in during the six named storms we had.
Spring ’22 was also warmer & dryer than average. Night time temperatures however remained cool and many plants withheld their spring flowers until late April. Having by now almost exhausted their winter supplies and lost most of the “winter Bees” all our colonies where slow to build up to strength. Our colonies first swarm preparations where over a month later than usual.
Summer ’22 was overall notably warmer than average. However June & July both had cooler than average starts which impacted colony build. During the Exceptional heat waves the bees where unable to forage for food as plants reduced nectar yield to conserve water. At these times they where observed to only be collecting water. Bees colonies have an internal core temperature of 34 to 36ºC year round which is optimal for rearing thier young. In summer they evaporate water within the Hive in order to keep this temperature stable.
Autumn ’22 was also warmer and wetter than average. Though the rain stopped foraging at times plants welcomed the rain and where producing nectar again.
Across the season our bees have managed to put by the stores they need for winter, about 45lb of honey per colony, and also did well enough to allow us to harvest a moderate amount of Honey which we now have for sale.
