The
apiary has five hives - A1 to A5 all on 14x12 brood boxes housed in
WBCs.
At the beginning of the year A5 was unoccupied, A1 and A2 were
small colonies set up the previous year and were earmarked for
management by Novices as part of their training programme.
All the
hives had overwintered with a super in place.
The week of very warm
weather at the end of February enabled the assessment of stores which
were adequate for A3 and A4 but A1 and A2 were given Fondant (A2 the
weaker colony which had taken less autumn feed) and light syrup for
A1. Queen excluders were put on all four hives.
Apiary meetings
started on 19th
March and Apistan treatment begun to be removed at the end of April.
The colonies were building up well except A3. Although the marked
Queen was seen in A3 and there was little Varroa infestation it was
clear by early April that A3 was failing and died out by the end of
April probably due to Nosema.
Because
of the cold, the first full Spring inspection was delayed until the
beginning of April when the Novices were involved. The marked queen
was found in A4 and the previously un-marked Queen in A1 found and
marked. A2 was becoming the strongest colony but it took until the
end of the month before the Queen was found and marked. The Novices
were not attending consistently to manage them and because a colony
had been lost, it was necessary to incorporate A1 and A2 into the
general management.
In early May the rape was flourishing and all
hives had at least two supers on and A2 had 3. A nuc was started
with frames containing eggs and bees from A2 as there were no charged
Queen cells. Within a week the swarming season got going with a
vengeance. None of Avoncroft’s colonies swarmed but a second nuc
was set up with a caste collected from a garden.
Forty pounds of
Spring honey was extracted from 3 supers in June (one from each of
A1, A2 and A4). It was not until mid-June that eggs were seen in the
first nuc by which time the second nuc had sealed brood. Both nucs
were hived at the end of June (the first nuc to A3, the second to
A5).
Icing
sugar treatment was performed on the three main colonies towards the
end of July, with minimal mite drop. Supering and extraction were
carried out during August and into September (4 from A2 and 3 from
A4) and all five colonies then treated with Apiguard. Queen
excluders were removed and A3 and A5 fed with heavy syrup. A5 stopped
after taking 14lb of the syrup and a cleared but un-extracted super
from A1 put on. An extracted super was put on A3 which continued to
take the syrup.
Partially filled supers have been left on A1, A2 and
A4 and hopefully they have sufficient honey to get them through the
Winter.
In
the past 12 months 130lbs of the apiary’s honey has been sold to
Avoncroft Museum raising £325 for NEWBKA. There is still about
50lbs honey to be bottled and sold in the museum shop.
Thanks
to those who attended the meetings, your help and advice were
invaluable and hopefully you had as enjoyable a season as we did. We
all learned a lot. Finally, and most importantly, thanks to the
bees.
Alex
Bignell and Bob Pargeter – Apiary Managers