Overwintered Colonies - Sept Update

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. We're here in the orchard apiary today, and I'm going to show you what a full-sized colony should look like going into winter. So we've done this video already with the nucs, and I thought it'd be worthwhile just showing you how that applies and kind of translates across over into a full-size colony like this. It's the 5th of September today, so Saturday the 5th of September, and this is what I want my colonies looking like coming into the winter. That winter preparation period, it starts so early on in the year. Do you know what I mean? You're talking June, July, August. That's when you're prepping your bees to get them into a good state going into winter. You don't want to get to kind of August and September and say, right, Let's start winter preparation. Doesn't work like that, and you've left it too late. The key for me, the key and most decisive thing that you can do to get your colonies through winter is make sure they're strong. You need big, strong colonies, especially in North Wales, just to kind of keep that temperature up within the brood nest. And that's what sees the colonies go through winter. If you're not getting the colonies strong, it doesn't matter whether you feed them, doesn't matter whether you give them varroa treatments, doesn't matter any of those other things. If you've not got strong colonies, the percentage of colonies that you will get through winter will reduce. So you need to start it early in the season, like we've discussed, giving them those preemptive feeds which they turn into brood if they need it, and then you get big strong colonies like this. So purpose of this video is I'm going to show you what this colony looks like first week of September, talk you through how we've got it to this point, and just give you a few close-ups to kind of show you how strong And how well these bees are doing. So quick update on this colony. This was a package that I bought from Murray McGregor. It's been built up throughout the year. I've taken a couple of splits off it, and I mean, this one was pretty much earmarked for a good season in 2021. They're really nice temperament bees. They're prolific, so they're a big, strong colony. We've given it Apivar, so we've done one treatment of apibioxal on this. Got a mite drop. Then we put the Apivar in and we're on week 5 of the Apivar treatment. It's had a couple of rounds of feed, 2:1 syrup, but I used it to rear brood, so you could have used 1:1 syrup. Really doesn't make a massive difference early on in the year. Definitely don't feed 1:1 syrup now though, only heavy, heavy syrup now going forward. Puts too much moisture into the nest if you do it any other way around. And that's about it, like these guys pretty much take care of themselves. It's a lovely day here today, although it's not sunny. It's kind of 18, 19 degrees. They found the ivy, definitely, and I'll show you how I know that because you can see the colour of the pollen. It's yellow, it's bright, it's the only colour pollen that's available this time of year that looks like that. And the weather's set fair for a couple of weeks, so I'm not doing any more feeding on this colony, although the feeders will stay on all year round just in case they need anything. And I'll just leave the colony to it. So as I've said in previous videos, this time of year I've got a lot more time to manage my colonies, so I can kind of remember my smoker, which I often forget. Although I did forget my hive tool, so I'm using kind of a bit of a levering device, trying not to break the frames. But the last thing you want to do this year is go into your colonies unnecessarily. So I'm not going into any of my colonies. I can tell what I need to know by doing that. And this colony is heavy. And we're going to do a separate video showing you kind of how to heft and how to weigh the colonies and what your target weight should be for a number and a range of different hives. So I'm not going in any of my colonies and I'm doing this video today specifically for you so you can see inside what is going on. So I need to be ultra careful because the last thing I want to do is damage or kill the queen because then that ruins the colony. And the chances are if I kill the queen now, unless I requeen, they're not going to get through winter. So let's crack it open, have a look, and I'll show you what a really, really good colony looks like first week of September getting ready for winter. So even before I'm into this colony, you'll see this on the GoPro as I'm recording it now, you can see how jam-packed this colony is. They are using every single bit of space within the hive and they're going into the feeder. So if you can see that now, I'll stick it up in the corner up there. Look how many bees are in that feeder. And that's not because they're gagging for food. I've lifted them, I've hefted them, they're full to the brim with feed. That's because they're running out of space. So instead of bearding out the front, they've learnt out that they've got a little bit of additional space in the feeder there, in that feeding entrance, and they're just making good use of it. So they've probably started drawing a bit of comb. Yeah, they have. You can see a bit of comb there. That's not the end of the world. Obviously you don't want the queen up there, that's not ideal, so you can put a queen excluder in to stop that happening. So you just need to be careful taking them out, don't want to squish the queen. And yeah, like, that is a lot of honey in this colony, completely full to the brim with stores. So I'm just looking for that queen, I can't see her on there. Just going to rest her up. Like I've had a few people have a go at me saying I keep such aggressive bees. The bees are always flying up around in every video, and it's because I don't smoke them. Do you know what I mean? Use a little bit of smoke on these bees, and they're absolute pussycats. And as you can see with this colony here. And I'll do a couple of close-ups with this as well. They're not flying at me, they're not jumping off the frames, they're just kind of chilled bees. Do find they're a little bit more chilled this time of year for some reason. But yeah, take a look at that. I mean, they're really, really nice chilled out bees. Right, so that's second frame in now, so that's Frame three from my side, and then we're into brood. So I was a bit worried when I pulled out frame two, and I saw that it was completely capped full of stores. That means that frame one will almost certainly be completely capped full of stores as well. So we've got frame one stores, frame two stores, and then frame three. As soon as I pulled it out, it was nowhere near as heavy, and I can see there's a good amount of brood on frame three. Just keen to kind of find the queen before I start going shaking them off and showing you the brood. So we'll go through a couple more colonies and I'll come back and show you the brood. Onto frame 4 now, and again, that is pretty much full of brood. Nice ring of stores though, and that's why I like my 14x12, because it gives you that ability to have the brood and the stores on the same frame. Something that I really do like. Gives you a little bit of a buffer both in the spring and during the June gap and going into winter as well. So we're on to frame 5 now, and I found the queen. So there she is. A little bit more touchy on this frame, obviously, because the queen's there. So I'll just show you the queen. Right, so now that we know where the queen is, I'll shake a couple of frames and show you what the brood looks like. So as you can see there, we've got Pretty much kind of probably half the frame there full of brood. I'll just make sure I put that Apivar strip somewhere I'm not going to forget it. About half the frame there full of brood. I'll do a close-up in the top right-hand corner. That's what you want to see. So on these frames, kind of frames ideally 2 to 9, you want to see some brood. And as you get further and closer to the middle, you should see the frames have less stores and more brood. And you're just basically building what the bees would build in the wild. which is stores on the outer edge and then brood in the middle, and that's where they're going to cluster on that brood. But what I really like about 14 by 12 is that band around the outer edge of the frame. It gives you that buffer and it really, really enables you to kind of not feed the bees that much because they can kind of store surplus feed throughout the season in that brood box, and then they use it as and when they need it. So I really do like 14 by 12. So let's take a look and I'll show you some more frames. So what's really nice to see on this frame, and this is frame 6, is some empty cells. So you've not just got it jam-packed full of stores or eggs or capped brood, you've actually got some space, you've got a bit of a buffer in there, because the last thing you want to do is just overfeed these colonies so they've not got space to lay. The queen will pretty much lay them up, do you know what I mean, face to face this time of year, But she won't do it unless she actually needs to. And it's good to have that buffer of, I mean, a really nice, this is a strong, heavy colony, but it's got a little bit of space for the queen to kind of ramp up that winter brood laying to give you the winter bees. So she's obviously not reached that point yet where she wants to go ahead and do that. She's having a natural brood break, obviously on this frame at least. There's brood in all stages on the other frames, but this is a really, really nice sign. So don't think that, I mean, first week in September, Every single cell needs to either have stores or eggs or brood. It's a healthy sign for there to be some empty cells, and that's not to say that you want a frame of empty cells. This one here, it's got a bit of brood in it, bit of capped brood, couple of eggs, got some stores in it, and then there's patches where there isn't any of that and it's just empty cells, and that's healthy, so don't worry about that. And again on this frame here, and I'll do a close-up top left-hand corner, It's not full, do you know what I mean? You can see they're bringing in that ivy pollen. That's really good. You want to see a good amount of pollen in your brood box this time of year. They've got stores over the top, a little bit of capped brood on the other side, but there's a lot of empty space. Now the queen will use that and the colony will use that to kind of the best effect. So if they need it to kind of create winter bees, they'll use it. If they don't, they'll condense everything in and they won't use it. The last thing you want to do with a colony this time of year is start going in and kind of unnecessarily moving stuff around. The bees will do that for you. They'll set themselves up in the best configuration possible to get themselves through the winter. And then what I'll do, and I'll show you this in a later video, if you need to dummy them down, you can do that kind of just before they're going into winter. So if they're kind of condensed over this side, so say the first 6 or 7 frames of the hive and there's literally nothing here or there's excess stores, you can take those out and you can replace it with a dummy frame, an insulated dummy frame. And then what you're doing is you're reducing the void, which means that the bees stand a better chance of overwintering in that configuration. Shouldn't get to that point though. You really want to make sure that they fill the box like this one, really nice and full, full of bees. This one definitely won't need that, but you can kind of do a little bit more damage than good by going and tinkering too much at this time of the year. So just be careful, make sure you put the frames back in in the same order and configuration that when you opened it up in, and just be careful not to squish that queen. It's game over if you squish the queen, so make sure you don't kill her. So we'll put this colony back together again there. We'll talk a little bit more about how to successfully overwinter full-size colonies. So there we have it. That's what a full-size healthy colony should look like going into winter. And I will have variation across all of these colonies. I'll have some that are considerably bigger than that. I'll have some that are considerably smaller than that. I'll have some that have got too much stores, some that have got too much brood, maybe some that are not so well. But you will get variations. But you're just trying to aim for kind of like an optimum performance from your colony. And you're trying to balance the amount of brood, the amount of stores. Obviously, you've done your treatments, you've given them feed. It's all about real kind of fine-tuning at this point of the season. And there's not a huge amount you can do now to kind of support a colony to get them through the winter, unless you want to start carving up other colonies and adding brood. I just wouldn't recommend it. All of that stuff should be done in July and August. Do you know what I mean? So if you need to boost a colony's strength, if you need to requeen a colony, obviously kind of August is my time to do varroa treatment. So mid to late August. Get all of those done. And then obviously feeding, if you need to feed to boost the brood, or if you need to feed to give them additional stores because they're light, like all of that stuff should really kind of not be complete by now, but you should have started it a long time ago. September for me is fine-tuning. It's finishing that last little bit of varroa treatments and it's getting the colonies up to strength in terms of weight. And again, if I just lift this colony here, and you would've seen it from the inside, this has got loads of stores in it. Like, I will not be feeding this colony going into winter. There's at least kind of like 20, 30 kilos of stores in there at the moment, and they're out foraging for more ivy, so they're going to pack that full. And I suspect that those empty cells in there over the next 2 weeks will probably get filled up with stores, and then they'll arrange that brood nest as they want it. So a 14 by 12 box obviously is, I mean, they're not going to pack that full of bees. You will have excess stores, but the idea is that come the spring they should build and fill that out and fill it with bees again ultimately. It might take a little bit longer than a national brood, and you might get that buffer, and you might have to replace a couple of frames of stores just to give the balance that you need. But again, it's very kind of fine margins that we're discussing here. You want— the simple answer to getting bees through winter is you want healthy bees, make sure you do your treatments at the right time of year, you want strong colonies, you want to see brood, good amounts of brood, and you don't want any diseases, and you want healthy queens. Like, it's just ticking off the majority of the boxes. And like I say, most of it though hinges on big strong colonies that fit the container that they're in. It doesn't matter whether it's a 3-frame nuc, 6-frame nuc, 14 by 12, single national, double brood, it just doesn't matter. They need to be full of bees and they need to be healthy bees. That is pretty much the simple trick to get them through the winter. So I hope you've enjoyed this video. I really do hope that all of my supporters and all of my subscribers do really, really well this year, and I hope you've had a good honey harvest, and I hope that you can use the advice that I've given you to help you prepare your bees, get them ready for winter, and have as minimal losses as possible. Final thing I will say though is, I mean, winter losses are natural. I've had winter losses. I'll post the video up there. I mean, we had pretty catastrophic winter losses last year, and it was because I was trying different things. I was doing things differently. It felt like everything was kind of stacked against me, but you recover and you learn and you adapt, and that was the reason that I did that video. And you might say, oh well, I mean, that video shows that you're rubbish at getting bees through winter, And I was last year, I was terrible at getting bees through winter and made lots of mistakes, but I've taken those on board. I've shared them with you so you don't make the same mistakes, and I'm putting kind of the lessons that I've learned into practice, and I'm getting them through the winter. So I'll do, as always, I'll do an update next year showing you this same colony, hopefully, unless we've lost it, and giving you the numbers and show you the difference in performance between last year, which was really bad, I mean, kind of 25, 30% losses, and then this year, and I'm hoping to get that back down to below 10% losses. So I hope you've enjoyed the video. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.