What Is The June Gap - How To Protect Your Bees And Honey

In this video, I'm going to tell you everything that you need to know about the June Gap. So the June Gap is just a short period in the UK between the spring flow and the summer flow. It's a period where there's no forage available, or very little forage available, and the bees up until that point have been used to copious amounts of nectar coming in, all of the trees and blossoms all happening all at once. And then as you approach the end of May or early June, and this period shifts around every year. It could be towards the middle of May, could be towards the middle of June. It's somewhere around that 4-week period where all of the blossoms just die off, and the bees can react to that in a number of ways. You'll generally see a defensive response. You'll see a lack of activity at the entrance. You might have been walking through your apiary and the bees are all nice and calm and they're not bothering you, and then all of a sudden you're getting pinged by bees out of nowhere. They're pestering you, they're hassling you. It's like all of these tens of thousands of bees that had lots of jobs to do the day before have all immediately got nothing to do, and they just become a little bit of a nuisance. Now, the June gap luckily doesn't last that long. It can be up to a week, but I would say in my experience it's normally 2 or 3 days. And you do need to watch out for weather conditions as well, because you can look and say, right, the June gap's going to be somewhere in that 4-week period, maybe even a little bit earlier, but if you get a storm come in and blow all of the blossom off the tree and the temperature plummets, you can say, well, the likelihood is that's going to trigger the June gap. So take the dates with a pinch of salt. You'll see all of these clues. The bees will give you the clues, the flowers will give you the clues, the weather will give you the clues. But the biggest thing that you need to do is understand how you can use the June gap to your advantage, but also to make sure that you're not doing significant damage to your bees by taking off too much honey. So a scenario could be like this in spring. You start off with a 6-frame nuc and the bees build up nice, so maybe you're on 2, 3, even 4 supers of honey coming towards that June gap. Now there's a couple of different ways of playing it. What you could do is you could just take off every single bit of honey that's on the hive, give the bees additional space down in the brood box, or give them another brood box, and then set them up for feeding. You don't necessarily have to feed them, but they're in that configuration so that if you go in and there is no stores at all, you can feed and get the bees through. And because you've taken all of the supers off, there's no contamination whatsoever. Very nice system if you're looking to make splits later on in the year. Gives the bees additional space to get through that June gap, but also gives them additional space to get through the swarm season. So it's a smart move for you. If you're not interested in increasing your colony numbers and you just want that one colony to go through, then taking off all of that honey and giving space in the brood box is not going to be a good idea for you. So maybe you take off the honey and you give the bees back another 4 supers. Now bear in mind, that means that for every beehive, if you're going to use that strategy, you need 8 supers in total, because you're going to take 4 off and you need 4 more that are going to go back on. Now I would not recommend that for one reason, that you need 8 supers per beehive, which is going to be really inefficient for buying the supers and having to store them. But also the biggest risk to bees at this time of the year, the time of the year when that nectar flow dries up and the bees are reliant on the honey that they've gathered to survive, Last thing they want is the beekeeper coming and taking it all and saying, come on, do another 4 supers please. Many people get caught out with that one. April and May is very easy to be a beekeeper. It is so easy. Nothing goes wrong. There's no robbing bees, there's no wasps, there's copious nectar. I enjoy my April and May beekeeping way more than at any other time of the year, but it definitely lulls people into this false sense of security that beekeeping is easy and it's just this honey tap that you go and get as much honey as you want. So my alternative strategy for you would be something like this, which is say you've got a brood box and 4 supers on. Maybe take a couple of supers off. Maybe take a super off, and then leave the bees with what they've got. I can guarantee you in most instances they will either stop collecting, so you won't see any increase in the supers, or you will start to see the amount of honey stored up there reduce. Hopefully not for that long, but if you get a really cold wet spell come in, it can drastically impact the honey that's in there. And see how easy it was in April and May with the supers filling up every single day? The same applies in reverse in June, post-June. June gap if you don't get the right weather. You've got huge colonies, loads of mouths to feed, and that honey store is there to keep them alive throughout the year. The last thing you want to do is do any sort of feeding between March and August if you can get away with it. So here's a few things that you should be looking out for to see if the June gap is coming into play where you are. The hive entrances in the apiary all of a sudden go quiet. You had loads of activity the day before, bees going in, bees coming out, You go back in and the weather is good, but there's not as much activity. That's probably the first one that I would look for. If you're going in and you're doing your inspections and you notice stores either in the supers or the brood nest going backwards, maybe you were opening it up and there was tons of nectar pouring out the frame, but you're going in now and there's just dry space. That's another sign to show that the June gap is either coming very, very soon or you're maybe in the middle of it. The sign that definitely catches people out is that bees will be more defensive during the June gap. They've spent the last 8 weeks going out doing all of that hard work and getting this massive honey crop, and they will become a little bit defensive around it because they can't go out and get any more because all of the blossoms have gone. And then the beekeeper comes along and says, thank you very much, we're going to take some of that. So don't expect them to behave the way they have in April and May. This is the time to go in and to do it at the right time of the day, to go and take anything when the foragers are out. So middle of the day between maybe 12 and 3. Bees will become a little bit more defensive during the June gap, but as the flow comes back on, that summer flow, you'll see that the bees start to chill out a bit more. However, it is worth noting that big massive colonies with 60,000 or 70,000 bees in, even though they are very, very calm, they can be a little bit overbearing when they get that big. So just bear that one in mind later on in the year. The next thing that you would definitely notice is that all of those bees that had the job the day before and no longer have that job today go and find themselves a job to do, and that job is robbing. They are trying to find any little scrap around the apiary, any drop of syrup, any little nook or cranny to get into the adjacent beehives so they can go and start robbing those supers. There is nothing worse as a beekeeper thinking that you've got 4 supers full of honey and you've put your clearing boards in and all the honey's being cleared and you go back and it's gone. There is no honey left because you left a little crack and all the robbing bees, which become a nightmare during the June gap, just find their way in and they will clear out about 4 supers in about 4 hours. It is crazy how quick they will rob those supers out. So my advice for you for the June gap is to understand it fully. Try and work out when it's coming, try and see it coming through the weather, the signs that the bees are giving you, and the state of play within the beehive. But I guess the more important advice here is what not to do. Don't take all of the honey. The June gap is probably the most perilous point in the beekeeping calendar that's within the beekeeping season. It's the point probably where most beekeepers who kill their colonies actually go ahead and kill them, because if you didn't know what was coming, beekeeping would have seemed so, so easy up until point. Now luckily for you, we've got an online course, 14-Day Beekeeper, that goes into all of this in great detail. So if you're interested in beekeeping, or maybe you're getting a nuc next year, then definitely sign up to our course that will turn you from a beginner to a competent beekeeper in just 2 weeks.