In this tutorial, Laurence Edwards explains his revised beekeeping schedule for North Wales, emphasizing the importance of ending the honey‑harvest season early—around the first or second week of August—to avoid a rapid rise in Varroa mite levels. He describes the visual signs of high mite loads, such as many mites in cells, deformed wing virus, suspect larvae, and cappings with holes. Edwards argues that even a two‑week delay can damage winter‑bee production, leading to poor overwintering. He outlines his management steps: removing the final honey super, condensing the colony into a single 14 × 12 or double National brood box, applying Apivar strips early (late August/early September) for an eight‑week treatment, and optionally providing slow or trickle feeding to build strong colonies. He contrasts this with his former practice of delaying treatment until late August or early September, which resulted in higher mite loads and reduced winter survival. The video serves as a timely reminder to prioritize early varroa control over chasing an extra honey super.
Chapters
In this video, I'm going to talk to you about why I never ever delay taking that honey crop and trying to get that final super of honey. So previously, I always used to do this, used to be really, really bad at it, especially in North Wales. And you'd kind of get to like the middle of August and you think, oh, you know what, there's a really nice spell of weather coming in. I'm going to leave it until like the end of August, early September before I take my honey crop off. And then I'll move on to getting them ready for winter because, you know, it's September, still got plenty of time before it gets cold. We can build the colonies up nice and strong. So the extra 2 or 3 weeks doesn't make a difference. I do not do that anymore. And I think depending on where you are in the country, this date is going to be very, very different for you. But for us in North Wales, we kind of have that cut off around the first or second week of August now. And the reason is, is that by the second week of August for us in North Wales, the varroa levels in the colony are noticeably getting higher. You see a lot of varroa in the cells, you see them walking around the frames. But more noticeable than that, you start to see a little bit of deformed wing virus, you start to see larvae that are looking a little bit suspect, you start to see cappings with holes in it. And that's as a result of a much higher varroa load than you would get in early spring. So my feeling on it is, you know, you might delay it 2 weeks and get an extra super of honey, even though I'd say that's generally debatable. But the damage that it does to your colony by delaying it by only about 2 weeks means that the winter bees that your colony is preparing can really be damaged quite a lot by that high varroa load. So for us in North Wales, we like to finish the season early, get the honey crop off, condense the bees down to a single 14x12 or double National Brood Box, get our varroa treatments in as early as possible, and then we start the process of doing some slow feeding. You don't need to do slow feeding every year, you don't need to do trickle feeding, just something that we do because I find it builds up really nice strong colonies. But if there's feed in there anyway, the boxes are nice and heavy, you definitely don't need to trickle feed. But what's really important is getting the varroa treatments on much, much earlier. I come back to my colonies kind of towards the back end of September, early October. You're taking out the strips 8 weeks after you put those strips in, doing a final feed if you need to do a final feed. And I find that the colonies come through winter so, so well since I've been doing that. Previously, what I used to do was push it as far as I possibly could. I would delay it until kind of the last week of August, first week of September before I put my Apivar strips in. And then it meant that I had to go back into my colonies in November, which is way past the time where I really want to be going into my colonies to take those Apivar strips out. But just that little bit of a delay built up such a high varroa load on the colony that I found the overwintering performance was really, really poor. I actually see the difference in terms of the colonies, the number of colonies that come through the winter, having made that decision to cut the season short and to get my varroa treatments on. So this video might be a little bit late for people this year, but it's a timely reminder. Don't go chasing that last super of honey. Cut your losses, take your crop off, get your Apivar strips in, get the mite load down, and get the colony ready to create the winter bees when it's still the summer.
