Apiary Notes (August 2026) By Wally Thrale

The end of the beekeeping season is almost upon us and it seems to come round so quickly. It wasn’t that long ago that swarm control checks were carried out and now we need to prepare the bees for winter.

Due to the drought the honey flow has reduced significantly during July. Looking at my hives a lot of the honey is capped so removing and extracting honey is the priority as I want to treat for varroa soon. When treating for varroa no supers must be present that has honey that is due for extraction. It is fine to have empty supers to provide space for the colony during treatment but again, if bees bring in more honey once treatment begins it must not be extracted for human consumption.

On the subject of varroa we should ring the changes each year if using products such as Apistan and Apivar. These products are designed to specifically target varroa mites and repeated use of them can result in resistance by the mite which then renders the product useless. This happened with Apistan many years ago and it needed a considerable time lag before the product could be used again. Resistance should not be a problem when thymol or oxalic based products are used as the mite should not be able to develop resistance to them.

Continuing with the varroa theme some trustees attended the recent Eastern Regional Bee Forum organised by our Regional Bee Inspector, Jack Silberad. The message from this meeting was that varroa is still the main killer of colonies and we must not let our guard down. Inspectors note that when a colony dies out for no apparent reason varroa is normally the cause of its demise. The message is do treat during August so that we the winter bees are fit and healthy. Treating later that this becomes less effective as some of the winter bees will be compromised.

Thankfully wasps are less of an issue this year compared to last. If this reduction applies to the whole county I’m not sure. Yes wasps are around but in fewer numbers.

Recently I made some nucs to overwinter and the queens should have emerged by now. However, due to the weather it appears colonies ejected drones earlier than normal. It will be interesting to see if there are laying queens in the coming weeks. Problems with new queens has been an issue for much of the season and again this has been weather related. Just another wrinkle that beekeepers need to contend with in order to have a strong colony ready to go through the winter.

And then onto feeding bees in a few weeks’ time. I normally start at the beginning of September and aim to finish by the end of the month. Then after feeding an empty super is returned to the hive in case there is a heavy ivy flow. Personally, I don’t want a lot of ivy honey in the brood box. Bees don’t seem to overwinter well on ivy and it also clogs the brood box, reducing egg laying space for the queen. When we started looking into colonies this spring there were reports of bees dying out for no apparent reason. Plenty of stores were present but the bees had just died out. This may be because the brood nest became too full the previous autumn thereby the reducing the number of winter bees needed to maintain the colony. The queen needs some empty frames from September onwards – if the brood frames are full of stores some must be removed and empty ones returned to allow the queen to lay.

There will be a Zoom session next Tuesday to chat over any of these points as well as anything else you may wish to raise. An email reminder will be sent before the meeting.