January is a challenging month for bees. It’s very cold, there is virtually no forage and there is still a long winter ahead.

Do heft your hives and give them fondant in a bag with a hole in it or a take away box directly over the crown board if they are light. While you are at the apiary, clear vegetation under and around your hive to reduce damp and check there is no damage to any boxes from woodpeckers. You can wrap them loosely in chicken wire to help keep them away. Strapping your hive to a concrete slab with a ratchet strap should help prevent unwanted mishaps due to badgers, sheep or high winds. Also check your hive entrances are clear, we use a large feather to do this. If it looks like snow you might want to place a branch or other obstacle near the front of the hive as the bright light reportedly fools bees into venturing out when they shouldn’t. Your bees may also appreciate a source of water nearby on sunny days. Ours like the compost heap being turned over as they tend to like ‘smelly’ water that they can’t drown in. Don’t worry, water is used to dilute stores for consumption and won’t end up in your honey.

We also clean the varroa boards, that we leave in place to reduce heat loss, when we visit the apiaries. We wipe them all with a clean cloth rinsed in a bucket with washing soda. This year we’ve been recording how many mites have been killed during our varroa treatments. We are hoping to breed from the colonies which are coping the best with mites. If you think you have colonies that have survived over 3 years without treatment we would be keen to hear how you’ve achieved this and we are keen to work with anyone interested in trying to breed varroa resistant bees. Please don’t just stop treating though, as in all likelihood your colonies will die and the mites and any diseases that may be present will spread to neighbouring colonies as they rob the left over stores.

Now is a good time to update your records. We start new records for each hive each year. You also need to check that you have recorded all treatments on the veterinary medicines directorate (VMD) form as this is a legal requirement. If you haven’t already, check and update Bee Base. Are your bees in the same place and do you still have the same number of hives? Remember, it’s a condition of your SBKA membership to register on Bee Base. While you are online you might also sign up to National Honey monitoring scheme.

Each year we also look at old records and create a plan of what we want to achieve. It includes the number of hives and nucs we aim to have, which ones we use for production, breeding and queen rearing, how many new queens we will rear, what treatments we plan to use and when we want to do disease checks. 

We decide whether we will collect swarms and what we will do with them and whether we will move hives e.g between apiaries or to the heather. It stops the hobby getting out of hand… or at least that’s the idea. Things always have to be flexible, but at least you can start making up frames and boxes to be ready when they are needed, but remember to bring foundation to room temperature before use, as it is brittle when cold and if needed, freshens up nicely with a warm hair dryer.

Keep warm and snug, not long until spring.

References

‘Practical Beekeeping’ by Clive de Bruyn

‘Beekeeping, A practical guide’ by Roger Patterson