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I've meaning to sort this out for months but used "i'll do it in winter" as an excuse to save me a lot of un-necessary hacking and slashing.

My out apiary is on a nature reserve, nicely tucked away behind some brambles. We originally cleared the area and put down a lot of mulch/wood chippings about this time two years ago.

By last summer you pretty much needed a machete to get to the hive and as quick as I could clear the space around the hive weeds were ...

Well, those Magnificant Seven small and perfectly formed (Amm-looking) colonies were still alive this afternoon. The 3.5% oxalic acid dihydrate in 1:1 syrup (w/v) was dispensed according to the usual 5ml per seam rule, although some were occupying a small part of their seam so were spared the full 5ml. It was baltic (that isn't any kind of reference to Finland by the way) and I think that my hands suffered more than the bees did, though several did point their stings in the air at me just to let ...

Yesterday my bees (bar one colony at home) got their mid-winter sweet and sour treat. Previously I've used the 4.5% oxalic acid dihydrate recipe (which some call 3.2% oxalic as that would be the weight/volume strength if people used anhydrous oxalic acid). This really confuses people. There has been a lot of stuff posted in various places recently and not all of it is right.

The standard recipe - as has been posted elsewhere on this site - is:

75g + 1000g sugar + 1000ml ...

I treated the 6 colonies I have at the bottom of the garden this morning.
The total used was 125 ml which lets you know that some of them were a bit smaller than expected as it is 5 ml per seam of bees.
5 of the 6 should be ok as they had tightly packed clusters over 4-6 frames. One nuc was down to about 1-2 frames and probably won't make it.
Tomorrow is to be mild and the clusters will probably look twice as big when they loosen up a bit.
Mine always seem to overwinter ...

After the rather balmy weather of autumn and some neglect on my part I figure I should do a quick check of all the hives and make sure they were well stocked with fondant. So far, touch wood, the three hives and two nucs all seem to contain bees though a couple were decidedly light after giving them a heft so I'm glad I've got the fondant on.