What next ....

[The Drone Ranger]

Do you use brood and a half overwintering often Bridget ?

I'm not keen because although they don't mind crossing a gap on the way up
Once they are in the super they sometimes stay there and wont cross back to stores below them

[Mellifera Crofter]

...
So why did the honey stores ferment? and what do I do in future to prevent this happening? Another guess would be that possibly I could remove some of the frames from the brood box in the late summer, early autumn and give them some drawn frames to store syrup in.

Do you use brood and a half overwintering often Bridget ?

I'm not keen because although they don't mind crossing a gap on the way up
Once they are in the super they sometimes stay there and wont cross back to stores below them

Yes, I would also like to know, Bridget. Did they move up to the warmth and easier food before they've capped the stores in the brood box?

Instead of using a super, might it help to use Ian Craig's method of over-wintering his bees: two brood boxes with the sides dummied down. You won't then have the problem DR mentioned.

I also got my results back from SASA, and my reading of my slides was correct. The nucleus colony was riddled with Nosema.

Kitta

[Bridget]

Do you use brood and a half overwintering often Bridget ?

I'm not keen because although they don't mind crossing a gap on the way up
Once they are in the super they sometimes stay there and wont cross back to stores below them

First time I've had a big enough colony to need to give them more space through the winter DR. I did wonder in the late autumn if I should have used a dummied down brood box on top and I will certainly do that next time.


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[Kate Atchley]

Bridget, so sorry you lost these bees.

I was wondering about leaving the bees on the heather till end September. Maybe the syrup was fed after that? There was some of that occasional good weather early October, so the bees around here were still foraging vigorously at that time. Yours too perhaps. So were the bees taking in/down more nectar/syrup than they could condense straight away and once the colder weather set in it became difficult to do this, so some stores were left uncapped and unfinished?

Also, I wondered how early the fondant was fed to them? It was a mild Autumn up to Christmas, so were the bees trying to store from that block too ... again adding to the strain on the hive to drive off enough moisture from the stores?

Here I take any honey off by mid-September latest (there's heather around – I don't move the bees) so that any feeding is finished by the end of the month and the bees take any autumn forage for themselves. Maybe I'm being too cautious but we have notoriously unpredictable weather!

[Calluna4u]

Part of Bridgets problem may well be that last year was terribly strange and late, and in her area, where we keep several heather apiaries, the heather was still yielding commercially significant amounts of nectar until around 24th to 26th September. This is more than two weeks later than we have EVER seen it before. We were astonished at how much honey the colonies from Newtonmore north to Aviemore packed away after our last visit at the start of Sept, and around Kincraig we though the average would be under 5Kg and yet they got up to over 20Kg. This undoubtedly beat the winter bees up a bit.

However....the report you have back is only about diseases, and the lab cannot see the combs unless you sent those in too, and its not their job to comment on status regarding queenlessness or otherwise. Several have agreed that you underlying cause was *probably* queen loss. The spotting on the frames is merely the result of very unsettled bees and this is commonplace if there is no queen and thus no pheromone to keep them calm.

[Bridget]

Bridget, so sorry you lost these bees.

I was wondering about leaving the bees on the heather till end September. Maybe the syrup was fed after that? There was some of that occasional good weather early October, so the bees around here were still foraging vigorously at that time. Yours too perhaps. So were the bees taking in/down more nectar/syrup than they could condense straight away and once the colder weather set in it became difficult to do this, so some stores were left uncapped and unfinished?

Also, I wondered how early the fondant was fed to them? It was a mild Autumn up to Christmas, so were the bees trying to store from that block too ... again adding to the strain on the hive to drive off enough moisture from the stores?

Here I take any honey off by mid-September latest (there's heather around – I don't move the bees) so that any feeding is finished by the end of the month and the bees take any autumn forage for themselves. Maybe I'm being too cautious but we have notoriously unpredictable weather!

Thanks Kate - thank goodness you did not put "sorry for your loss" or RIP as I see on an certain a more southern based bee forum!

My bees are naturally on heather and I don't move them but as Calluna4U says they were still taking it down end of September in this area. We did feed syrup but it was not until mid October when we did the varroa treatment. I know this was very late for that but it worked well and once we had taken the strips off we gave them Fondant, end of November. The reason was that they had been so active throughout the autumn that I was worried they might need it. I suppose trying to cover all options, especially as I can no longer actually look at the bees so my husband sort of relays everything back to me to make a decision!
But all the hives were treated the same and the others were out flying today, air temp only 4 degrees with all the snow on the hills. The only difference with this colony was that it was super big going into mid October.

[Kate Atchley]

Thanks Kate - thank goodness you did not put "sorry for your loss" or RIP as I see on an certain a more southern based bee forum! ...
But all the hives were treated the same and the others were out flying today, air temp only 4 degrees with all the snow on the hills. The only difference with this colony was that it was super big going into mid October.

All the more upsetting to lose a "super big" bunch of bees.

Mine were out flying and bringing in pollen today though not quite so cold as with you – 6.5º. Ahhh Spring is unfolding gently!

[Bridget]

All the more upsetting to lose a "super big" bunch of bees.

Mine were out flying and bringing in pollen today though not quite so cold as with you – 6.5º. Ahhh Spring is unfolding gently!

No pollen here - even the snowdrops are still closed up. False spring I suspect as we are still to have the annual "lambing storm"

[SDM]

Spring looks set to ... well , spring into action from this weekend with the far north of Scotland being the warmest in the country over the next 10 days. It looks like a fortnight of double figure temps for you, which should get those snowdrops open. Acres of snowdrops by me wasted as they opened just as this cold snap arrived.