Overwintering Apideas

[Jon]

Just in from a BKA meeting and I was talking to one of our beginners. last June nine members of the beginner group bought an Apidea and as part of our queen rearing group activities they were given a bonus of a cupful of bees and a virgin queen. The idea was to give them some hands on experience of manipulating bees and a chance to observe them at work. None of them had kept bees before. This chap came up to me tonight and asked how he was going to get his bees into a proper nuc.
I was impressed, as he has kept a little colony of bees alive in an apidea between June and March and I never imagined that any of these queens would mate and survive a winter.

[gavin]

Cracking report, cracking. Top marks to the man from Belfast who decided to give this a try. Do you plan to find out about the others? Can he move them up to a nuc? Did he do it with a feeder on top or just a plain Apidea?

[Jon]

I think they were just an a single Apidea but I know some of them were offered feeders as well. I would be amazed if any of the others made it. I bumped into one woman in the local Lidl at the end of the summer and her Apidea had been gnawed by her sister in law's fox terrier leaving any possible queen mating in jeopardy.