This Month in the Apiary – August
- If you have not already done so , you may want to extract this month. Give the bees space to go into or push down into the brood box by putting clearer boards on Place supers back on the hives they came from.
- Remember honey is a food product and should only be stored in food safe buckets or sterilised jars.
- If placing supers back on colonies for cleaning up, place above the crownboard with a reduced entry . (Old CDs over the hole make an ideal entrance)
- Monitor varroa levels if treating. Use the BeeBase calculator to judge the level of infestation. Treat all colonies at the same time in the apiary.
- Consider the timing of treatments and feeding. Varroa treatments are temperature sensitive. This refers to the ambient temperature and not the brood nest temperature.
- Remember any chemicals used in the hive must be recorded with dates of use and batch numbers etc.
- Ivy has still to come in, but if all the honey has been removed you may want to feed. Assess the amount of stores the colony has and feed accordingly.
- The bees need to reduce the water content of any 2:1 syrup you feed to avoid dysentery from fermenting stores. This is harder as the weather gets colder.
- Wasp traps will probably be needed now. reduce entrances and put out beer and jam traps away from the bees.
- Check the hives are sound and will not allow wasps in through joints or ill fitting equipment.
- Do a full health check by removing a couple of frames and shaking all the bees off the brood frames to inspect. Pay attention to the cappings. Investigate any off centre perforations with tweezers not your hive tool. Put anything suspect into the smoker.
- Go into the winter with strong colonies and unite after doing your full health checks any small colonies. Cull queens who have not been productive.
- Swarming is probably over but keep an eye for queen cells that might indicate supercedure.
- Still keep an eye out for Asian Hornets searching for protein and monitor traps daily.