Episode 120: Collapsing Colony and Gary's Hive

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 120 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. The Summer nectar flow is all but done and I discover a colony rammed full of varroa and in danger of collapse.Do take a look at the extra content available on my patreon page, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoneyI’m grateful to Honey Paw hives for sponsoring in part our podcasts for this season. Honey Paw hives are, as I’m sure you’re aware, Poly Langstroth hives and we’re setting up an apiary full of their hives this season courtesy of Honey Paw. Check out their range of hives and other equipment on their website, I’ll leave a link to their website in the show notes as usual.Honey Paw Hives - Designed by Beekeepers, For Beekeepers.Hi Everyone, I trust you’re all safe and well still and enjoying your beekeeping season, mine sadly, is coming to an end this weekend. I say coming to an end but it’s only the end of the Summer nectar flow and the work ramps up for a while as we remove honey and start preparations for the Autumn treatments and feeding. Inspections can actually start to reduce a little, no need for the mad rush of weekly inspections to check for swarming bees. The main priority for me now is changing focus to get bees treated and fed for the long Autumn and Winter haul.Following on from last week’s podcast I’ve had a number of messages to say my comments regarding a lack of honey stores in the brood boxes is something other beekeepers are experiencing too. Sometimes when I’m looking through my colonies and making a mental note of what I’m seeing I do wonder if what I am seeing is fairly normal for beekeeping here in the UK and particularly the East of England or whether I’m a bit of an odd one out and somehow I’m getting it all horribly wrong. I have to say, I’m fairly comfortable with my own style of beekeeping and what you see in the videos is generally how I inspect my bees off camera too. Maybe a little quicker and a few more colourful expletives when I get stung but otherwise I don’t change much. It got me thinking about how many colonies I could actually handle with my particular inspection regime. On a good day I can easily inspect fifty plus colonies with comparative ease, it’s those days when things don’t always go to plan and the weather intervenes to complicate matters. Then there are the days when all of the colonies need your attention at the same time on the same day, all I can say about that is thank goodness I clipped queen’s this year!It’s looking like we’ll have something in the order of 100 to 120 colonies going into the Winter this year. That feels like a very comfortable number to manage for me, allowing for the fact that I’m also working on the videos, podcast and other various projects along the way.Honey production has slowed through the Summer, I’m making a snap judgement here that the weather has played a big part in this. Even the more reliable apiaries near water courses and packed out with brambles have been a little slow. Most of the honey production colonies have a couple of supers on with just a few having more. Of course, I did split a number of colonies to produce nucs for queens to go in to so that reduced the number of production colonies quite a bit.......Well that’s it for this week, Time to get out and see how my bees are doing in some of the Honey Paw Hives and I’ve also got a honey delivery to complete. Please do take a look at the extra content available on my patreon page, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney I’m Stewart SpinksAnd that was Beekeeping Short and SweetSupport the show