A windy day in the apiary yesterday. Feeding is done for now, battening down the hatches for the long winter. The bees were still bringing pollen in, braving the rain and wind.
00:05
Welcome back to a Beekeepers diary podcast. We're a couple of weeks later and it is very autumnal now. In fact it's raining. I don't know if you can hear the rain on the leaves above me.
00:24
It's prevented me from doing what I was hoping to do today but I've turned up to see what's happening with the bees and they're out flying, bringing pollen in even though it's cold and wet. It's a hardy colony this so far. um Yeah so they're still out foraging, still flying and
00:53
I was hoping to take the feeder board off today and get them all fully prepared for winter but I didn't want to crack open. It would involve exposing the colony and I would prefer to do that on a dry day. The cold's not so bad but I don't want let the wet in and have to shake out a load of bees onto cold wet grass so I'm going leave it for another day.
01:20
but I've looked in the feeder and they've taken down all the syrup that I gave them a week and a bit ago. Two to one syrup, thick syrup. So that will conclude my syrup feeding. And I think they've had about 20 kilos of feed. So that's more than enough to get them through winter.
01:42
Obviously I'll monitor the weight of the hive as time goes by over winter and I've got some fondant, little packs of fondant that I can put on top and I like making my own sugar blocks as well.
01:57
flock of jackdaws going by. I wonder what the collective noun for jackdaws is, I need to look that up. Yeah so that's all empty, the bees are knocking around the top of the feeder seeing what if they can find anything so I just quickly checked that was empty and I've put it all back together so at the moment I've got my floor. eh
02:22
then a super which is at the bottom, then the brood box, then the feeder, my perspex board on top, the roof as such, know the last thing that goes on top of the feeder, not really a roof, crown board we call it in beekeeping terms, I don't have any ventilation on that and it's a perspex crown board, some people worry about condensation on the top.
02:48
So you just need to make sure that that perspex board is warmer than the sides of the box. So I put foam on top of the perspex to keep it warm and then I put my roof on. And I never get condensation issues. It's always bone dry and any moisture will be to the sides which the bees can use to their advantage but it doesn't drip down onto them when they're clustering. Works for me and I have the open mesh floor at the bottom with...
03:18
nothing in. I think this year once it gets properly cold I'm going to um rather than just leave it out all year when it gets very cold I think I'm going to try this year cutting down a Varroa tray that you slide in underneath so it doesn't cover all of the floor and leave some airflow there but doesn't fully seal it up so you just end up with a sweaty box. That's an unfortunate term. oh
03:46
Yeah, moving on. have a little kit that I leave down here which has got four posts and some uh garden wire, sort of a grid of chicken wire you might call it, but it's covered, it's plastic coated so that I'll put a post in each corner around the...
04:13
the hive and slide the wire over so that green woodpeckers can't tap their way into the hive. Obviously poly hives are quite vulnerable. mean even wood hives are vulnerable but poly hives even more so to woodpecker attacks when the ground gets freezing. So in a little bit I should put my woodpecker defences up but I've managed to unearth my posts and wire because the grass had grown up over it where I just lobbed them into the grass nearby.
04:43
gathered those up and yeah so that's it for this week
04:52
I shall come back hopefully next week and I'll be able to put the the Celotex bonnet that I put on the top and the hard roof and see where we're at. But yeah, everything looks good. Hi to everyone that's listening. I can see there's someone in Romania that likes to listen to this podcast. I'd love it if you could drop me a message and tell me if you're a beekeeper.
05:20
what your link to Beekeeping is. It would be good to get in touch. You can see me on Beekeepers diary podcast on Instagram or message me through the website. Beekeepersdiarypodcast.com I think it is. Yeah, get in touch. Love to speak to you. Anyway, have a good week everyone. I'll see you soon.