End of October visit. Feeders all empty and removed. Celotex bonnet on top with metal roof. Bees looking good, nice big colony.
00:05
Welcome back to a Beekeepers Diary podcast. We are now at the 26th of October and pretty much, excuse me Mr. Horse, no need for that, pretty much finishing up all our winter prep. So I've come down today and as it's not raining, it's not super cold. So I have taken off my roof and
00:35
I've emptied out the feeder of bees as it was completely empty of the food that I put in but it was the bees have been hanging out up there so I took that off and brushed and tapped all the bees out of there which gave me a quick look into the top of the brood box which was absolutely packed with bees that was great to see. So I've taken a little video of that.
01:04
which you'll be able see on my Instagram, BeekeepersdiaryPodcast, if you're interested in seeing some video. Yeah, so put the lid back on and I put my Celotex insulation bonnet around the brood box with a metal roof on, which I normally leave for winter, which insulates.
01:27
the hive all through winter so the bees don't have to waste any energy trying to keep warm. They stay warm and dry because I've got foam on top of my perspex board which is on the top that stops it getting colder than the side so no condensation gathers there just if anything on the side so they're snug in there and yeah full of food nice and warm all the bees are going back into the box.
01:55
as I did that. Yeah, so it's looking good. Lots of birds flying around today here. I've had great tits, long-tailed tits, jays, buzzards, uh red kites, uh crows, all sorts flying around. It's been quite noisy here, it's quite nice. They're zooming about in the autumnal breeze. So just a quick one today, just a whistle stop visit on my way back home.
02:26
Hope you're all well. Thanks for listening in. I guess I probably won't do many more this year. I'll keep checking in on them. I'm going to carry on with deciding how much of a varroa tray to put in the floor when it gets particularly cold to help them keep even warmer, try and prevent the disaster of last year happening.
02:53
I'll be back monitoring see how heavy the hive is or heft it. em I'll be in a few weeks but I'll just pop in from time to time do a quick check on them. I've got my em camera down here so I can see you know if it's especially windy I can see if the hive's blown over and see what if any woodpeckers or badgers have been at them.
03:17
So yeah, I shall check in from time to time. Thanks for listening through this season. Much appreciated it. And hopefully if all goes well, we can have a better start to next year. Anyway, have a good one. I shall probably catch up with you in a few weeks, but we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for listening. Much love. See you later, bye.