Winter's End

Everyone is reporting losses.  

We gather at the Beekeepers' Hut and make tea.  Someone spills a mug and I take some time to wash up all the cutlery, listening to the gossip in the background.  Guy always used to say we were like a bunch of high country farmers in New Zealand, down in town for the first visit after the snows had gone; talking nineteen to the dozen.  And so we were today; a huge group crowding into the little space, and you could barely hear yourself think above the chatter.

"Alan's lost twenty out of forty hives," said someone.

"I lost two, but four have come through alright," says another.

This is always the way at the end of winter, the beginning of spring.  We gather to count our blessings and mourn our losses.

Tom and I headed down to his orchard after tea, hitched on our suits and went to look at our own hives, concerned by so many devastating losses this year.  It has been an extraordinarily mild but wet winter and the bees have suffered for it.  In the winter warmth the bees have come out to forage and found nothing flowering, and then been trapped without the energy to return home.   Or some have been caught by Nosema, that dreadful tummy bug that forces such indignities on our bees - something that can't be cured and must be endured, and often weakens them to such an extent that the hive dies before the end of winter.

Tom approached in his usual inimitable fashion; organised and practical, with a clear plan of action.  I as always tripped over my suit, squelched a shoe into dog poop, left all my tools behind and couldn't keep my hair out of my eyes.  Never a dull moment but oh, what a pleasure to come to our hives and see only good news.  All of our hives have survived the winter.  100% survival!  

Tom's Mum's hive came first and looked absolutely perfect inside.  Honey, eggs, larvae, sealed brood and lordy, lordy - a Blue Queen.  Then on to Tom's hive; the central one, the little one, the weak one.  The bees must've been worried too because they had literally stuffed 6 frames full of sugar.  What a laugh, I've never seen anything like that before.  But there too we saw brood, food and another glorious Blue Queen.

Now on to Margo's hive.  Astonishing - truly astonishing.  This structure is big - I left it at a brood and a half.  And it's bursting at the seams with bees, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of bees.  It's only the beginning of April.  If I'm not careful we could have a disaster on our hands - there are just too many bees for the box already.  Didn't see my own Blue Queen but there were eggs and larvae everywhere, and signs that already one generation has been bred and born and a second is on its way.  

We whooped and hollered our way through this delightful inspection then we sat down to just watch the bees for a while, and talk about strategy.  This summer we have decided to follow the lead of the Club, and manage the bees the way Tom would prefer.  So we shall do an early season "shook swarm", something I have never done before.

An early "shook swarm" requires us to destroy all the eggs and larvae and sealed brood, and move all our bees and queens onto new wax.  This forces them to start all over again in a rush, working extra hard, but it also destroys all the varroa pests thriving on the bodies of the baby bees.  It will form part of our Integrated Pest Control strategy this year.  It's a dangerous tactic - time it wrong, get bad weather, and you could weaken a colony to the point of no recovery.  Time it just right and the bee girls will go like the clappers and you get a healthy, hard working result.

As we sat and talked it through I realised that I don't have a choice.  My hive is so big, dangerously big this early in the year, that a "shook swarm" has become a necessary intervention.

So be it.  I'm excited, looking forward to another year of learning and adventure.  Roll on, Summer of 2016!