Blogs

One of the tasks for this year was to build a solar wax extractor in order to process all the excess wax at the apiary.

We end up with excess wax for 2 main reasons:

So far the weather this year has been very cold and wet, meaning that the early spring inspecitons have had to be delayed until this week. Fortunately however the temperature yesterday just crept above the magical 10°C mark, accompanied by bright sunshine and no wind, so our first inspections could happen.

Every winter we provide extra emergency food stores to those hives that need it - a backup for those which haven't managed to store enough honey for winter, or those who have unexpectedly used up all their stores.

This coming week staff from the University Apiary Project are working with the School of Veterinary Medicine to help teach their online distance learning MSc in Conservation Medicine. We discuss invertebrate ecology from the perspective of threats to honey bees, both naturally occurring, and man-made.

It is always interesting to be able to teach others about honey bees and related species, and the effect that man's intervention has had for them - both positive and negative.

Despite having an Indian summer which has given the bees a longer period to forage for winter stores in, it is now time for the hives to be closed up for winter.

Each hive is left with plenty of honey stores to see them through, though some have had to also have some sugar syrup feeds as they have been weak due to the late and relatively cold summer this year.