best time of the year

[jeff33]

I will have to admit I usually cannot wait for the season to start but when September comes and you look back you realise how demanding and stressful it can be. This is why for many reason September and the arrival of autumn is imo the best season. I have now done all my nucs, treated my hives, slowly feeding for winter and will probably do my last inspection this weekend.

It has been a season of ups and downs, managed to increase to 10 hives and 6 nucs, grafted for the first time, had the best season for honey so I can re-invest in more equipment. On the down side and through my own fault (being too casual about it) I lost what was going to be my breeder queen for the start of next season. This is setting me back by 1 year but we live and learn.

I can now sit back, relax and watch them work the ivy....and book a holiday!

How did you all get on?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

still got the heather to take off and extract

 

[Swarm]

Ups and downs. Downsides were failed early queens and two horrid colonies of ginger remnants that killed two new queens. I should have used my native colonies to make up the nucs but too late now. I did however make up a nuc of Amm for a beautiful new arrival and she is thriving.
Upside ..
Apiary returned to all quiet and gentle native black bees. I can't wait for next season.

It's a long wait until next Spring before I get to see them all again and all I have to look forward to in the meantime is wind, rain, frost, ice, snow and disgusting, long, dark nights.

Best time of the year? Early May, IMO.

 

[Repwoc]

Best time of the year? Early May, IMO.

 

[jeff33]

Ah yes I forgot about the other down that was the horrid swarm from 2018...which by June was in dble bb. At least I got 4 nucs out of it, 4 supers and a few stings!! I hived only 1 swarm this year and as soon as the hive was strong enough temper started to change. I have re-queened it but I have decided that I will not bother with swarm anymore or if I do they are re-queened straight away.

 

[madasafish]

Mixed year.
Lovely spring, loads of honey.
Weather broke June and summer was cold and wet and windy. LOTS of swarms June due to confinment for weeks on end..

Queen rearing a disaster June- due to weather..1 queen out of 20. Reduced to ripening QCs in incubator due to cold nights - sub 10C down to 5-6 C at times.
July warmer and easier.

Honey output 25% down on 2018 which had exceptionally fine weather.
Q rearing in July and early August was better but mini nucs decimated in September by wasps..

Not a great year and hard work with swarms.

 

[Courty]

This time of year for me is a mixture of hoping I have done enough to get them through the winter and some pleasure at what has been achieved.
This time last year I had my first nuc in a hive and was losing sleep over varroa and DWV, they survived winter and I am now going into this winter with three colonies, have leaned a lot about honey extraction, wax filtering and planning for next year.
My splits didn’t quite work out as planned probably due to the weather but all in all I’m glad I jumped into this bee malarkey.
Winter will be candle and pine cone firelighter making and a return to fly tying and fly fishing, which has taken second place for a while.
And reading up on bees again, a lot of it makes more sense now.

Happy fireside moments everyone.

Courty

 

[Ian123]

Lol .... I’ve got nucs to make up at the weekend...

 

[Curly green finger's]

Funny year for me not much spring honey only the set stuff in buckets.
Summer honey was my best with 4 production hives producing 260lbs. And my amms producing some lovely cut comb first year for cut comb.
I collected 5 swarms ( being on the swarm collection list for my area)
Had two swarms of hybrids at one of my apiarys not mine,and three of my own swarmed one was in a disused quarry building retreaved. And one went down the valley the other landed two metres from the hive.
Next year I'm setting up a mating station and want to concentrate on my amms .
Busy season really.

 

[Curly green finger's]

Funny year for me not much spring honey only the set stuff in buckets.
Summer honey was my best with 4 production hives producing 260lbs. And my amms producing some lovely cut comb first year for cut comb.
I collected 5 swarms ( being on the swarm collection list for my area)
Had two swarms of hybrids at one of my apiarys not mine,and three of my own swarmed one was in a disused quarry building retreaved. And one went down the valley the other landed two metres from the hive.
Next year I'm setting up a mating station and want to concentrate on my amms .
Busy season really.

Swarm from the pink hive.

Buckfast bee's which are now very black and not bucks at all
Sent from my Nokia 1 using Tapatalk

 

[Walrus]

Mixed year.
Lovely spring, loads of honey.
Weather broke June and summer was cold and wet and windy. LOTS of swarms June due to confinment for weeks on end..

Queen rearing a disaster June- due to weather..1 queen out of 20. Reduced to ripening QCs in incubator due to cold nights - sub 10C down to 5-6 C at times.
July warmer and easier.

Honey output 25% down on 2018 which had exceptionally fine weather.
Q rearing in July and early August was better but mini nucs decimated in September by wasps..

Not a great year and hard work with swarms.

Pretty much sums my season up, except the wasps weren't excessively bad.

 

[simonforeman]

Went from 4 to 8 hives. Have my first out apiary with 5 hives there.
Made my first soft set honey and nearly sold the lot.

All but 1 hive going into winter with 2019 queens. Looking forward to next year when my 2 dr stofen queen hives I have very high Hope's for

 

[coatesg]

Started with one overwintered colony that produced 61lbs of honey during the year which was great (42lbs of it spring, the rest summer). Now up to three colonies.

Survived the wasp onslaught in July/Aug, but had an introduced queen killed off in a Nuc. The bees were good at raising queens themselves this year though...

Kinda felt mostly on top of things this year - just need to get the feeding going for winter - stores are getting low as the late summer foraging weather has been poor so far.

 

[SWEET]

Can relate and been a steep learning curve v the past few years.

1. DEFRA inspections (learning new stuff from the chap)
2. Added supers too late in spring resulting in a swarm (assumed) and new queen from HELL while my lovey queen vanished..
3. Dealing with that HELLish hive, real learning experience that.
4. Supersedure in feral hive (interesting to see pan-out)
5. Marking queens
6. Creating Nucs/swarm spilts
7. Witnessing what Aggressive bees to do a new queen....
8. Leaving Rape Honey to set...
9. Moving full hives at dusk
10. Witnessing and a stopping a huge robbing attack
11. Dealing with a worker drone laying hive.
12. Nice summer harvest.
13. Had a custom OB hive made in oak.
14. Other stuff

Been fun

 

[Podilia]

It's not the best season for me. May was cold and rainy. Many colonies were too weak after winter. Then June was unseasonably dry and warm (30 C). I extracted some osr honey and until sunflower was empty because of a drought. Swarms also were small. I catched 10 or 12 swarms, only half of them are able to overwinter.

Positive side. My bees collected a lot of late honey. I'm not feeding them except nucs and some swarms. Feeding is not economically preferable now. I also managed to keep my bees from pesticides in my backyard in the suburb area during May and June. Neighbors were a bit troubled.
In the summer site two of my colonies were stolen. I was waiting for the thieves at nights. Interesting adventure. Well, at least they arrived - a man and his son from nearby village, arrived on a cart with a horse. The man got a hit on his back. In fact they were very frightened. Now they have a problem with police. I got my stolen colonies. I gave a bait hive to that man and explained how to catch a swarm. The apiary is still on the summer site.

The best time for me is summer, but now June is extremly stressful because never know from what side you can receive a surprise from farmers.
The weather is going to turn to autumn. Today is the last summer day 27 degrees. This turn from 27 to 15 is always dramatic.

 

[The Poot in Somerset]

Here I enjoyed a lovely Spring with the colonies expanding rapidly and storing honey. June saw them consume a lot of the honey with bad weather prevailing.

Through May I captured five swarms and spent a fortune on additional kit to house them - mainly Abelo poly which I'm pretty impressed with. Have combined colonies and given two away to get back to four to go into Winter with. Have extracted and jarred over 100lbs of honey. Made soft set for the first time.

Suffered only five stings - all on my hands through not being alert enough to what the bees were up to. Have learned not to panic when things go wrong, but to pause and think through the options.

Biggest mistake was hiving a swarm close to the house and not immediately in the apiary. Now is a big colony that will be a pain to move.

All in all though, a pleasing Spring and Summer. Treating well under way, feeding to do then it's all gloom until April.

 

[Poly Hive]

2019 is a year I want to forget. Utterly horrid.

Honey? not finished the tally yet but roughly 50lbs from 8 hives. Yes seriously. ARGH.

Bees? Finally managed to get some grafts accepted in late July. Why? Cold and wet. Wet and cold.

The trees and hedges have grown like mad. Trees we planted this spring have grown a good two feet and some more. The grass has been going mad but for the bees.............piss poor.

I am looking forward to warm winter nights with the stove glowing and the whippets snuggling in as only whippies can. 2019 can get stuffed.

PH

 

[maz0]

2019 is a year I want to forget. Utterly horrid.

Honey? not finished the tally yet but roughly 50lbs from 8 hives. Yes seriously. ARGH.

Bees? Finally managed to get some grafts accepted in late July. Why? Cold and wet. Wet and cold.

The trees and hedges have grown like mad. Trees we planted this spring have grown a good two feet and some more. The grass has been going mad but for the bees.............piss poor.

I am looking forward to warm winter nights with the stove glowing and the whippets snuggling in as only whippies can. 2019 can get stuffed.

PH

Thought it was maybe just me being a beginner and this was the reality of how much honey to expect. Good to know it’s just been crappy old Scotland weather.

 

[Beagle23]

This year has been without drama, my first in four years of beekeeping. Neither of my hives swarmed (I was experimenting with splits and moving things around), and both produced good amounts of honey.

Only got stung once as well. So all in all a relaxed, pleasant, beekeeping year.

 

[deemann1]

Alot of lessons learnt this year
Went from 8 to 24 hives
Alot of timber work achieved making boxes roofs floors etc.
Got 20 extra supers drawn out ,
This winter I'll be making alot of kit gonna be busy in the evening's
2020 prep make 40 double nucs ,80 five frame boxes
Cedar hives 20 brood boxes 80 supers plus roofs, floors etc.
I enjoy making kit but I hate making up those damn frames