We had a cold snap in December with temperatures down at around -8 Celsius. The garden was a winter wonderland. We had some anxious moments thinking about the bees and wondering how they were coping with the low temperatures.
You can just about make out some of the frost covered hives in the bottom right of this photograph. The grass was crunchy underfoot.
The bees live a seasonal life. Everything they do is impacted by the weather. At this time of year honey bees are much less active. They have formed a protective cluster around their queen to keep her warm. The colony shivers to keep warm and will only venture outside for the essentials. They bring out the dead bees and their waste on better days in their continuing efforts to keep their palace as clean as possible. So on a sunny day, even in the depths of winter, you can see all of this activity taking place.
The queen is at the lowest ebb of her laying at this time of year when the days are shortest. So its important that we use this time to help the colonies with managing some of the diseases and infections which are endemic in Scotland. This includes the Verroa Destructor mite. Verroa are tiny. They are around the size of a sesame seed. As a beekeeper you become accustom to spotting them quickly when performing your regular checks. It is fairly normal to have some in every hive. You want to support the bees in managing that number down. They reproduce inside sealed brood cells. Once inside a sealed cell they are impervious to most treatments and so, at this time of year, with little or no sealed brood in the hive, we have a great opportunity to do some good housekeeping. You can read more about Verroa and their potential impact on the loss of bee colonies in Scotland here.
We use Oxalic Acid to treat for Verroa. Oxalic acid is an organic acid with the systematic name ethanedioic acid and formula HO₂C−CO₂H. It is the simplest dicarboxylic acid. It is a white crystalline solid that forms a colourless solution in water. It occurs naturally in many leafy green plants and we produce it in our body too when we process things like vitamin C. As we produce honey which goes into the food supply it is really important only to use treatments which have been approved by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate of the Scottish Government.
We use ApiBioxal. To treat all we need to do is dissolve in syrup and trickle 5ml on to seams of bees between frames.
As our bees are fastidious about hygiene they carry it down and spread it around the hive as they work to clean themselves. Its quick, easy and helps sustain our happy healthy hives.
It also gives us a great opportunity to check on the health of our colonies. We were delighted to see that all colonies appeared to be active and tightly clustered. They had depleted their food stores and so we topped them up and sealed them up until our first inspection of the new season.
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