BeeLines - April '25

1st April was “Fool’s Day” but it was also the last weighing-day of our hives to find out how much their weight has changed over the winter from 1st October. These are the results:

Firstly, credit to Cerys for turning our rough notes into a table and illustrative bar graph. Note that the ‘Change Date’ is for the preceding month, e.g. ‘Change 1st November’ shows the weight change during the month of October. And, as can be seen, all hives gained weight during October. After that, the weight was mainly lost from hives; the three exceptions being small gains in February and March for hives 4, 1, and 3. What is of particular interest is the weight change between the first weighing on 1st October and the last weighing on 1st April . They are as follows for hives 1 to 7 respectively: +0.03kg, -1.86kg, -3.44kg, -3.51kg. -5.15kg, -4.33kg, and -4.18kg. These weight changes seem to support the thesis that our local bees are relatively frugal. The maximum loss, by hive 5, was 5.15kg, and one, hive 1, actually ended the winter with a slight gain of 0.03kg. The hives in this project were fed a small autumn feed (or mostly no feed at all) and only two were given a supplementary feed of candy, and that was removed from the weight measurements. It seems relevant to record that all hives on first inspection during March were seen to have between 2 to 3 frames of stored honey on either side of the brood nest.

Maybe a discussion of this data and implications for ‘winter feeding’ may be useful. Apologies to members who also recorded winter hive weight changes; collating other data for these notes has proved difficult.

How are your bees? From what we have heard, it seems that many members have colonies that have wintered well with few losses. As is often the case, however, we do know of some higher losses that have been sad to learn about. We have lost two colonies out of our eighteen overwintered hives. Both these were queen failures; colonies still with healthy bees but no brood - one had a queen and one didn’t. The hive with the smaller number of bees was moved, the bees shaken off their frames, and the hive taken to be ‘refreshed’ - many of these ‘homeless’ bees will be accepted into adjacent hives. The second hive, which has a large number of bees will be given a 40mm circle of comb containing eggs to (hopefully) rear a new queen (The comb is cut with a prepared ‘pilchard tin cutter’ - credit to Pete Haywood for this useful tip. Ask if you want more detail). Asking ‘winter bees’ to raise a new queen is not recommended in bee literature, but we tried this with a colony last season and it successfully raised a queen. The colony overwintered well and is currently one of our stronger colonies (the patch of introduced eggs was from a favourite colony!)

How are your preparations for this season? Are you going to check for queen cells, split colonies, position bait hives to catch swarms? Have you got a spare hive ready for splitting a colony? Have you got a nuc box to accompany you when inspecting hives? (very useful to isolate a frame with a queen if spotted early in an inspection - if further into the inspection you find queen cells, you will be pleased that you know where the queen is!)

Hive inspections and dividing colonies is often related to controlling swarming. Some useful information on this topic was provided by Helen Tworkowski, from Devon BKA, in an article Helen wrote in BBKA News (March 2025, No. 232). We quote: “I keep…the dates when I first see drone brood and the first time I see a mature drone…Drones are 24 days in their cell and take 10 days to mature…So once you see drone brood you have about four weeks before your bees might be ready to swarm. It is all weather-dependent, but you have been given an indication”. We looked into some hives today (8th April) and all had patches of drone brood, with just a very few capped cells. The ‘swarming clock’ is ticking!

We think it is important to note that it is four years since LLEBKA initiated a Voluntary Conservation Areas (VCA). Our Statement was published in the 2021 Spring Edition of the Welsh Beekeeper and begins as follows:

“A statement to beekeepers in Wales about Voluntary Conservation Areas for our native honey bee. Llŷn & Eifionydd Beekeepers’ Association (LLEBKA) wish to announce the formation of a Voluntary Conservation Area (VCA) for native Welsh honey bees in the area of our association members”

Further background and detail: https://llebka.org.uk/assets/documents/archive-vca-page

It is encouraging to note that Montgomeryshire BKA also has its own VCA. The crux of these Statements is to inform beekeepers in the Association areas of the importance of the local native, or near native, honey bees and to, please, not bring-in honey bees that are not local to the area. Non-local subspecies from other European countries or hybrid strains, such as so-called Buckfast bees, are not welcomed by LLEBKA members into our Association area. Reasons for this view are explained in the Statement.

If you have comments, information, a bee story or tips you would like to share with members, please let us know and we will include them in BeeLines.