The Kilburn Road Bees
Early Spring Update – 7th March 2019
The new season is almost upon us and bees will be flying at every opportunity through March.
Winter stores of honey and pollen are getting low in the hives and early flowering plants like crocus, snowdrops, heather and willow offer a great opportunity to gather fresh stores.
Cooler conditions are not really a major problem for honey bees, but wet and windy weather can be a serious issue. Workers are unable to fly and waterlogged flowers are of limited value to the colonies.
As spring gets in to full flow the Queen Bees will begin to produce a growing number of eggs and new brood in anticipation of increasing food availability from spring blooms.
Worker bees that have been with their Queen through winter are now very old in bee terms and will begin to die off. Typically a summer Worker lives for between 5 and 6 weeks before she “works herself to death”. For the most part, current Workers will have been born in September or October of 2018! Less foraging and a pre-winter binge on pollen, the bee protein, enabled them to survive for this extended period.
There are currently three colonies at Kilburn Road.
Two were started in late 2017 using Queen Bees from a UK breeder and worker stock from existing colonies I managed. They were moved onto site early in 2018 and flourished during the warm summer.
In June 2018 I had a call regarding a swarm spotted clinging to a small Christmas tree at the Ashwell Road end of the allotment site. I collected the swarm and moved it to a location a few miles away, in order to re-orientate the bees and eliminate any risk of them flying back to where they’d been gathered from.
After a few days at their new site I was able to make a more detailed inspection of the swarm and importantly, find the Queen. She wasn’t from either of the two initial Kilburn Road colonies and must have come from either a managed colony off the site, or an unmanaged colony living in an old tree trunk, or suitable building cavity somewhere!
Given the unknown origin and temperament for this swarm, I re-Queened it with a 2018 Queen from the same UK breeder as the initial Kilburn Road colonies and moved it back onto the allotment late in late summer.
More about swarming in the next update.
From a Beekeepers point of view, I’m currently busy ensuring all equipment required for the new season is clean and ready for use as the bees become more active.
Once the risk of any serious cold snap has passed, I’ll be looking for a window of settled weather to open up each colony and check how they have done through winter.
I have been checking them for food supplies, but now need to ensure no disease, the Queens look strong, sufficient surviving Workers to start the season and any dirty or damaged equipment is replaced.
Once I’ve had chance to complete this early season activity I’ll be in a better position to give a picture of how I see this year developing in “Beeworld”.