The four quarter days are:

• Lady day or the Feast of the Annunciation 25th March;
• Midsummer’s day around 25th June;
• Michaelmas 29th September;
• Christmas 25th December – lest we forget. Fat chance.

They all approximately coincide with either an equinox or a solstice.

Equinoxes

An equinox is when day and night are of equal duration. There are two of them – spring and autumn:

• Spring equinox 21st March;
• Autumn equinox 23rd September.

Solstices

As for the solstices there are two of these too – summer and winter.

• Summer solstice (longest day and shortest night) 21st June;
• Winter solstice (shortest day and longest night) 22nd December.

Christmas

Nobody knows the day or the month when Jesus Christ was actually born. However, the Feast of the Annunciation falls on the 25th March which is when Christians celebrate the day Gabriel called on Mary to tell her she was to be the mother of the son of God.

Imagine that!

Christmas is exactly 9 months after the Feast of the Annunciation. That’s biology for you.

Christmas also coincides approximately with the Winter Solstice on 22nd December. Also known as The Shortest Day. Now there’s cause to celebrate.

Christmas Traditions

You don’t need me to tell you about the ‘traditions’ of Christmas. Suffice to say, it is cruel that we have to bear it in the middle of the darkest, wettest and most depressing time of the year. It’s enough to push you over the edge!

We can never really know what Jesus might think about Christmas traditions, However, we do know what happened when he discovered the merchants had set up shop in the temple, so we can guess:

‘But what about the bees?’ says you…

Us beekeepers are fortunate because there is a lot of stuff out there to be getting on with at christmas.

Treat them

The bees should have been fed and treated for Varroa after the honey was extracted at the end of summer. However, midwinter is the time when the queen bees should be off lay and there should be a short broodless period which is ideal for a backup treatment with Oxalic acid. I say should be because it is not always the case especially in a mild year or where they ivy bloomed late. So long as there has been a bit of cold weather – below 15 degrees – and a decent interval since you last saw yellow ivy pollen going in to the hives – Christmas should be perfect.

Click here for how to do that.

Click here for more about Oxalic acid for Beekeepers.

I should add that midwinter treatment may not be necessary if you are confident that the conditions in autumn were good enough to allow your thymol/MAQS to work properly.

Feed them

While you are out there – check the feed status of your bees. Heft the hives to assess the weight and if they seem light put some fondant on. It won’t do any harm and if they need it later – it’s there.

If the bees seem weak and are clustering close to the top of the frames you could choose to remove the crownboard and place the fondant directly onto the bees where they will find it easily. If you do this – add an eke and pack the space around the fondant with old jumpers, sacking or some other cosy stuff.

Don’t put pollen substitute on yet – too early – wait for February.

Apiary Watch

Make sure the hive roofs are weighted down with stones or tied with ropes – winter has hardly started and there could be gales. And there could be animals.

Maintenance

Mend broken equipment. Treat spare boxes if they need it. Make up new stuff but don’t put wax into new frames till spring or it will just lose its fragrance and go all crispy then the bees won’t work it properly – they’ll draw all that abstract stuff with holes and buttresses.

All your equipment, supers, spare brood boxes etc could all do with a good scrape down – propolis flakes off well in the cold weather.  Save all the little bits of beeswax you will be amazed how it mounts up.

Click here for how to tackle your beeswax mountain.

Strip down old frames with black, knackered or holy wax. Holy wax is comb with holes in it. Burn the really black horrible wax – use if for lighting fires that’s the only thing it’s good for.

Save the paler, cleaner wax and render it:

Click here for how to render beeswax.

Then do something interesting with it but take care not to set fire to yourself:

Click here for beeswax polish recipe

Click here for beeswax lipbalm recipe

Click here for beeswax handcream recipe

Click here for candle making

Click here for soap making

Wax Moth

If you are storing used brood frames and you know you have a  wax moth problem you might like to take this opportunity to treat them with acetic acid. Acetic acid is not the stuff you put on your chips – treat it with respect.

Click here for how to do that thing

There is also a biological control agent from Vita which uses a micro-organism to attack wax moth.  The product is called Certan and the micro-organism is called Bacillus thuringiensis.

Click here for Certan information

Christmas Forage

There is very little floral forage out there for the bees at Christmas. This year there is quite a lot of gorse in bloom. In some years there may be the dregs of the ivy. Also some winter garden plants such as Mahonia or even snowdrops.

• Ivy pollen is yellow
• Gorse is orange/brown
• Snowdrops pollen is orange/brown too
• Click here for more about ivy
• Click here for how to take a crop of ivy honey.

Happy New Year!

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2017.  All Rights Reserved.

Trickle treated 35 hives of bees with oxalic acid for Varroa today at 4 apiary sites. The temperature was 6 degrees, windy and beginning to rain. It took from 1.15pm to 4.15pm including travelling time so it has to be said it is the quicker of the two methods. If we had only the one Varrox Vaporiser it would have taken 10 minute per hive – which is nearly 6 hours and without the travelling time.

It has to be said the bees were not pleased to see us. It also has to be said that they are still very well stocked with stores. Most of them were on double boxes or one-and-a-halfs and because they had so much stores they were well down in the boxes so that was a bit of a dilemma: either you disturbed them more by separating the two boxes or you took a gamble and trickled from on high. We did some of each. I’d say the hive is open for no more than 1 minute each if you’re organised and have everything ready.

The only other thing to say is that there was very little problem with brace comb but then we have most of the bees on double boxes or 1.5’s – perhaps with that extra space they don’t feel the need to pack the space between the top bars and the crown board.

We must have found at least 8 hibernating queen wasps and often – stangely enough or perhaps not – 2 per roof – common wasps I’d say, going from the marks on their faces.

1. When a colony is broodless, all the Varroa are at their most vulnerable out there in the open, either on the bees or creeping about on the comb – Varroa are protected from the effects of oxalic acid when they still inside the cells of the brood nest;
2. Oxalic acid can damage open brood so these effects are minimal when there are no or few larvae.

On December 9th 2013 the bees were flying quite strongly and still working the last of the ivy and the Mahonia but there has been little activity since then. Any eggs laid during that spell of mild weather will have hatched by the end of December so that might be the best time to treat.

The following methods can be used during any broodless period, even in the middle of summer, but supers need to be removed. Click here for more about summer oxalic acid treatment.

There are two oxalic acid treatment methods – vaporising or trickling.

Vaporising – Possible mitefalls of 98% when broodless.

If you are vaporising you will need an Varrox vaporiser which is a little pan with a heating element which can (technically) be inserted through the hive entrance. 1 gram of oxalic acid dihydrate is placed in the pan and the heater is plugged in – either directly into the cigarette lighter in your car – if you can get that close – or into a spare car or lawnmower battery. The vaporiser is turned on for 2.5 minutes after which the hive needs to be left sealed for about 10 minutes. During that period of time the vapour settles in a fine white layer on the bees and the Varroa and all over every interior surface of the hive. It kills the mites but the bees don’t seem to even notice it.  The vaporiser can then be removed and plunged briefly into a bucket of water to cool it otherwise if you prime it immediately with another dose of crystals it will vaporise right there and then – do not breathe the vapour.

Before you can start this procedure you will need to make sure the hive is sealed or the vapour is going to come billowing out of every crack and don’t whatever you do breath that stuff in because it is EXTREMELY corrosive.

I have used a Varrox vaporiser in the past and although in theory it works well, there are always problems either getting the hives sufficiently well sealed or getting the Varrox pan through the doorway.

Even if you achieve both of those things, the heat from the pan can melt plasticised Varroa screens or even start to burn a wooden one.

Because of these problems and because I overwinter on mesh floors, I made a special, solid vaporising floor with the vaporiser set into it so I could simply lift a brood box gently onto the top and vaporise away.  It worked quite well.  However, as always with bees – expect the unexpected – once at the end of a treatment I found a single bee scorched in the bottom of the pan – the queen!

It is also very time consuming if you have more than a couple of hives.

It is possible to vaporise through a mesh floor but you need to know beforehand that the floor isn’t covered in dead bees or blocked by debris. Also, bear in mind the acid will corrode a metal mesh.

I prefer trickling. Trickling is great.

Trickling –  Possible mite falls of around 95% when broodless.

A lot of experiments have been done to determine the best concentration of acid to use in terms of effectiveness against the mites and ill effects on the bees. In Europe and in the UK, the recommended concentration is around 3% depending on who you read.

Here’s a recipe for 3.2% from the UK:

• Make a sugar syrup with 1kg sugar and 1 litre of soft water;
• Add 75g oxalic acid dihydrate crystals and stir till dissolved;
• This will make nearly 1.75 litres of solution.

I’ve been using 3.3% for many years with good effect and imperial measurements. This is my recipe:

• Make a sugar syrup of 1lb sugar and 1pt soft water;
• Add 1.25 oz oxalic acid dihydrate and stir till dissolved;
• This will make about 1 and 3/4 pints of solution.

As for method and dosage at temperatures down to 0 degrees C when the bees are well clustered:

• Pull 50ml of solution into a syringe;
• Gently remove the crownboard;
• If you are overwintering in two boxes you may have to remove the top box also. Note which way it came off and put it back the same way round or there will be draughts and the same with the crownboard;
• Trickle 5ml of solution per occupied seam of bees directly onto the bees;
• For nucs or very weak colonies use 2ml per seam. Or not at all if you think they are too feeble.

This method is very quick and the disturbance is not as much as you would think so long as you are gentle. You shouldn’t need smoke but have it there in case things turn nasty!

By the way, don’t go scraping off brace comb – I’ve never needed to – just trickle between the holes.

Also, use the mixture as soon as possible – it does not store well and eventually it will become toxic to the bees.

Click  here for more about oxalic acid – where it comes from, what it is, what it does and what it doesn’t…

Click here for Summer Treatment with Oxalic Acid

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