We’re almost at the end of the season for the honeybees – most of the flowering plants have finished and the bees are already thinking about settling down for Winter. The queen has been reducing her laying for several weeks now and the bees that are now being raised are the ‘winter bees’ who will live right through to next spring – that’s up to 6 months as opposed to 6 weeks for the summer bees.
Stores are being put away in the form of honey – but not pollen as there will be no larvae to feed during the winter months. Honey is of course a carbohydrate – glucose and fructose – and will power the adult bees to enable them to keep the colony alive whereas pollen is a protein and adult bees, being full grown, have no need of this.
Beekeepers of course remove the honey for their own use. This isn’t a problem as bees usually (not always) produce a surplus and providing about 20kg is left for each hive then that should be enough to see them through the winter. It depends on the weather though – the worst scenario is a mild winter which means the bees are active and burning through their stores.
Anyway, I’ve extracted the surplus honey from our hives and have left about 25kg on each colony. It’s all now been bottled (jarred) and I have to say it tastes delicious. A little darker than usual so I’m thinking there’s some chestnut in there and I also think there’s a little more lime tree than usual.
The other big thing that happens in September is that we say good bye to the drones (the males). They usually forma bout 10% of the colony but they don’t actually do anything – well, they do something very important which is to mate with the virgin queens.
But they don’t collect pollen or nectar and generally just hang about waiting to be fed. Not making any inter-species comparisons here by the way. Anyway with no virgin queens around during winter the winter the drones are just another set of mouths to feed, so one day later in the month they will all be dragged out of the hive by the workers and kicked out. Please don’t let this give you any ideas…
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