Our midwinter check on the Honeydale bees revealed that all the hives are looking very healthy, with nothing to cause any concern.
We’ve provided all the hives with sugar fondant to be on the safe side, but the bees performed well in the summer, building up their honey stores which are still plentiful and might have been sufficient to see the bees through until they can replenish their food supplies in spring.
The behaviour of bees in winter is slow and sluggish. They keep a tidy house inside the hive, clustering together in a ball formation and taking it in turns to move to the warmer centre, much as Antarctic penguins do. They’re also popping outside for short toilet trips and forays for water.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be doing a bit of our own housekeeping too, in preparation for spring, cleaning out one of the hives that was recently donated to us. This involved blowtorching it to sterilize before the newly arrived colony is transferred into it in the Spring and the hive they are currently occupying will then be given a refurb too.
We’ll continue to check on the bees as winter progresses and we move towards spring.
