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I may be accused of being a bit of a grumpy old git, but I don’t like Christmas very much. In fact, I hate winter, at least in my part of the world, and Christmas happens to be in the middle of it. I’ll go further; I don’t like Halloween either. It’s excellent for farmers who grow pumpkins, however, and farmers need all the help they can get. In terms of beekeeping, as we move from summer to autumn, there are still things to do. Here’s my take on autumn: honey, wax, and more.
Honey Processing
In my case, as somebody who does not take bees to heather (or anywhere else, for that matter), my honey harvest and extracting is finished by the end of August. This is because I am obsessed with keeping the levels of varroa mites in my colonies low, particularly during the time when the winter bees are developing. I am fine with sacrificing some late honey to get varroa treatments over with by late August or early September.
I do understand that for many beekeepers, including bee farmers that I know, the months of September, October, and sometimes November, are all about honey processing. Some people have hundreds or thousands of colonies, and it takes time to get things done. If they are lucky enough to make large honey crops, they have weeks of uncapping and extracting ahead of them. I don’t recall ever talking to a beekeeper who enjoys extracting honey, but it’s part of the job. But for me, by the time autumn comes along, the honey processing room (a modified shipping container) is clean and tidy, ready for the spring crop next year.
Wax
Depending on how enthusiastically you uncap honey combs, you should end up with some wax cappings soaked with honey. We use an Apimelter, which I highly recommend. After the summer extraction, it was pretty well full to the top with cappings. The thing I had never fully appreciated before getting the Apimelter is how much honey can be obtained from this uncapping mix. We set the temperature to 40 degrees Celsius and leave it overnight. The next day, we can tap off a lot of honey; I think it was about 36 kg (80 lbs).
Next, we ramp up the temperature to 70 degrees C and again leave it until the following day. That gets tapped into a large bucket and left for a few days. The top ends up being wax, with ‘cooking honey’ and general sludge below. With a bit of washing and scraping, we end up with a giant ‘cheese-wheel’ of wax (see photo). The latest weighed 12–15 kg (estimate).
Last year we made candles using silicon moulds. We had Christmas trees, which sold well, bee hive/skeps which did not sell so well, and candles in tins and glass jars, which were quite popular. As a novice candlemaker, I have much to learn, but the key factors in success appear to be clean wax and the rate of cooling. We filter the melted wax through cheesecloth, and try to stop it cooling too quickly, as that can lead to cracks in the surface of the candles in jars or tins. If I get surface cracks, I repair by re-melting with a hot air blower.
The strategy this year will be to make some Christmas trees and lots of the glass jar types, as these will presumably sell throughout the year. I sold all of our wax from the spring harvest (only 3 kg) to a local producer of skin ointments and beauty products.
Feeding
When harvesting honey supers from production colonies, we leave a partially full super below the clearer board so that there is space for all the bees. This is in August. When we return to remove the honey, sometimes the remaining super has been filled up, and weighs a ton. Occasionally, it is empty, as they have moved honey to the brood nest or eaten it, and often it is still partially full. The full supers get left above the brood box with no queen excluder, and that’s their winter stores. The empties are removed, and partially full supers go below the brood boxes (no excluder). They will remain there until the spring, when they are reversed so that they go above the brood box, with the excluder between.
Generally, the colonies with a heavy super stay heavy through September and no feeding is required. We periodically check the weight by hefting. If it isn’t really heavy, as in “OMG, that thing weighs a ton,” it gets some 2:1 syrup. This can be using a frame feeder for those that are nearly winter-ready, or a top feeder – the polystyrene type that covers all the frames. The lighter colonies get a full jerry can of 2:1 syrup (14 kg) and usually that’s enough, but we will add more a week later if needed.
By doing this, our production colonies are pretty well sorted by now (end of September). This season, only a third of them have needed the jerry can of syrup, which is great from a cost perspective. However, if this was all about money we could have harvested every drop of honey and used more syrup, given that syrup is cheaper than honey, but that’s not the case with us.
Nucs
We have about 50 nucs going into winter, although I’m not expecting them all to make it to spring. There are ten mini-plus colonies consisting of two or three boxes, with the top box packed full of stores. These are simply for taking left-over queens into next season, and will be split up to be used as mating nucs in the summer. Mostly these don’t need feeding, but we have top feeders for when they do.
There are also 20 Langstroth nucs and 20 National nucs going into winter. The Nationals are to be sold in April, and I already have one order for ten of them, so I hope to keep my losses below 50% (!). The Langs will be promoted to full-sized hives in April or May as part of our expansion plans. We do sell a couple of Langstroth nucs, but most people still want Nationals.
In my experience, it is the National nucs that we made up late in the season that require the most care and attention. Even now, some of them are looking quite pathetic (three frames of bees). We feed them syrup and protein supplements (patties) and keep checking the weight – usually they get strong and heavy. If any don’t, they will probably not make it. Anything not growing gets thoroughly checked to ensure that they have a laying queen, and if they do, they might get boosted with a frame of sealed brood from a strong nuc.
I should add that we are always on the lookout for any dodgy brood, and so far, it’s been fine. I did have a colony with pepper-pot brood earlier on, and changed the queen, and treated with thymol, which seems to have resolved the problem. Perhaps ‘super-hygienic’ bees would have an ugly brood pattern after pulling out pupae with mites on them. In which case, I lost those genetics. I guess I’m just an old-fashioned walrus.
Shopping!
Autumn is a good time to buy things for next season, as there are often discounted items available. As soon as the majority of the ‘proper beekeeping’ work is over, I get twitchy and start buying things. It is almost impossible to find Langstroth hives made with western red cedar in the UK. Recently, I contacted Peter at Caddon Hives, and bought all of his remaining stock because he is discontinuing Langstroth hives and wanted to be rid of it. I also bought some more Anel hives from Gruff and Angharad, as they have been great for us this season.
I am about to invest in a labelling machine and, if I can scrape the pennies together, a second extractor. The mole and I have discussed our extraction process and believe that having two extractors will be a benefit. Firstly, there will be less time hanging around waiting for a spin to finish. We can get on with uncapping and loading extractor B while extractor A is spinning. Perhaps more importantly, if one machine goes wrong, we can still carry on with the job. We had a bit of a mishap with our extractor this summer and luckily got it fixed within an hour, but it could have been much worse.
Frames are another thing that we buy every year, ideally long before we actually need them. We get ours from Helen at Denrosa; they are good quality and already assembled and waxed. She also sells pine boxes that have been fried in wax, and therefore don’t need to be otherwise treated, at good prices.
Tidy Up
This gets left to the very end. Here at Walrus Apiaries, we are a bit untidy. By the end of the season, some of our storage places are not looking pretty. At some point, we have to chuck out old or useless items, move things to where they should be (preferably applying some kind of system), and make sure everything is neat, tidy, and easy to find. This may not last long, but it is nice to start the season looking organised and professional.
Our extracted supers are stored wet, stacked about ten boxes high, and wrapped with cellophane. If we don’t do that, there will be a mass robbing incident at some point. Queen excluders get scraped and sterilised using a flame or a solution of bleach and soda crystals. Same for spare hive parts. One advantage of wood is that it can quickly be cleaned up and scorched, whereas poly is a bit more of a pain, having to be submerged in sterilising liquid. These things give me some peace of mind that I’m reducing the risks of spreading any disease.