27/07/2022
Happy Bee New Year!🐝🐝🐝
Beekeepers each have their own ways of marking the beginning of each year’s bee season, and for many, including me, the Bee New Year starts after the winter solstice. In the southern hemisphere, bee colonies are at their smallest in June when our days are shortest, but as the daylight hours slowly increase, brood-rearing will begin again. Nothing dramatic happens – this is simply the cycle of life in a bee colony.
The worker bees begin to raise the temperature of the brood nest. These warmer conditions stimulate the Queen to lay eggs—just a few at first, but more and more as time goes on. And keeping the colony warmer requires more food … just when food reserves in the Cape are low! For this reason, many beekeepers like to check on their bees on the first warmish day after the solstice, and give the colony a boost of sugar water, pollen patties or both. After all, brood-rearing requires well-fed nurse bees, and if there’s insufficient forage in our gardens and fields for the worker bees to find and bring back to the hives, they’re going to need a bit of help!
We also need to check that our brood boxes have enough space for the Queen to lay new brood. This means checking each of the frames (there are usually 10 or 11 in a brood box), and removing the “worst” two frames, replacing them with new waxed sheets ready for the Queen to lay her eggs. Creating this space is essential. If the brood box is already full of honey, the Queen won’t lay!
Every beekeeping situation is different. There’s no set formula to follow. But it’s important to remember that changes are taking place inside the hives, and it’s our job to assess the situation and decide whether something needs to be done. The next six months until the summer solstice will be a time of growing, then things will slow down again. A reproductive phase as the Queen lays brood and grows the size of the colony, followed by a productive phase when we can harvest honey, then the total slow-down as we go back into winter.
And if you’re reading this in the northern hemisphere, the bee year phases are the same, just in reverse.
