I ended the last blog-post saying that the season wasn’t completely over yet. That was very true. August has been our summer here in Sweden. And it’s not over yet, August and warm summer. Though the nights are chilly. But my wife and I are taking our daily morning swim in a near by lake, followed by breakfast at the shore, coffee and a sandwich.
Heather
Heather (Caluna vulgaris) yields honey this year in big parts of Sweden. In my area very good, even in areas quite far from places with lots of the plant. But in spite of this the total honey crop is the worst since I became a beekeeper 40 years ago.
But the colonies have changed appearance. Now they look very healthy and the winter room will be quite full of honey, not only from heather (a quite tough honey for wintering a long winter confined to the hive), but also from thistles, fireweed and golderod. And probably I will not use more Thymol than last year after all.
Why the VSH 80-daugter I mentioned in the former post had so much bald brood, I saw the other day, may well be due to a failing queen. She is not laying that much eggs any more. So there are fewer open brood for the mites to invade and thus not so many new healthy pupae that turns into new bees. And the strength of the colony declines. It’s a little late for the bees to shift the queen. They should have done that earlier. We’ll see if the colony will make it through winter.
Apiary where all supers above the queen excluder has been harvested. Most colonies are wintered on three square (12-frame) shallow langstroth boxes. Two colonies are wintered on two boxes Even with isolation dummy frames at the sides in both boxes). They are weaker than the others.
The strongest colony in this apiary
One colony in this colony needed Thymol against varroa now. The sign for me was wingless crawling bees on the hardboard outside the entrance. It got two pieces of dishcloth with 4-5 gram Thymol each (hopefully it will be enough, will check for this sign again in 10-14 days).
At the moment I’m harvesting all supers above the queen excluder. From some apiaries there is a quite good late harvest. From others not so good. But the winter room will contain a good amount of honey. Those colonies needing Thymol strips get it, not so many now. Most of the needy have got it earlier in the season.