It seemed that the winter of 2021 might never end with bitter storms continuing into our early Spring. When Spring finally did appear, it was warm but wet. This is unusual for Cornwall and although us humans were disappointed with the weather, the bees were managing OK. The wet humid weather encouraged the growth of flowers and aided their production of nectar, however there was a bit of concern over the pollen. Pollen stores were extremely low in comparison to this time of year normally, perhaps it was too damp for the pollen grains to dust onto the bees as normal. We did attempt to supplement the colonies with pollen patties, although we were unsure whether the bees actually used it as they did not appear to store it in their cells. It even seemed that we experienced less swarming this Spring and I wonder if that may have been a result of low pollen stores. Without pollen, the bees cannot support the growth of new brood and so the colony stagnates in size, making them too small to swarm. By the end of Spring though, the weather finally perked up and the bees started to make good progress expanding.

In normal circumstances, we are used to a “June gap” where there is a natural lul in the nectar flow. However, this year we experienced an unusually short gap in the season which we felt benefitted the bees. The gap generally lasts for four weeks and in this time the colony’s food stores can become very depleted and this may lead to “robbing”. Robbing can be fatal to some colonies which are small enough to be overridden by stronger colonies. Also, the lack of nectar during the gap can result in queens coming out of lay, reducing the consumption of stores. Instead, this year, the Queens seemed to continue laying and the bees were able to continue foraging. This meant that the colonies remained fairly strong and so they were able to make the most out of the main summer nectar flow.

During July the UK experienced an extraordinary heat wave of which many areas, including Cornwall, saw record high temperatures for prolonged periods of time. Heatwaves can often be worrying for honey bees and their keepers, as droughts can dry up the nectar flow. Despite this, we did not see our colonies struggle too greatly, in fact, they coped surprisingly well. I wonder whether this was because our bees had plenty of stores, having  avoided the June gap.. Not only this but, we often have quite changeable weather in July, with lots of rain, making it hard for the bees to fly. Maybe this long period of good weather allowed them to continue working on the watered gardens and irrigated crops, keeping them going.

August also had high temperatures, but we also got good intervals of rain. This did wonders for the remaining summer flow and in particular the Bramble which was teaming with honey bees. By the end of August we had begun to remove the supers of honey ready for extraction. We aim to do this before the start of the Ivy flow in September as Ivy is hard to extract and instead the bees can use it to top up their stores in the brood box for winter.

It is now the end of September and we have finished removing all of the supers from the hives. Our apprentice George spent weeks extracting the honey and although we haven’t finished filtering and weighing it all, we can see we’re in for a large harvest!

This is great, as the past couple of seasons have been relatively poor for honey production and so our stocks were almost empty. There’s also something very rewarding about a good harvest, as it concludes the season and gives us a visual/physical representation of our hard work.

Not only was it a good season for us at Widdicombe’s this year, but I also took on another job working for a company called Pollenize! This exciting new adventure will be shared with you in my next blog. Bye for now!