Our monthly meeting is this coming Thursday, January 9th, Central Saanich Senior’s Centre, 1229 Clarke Rd, Brentwood Bay.
January in Victoria is always a dark, wet, chilly month that feels suitable only for the necessary basics of life, if not for outright hibernation as we wait for the warmer sunnier more promising days of spring.
Wintertime
But for beekeepers? Nope! Not a hope! My Scottish grandmother had a saying she would often relate to me: “There’s no rest for the wicked, laddie… and even less for the righteous!” And this is the lot for beekeepers. Winter is not a time to become dormant, to rest upon ones laurels or dream about how this next season will better. Once those promising days of early spring arrive our bees will be on max overdrive, so winter for us has to be a time of preparation to be ready for that!
- How are your hives doing? Is there enough food? Best to have some sugar cake or fondant made up in advance, so you can pop it in as soon as you feel it’s needed.
- If you will likely need some new bees, have you ordered them?
- Do you have enough hive boxes, and what shape are they in? Do they need a fresh coat of Tung oil or paint? Do you have enough for the extra honey supers you’ll need this year?
- Remember, it’s always good to have an extra hive set ready to go. There won’t be time to dither around if you need to do a split or collect a swarm! That means a bottom board, boxes and frames, inner and outer cover – all assembled, prepped, and oiled or painted.
- Do you have enough frames assembled and ready? And if you’ve been doing this for few years, is it time to retire some of the older frames? Marking each frame’s top bar with the year and date it went into service sure helps with this! And now that you’ve retired some old frames, do you still have enough for brood boxes, honey supers, and extra frames to sub in as the used frames get filled up?
- Do you have quilt boxes on each hive? Again, always good to have extra ones prepped so you can swap in dry ones and take the damp ones inside to dry.
- Have you brushed up on your techniques? You suddenly realize you need to do a split to stop your hive from swarming, you need to do it that very day, and your hive is already open and apart.
Remember how to do a standard split? A walk-away split? A Taranov split?
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does mean one thing – the new season is coming! And soon, and with all the promise of this year being the best year you’ve had yet. Have fun!
Intermediate Beekeepers
We are putting in a concerted effort this year to have topics that appeal to more experienced beekeepers, and I’m happy to report that Paul Kelly, from the U of Guelph’s Honeybee Research Centre, will be presenting to us in March on Buckfast bees, their characteristics and advantages. This is the first one we have nailed down, and I look forward to announcing more in the coming months.
Home Insurance
A strong reminder to check your home insurance to see if there are any restrictions around beekeeping in your policy. While some underwriters allow hives up to a maximum, others exclude it completely – and others may allow hives but disallow the processing of honey on the premises! And it is not unheard of for an insurance company to avoid a claim for any reason, so even if a claim is made for an unrelated issue (e.g. drain backup), if they find hives or processing equipment on your property they could deem your contract to be null and void. So – CHECK! And remember, if your underwriter won’t cover you, the BC Honey Producers Association has policies that will; it will cost you $50 for a membership and $95 for the insurance – a lot cheaper than being left high and dry by an uncooperative insurance company! And they also have policies to cover liabilities if you put your hives out in the forest to take advantage of the fireweed…
Happy Beekeeping!