OK so this brings us to the end of 2025. It has been a strange year; started really early and built up quickly in the spring. Blackberries out in July, and now in mid August it is clearly moving into Autumn!! I tend to time my years based on the flowers. end of year is the ivy flowering with the blackberries just before as a warning. This year there have also been loads of swarms. BeeSwarm has been superbly busy and I have had to answer a few calls myself.
So my end of year jobs are:
- Remove the queen excluders.
- Harvesting any full frames that remain.
- Close off entrances to protect from wasps.
- Prepare those that need it for winter.
- Refill the water buckets.
- Change the batteries on the Hive Scales.
After the success of last year where I left the flow supers on the hives over winter I have decided to do this again this year with the poly hives.
Hive weights suggest that the brood boxes are full of honey and there is little in the supers, so I went in expecting very little. Last years harvest was 25 Kg and I took 20 kg in July this year so the extra 5 kg would be nice.
Had both my little helpers with me this time. Must have been something to do with the transport as they are usually not that keen on a walk through the woods.
OK so this is how it looked at the start note that both the blue and the red hive have QEs and the purple hive has a flow super on top, (though it is empty of honey!)
Ignore the green poly as this is a whole new story! It was on a journey!!.
The three water feeders on the side are regularly filled. and a new battery was added to the battery compartment for the hive scales. These batteries last about 3 weeks to stop registering 100% and then drop rapidly over the next week.
At the end I have removed the purple hives super, given them loads of sugar and closed them down for winter. At 26 kg this hive should last through the winter if it is mild. I don’t like leaving the flow supers on on the wooden hives as they are not as well insulated as the poly hives and the extra space may cause issues with heating over the winter.
Blue and Red poly have got their supers back on but without they QE. This allows the queen to come up if she wishes. they can store honey in there for over the winter if they get a nice drive form the ivy late on. Will also mean that in the spring the super is on and ready to go. Simply return the QE April time and the hive will have sorted itself out by June.
So I managed to get 2 full frames and 3 frames with patches on them. The partially filled frames were fully sealed so good clean honey. You should only harvest frames that are 80% or more fully capped. These were about 10 % filled however fully capped so made good honey.
Note the adapted supers on the white super frame that supports the flow frames for harvesting. These were my adaption from this year and stop the supports from falling into the honey.
All in I got about 5 kg of honey out so I am happy for this year. Most came from the red poly hive.