Harvest 2024 over and out!

Well September has flown by! We’ve been busy getting our bees back down off the moors and sorting out our cut comb. 

Due to Heather beetle damage we’ve really struggled to produce as much Heather honey as we have done in previous years. The picture below (or right) is the trailer returning from the moors. At about 4am I headed up the M1 to our site near Sheffield. I had already strapped the hives so when I arrived I closed up the hives and loaded them on to the trailer. We can easily stack 30 hives on the trailer which is an ideal amount. I now always put a net over the trailer just in case there are any issues. 

I was back down from the moors with the bees and unloaded by 8:30am which was great. I must admit to having a slightly earlier finish that day as it’s always a tiring, but rewarding job.

Back with the bees that didn’t go up to the moors, all of them have been treated for Varroa Mite which is an invasive mite species that live on honey bees. We’ve been seeing quite a bit of varroa damage in our hives over the past month so we were please to get treatments on. 

We’ve also started feeding bees, the ones not strong enough to get through winter. They have a strong sugar syrup and will need a total of about 25kg of food to get through winter. 

Over the next few weeks we will continue feeding once a week and then we will go around and take the feeders off before the end of October.