NOVEMBER

Half way through November and it has to be said, the weather so far has been what can only be described as changeable. We’ve had days of torrential rain followed by days of intermittent sunshine, some more akin to early Summer than late Autumn. We’ve had our first flurry of snow and there’s a thin layer of frost adorning the parked cars most mornings. Today, by comparison, is beautiful. There’s hardly a cloud to be seen and the sun is very much in evidence and I shall be off to see my bees shortly. Even though there was quite a brisk frost this morning, I’m fully expecting to see plenty of flying bees in evidence. There’s not very much to be done around the apiary at this time of year other than making sure everything is secure. Like me, you should have finished feeding some time ago and your mouse guards should by now, be on. If you over-winter your hives with floor slides in and some form of woodpecker protection, then this should also have been sorted by now. Even though I’m happy in my own mind that all of the colonies are going into Winter with sufficient stores, I have still left them each with a block of candy just to be on the safe side. My local Baker kindly supplies me with fondant for ten pounds a box which is not only good value, in my opinion, it saves me an awful lot of messing about making my own and one box is enough tor each colony to get a generous portion. When I first started using candy as a winter supplement, I used to put it on a disused plastic margarine lid or similar placed above the brood frames. This works well enough but apart from the plastic lid limiting access to the candy, there have been occasions when, probably due to the heat rising from the brood, the candy has begun melting and dripping down onto the cluster. Following on from this I began experimenting with alternatives to plastic lids and hit upon the idea of what I now call My Candy Cage. This is a wire mesh box, for want of a better word, approximately 8″ x 4″ x1″. I have used the rigid mesh as used in my comb cages. ( See August’s post ).

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MY CANDY CAGE

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CAGE IN USE ON NUC.

This picture shows the cage on one of my nuc’s. It has been in place about a week and you can see how well the bees have been able to attack the fondant, apart from anything else, the cage allows the bees to access the fondant from all angles. This is the second or third year that I’ve been using these cages and I must say, they work for me! The one drawback with using the cage on a nuc., as in the pic. is that the eke needed, does make the nuc. appear somewhat top heavy. For that reason I always anchor any nuc. with an eke on board, to the hive stand. I prefer to use a hive strap for this purpose,

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NUC ANCHORED TO STAND USING HIVE STRAP

for if nothing else, it enabled me to walk away with peace of mind in the knowledge that I’m not going to return to find a nuc. full of bees laying on the ground beside the stand where a strong gust of wind or some deer that has decided to use it as a scratching post, has deposited it.