Episode 82 Syrup for Autumn Feeding

Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 82 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. Following on from last week, today, I’m talking about Autumn preparations and looking at the sugar syrup I used to feed my bees through the Autumn to help the bees get through to next Spring.

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It’s been another busy week here in Norfolk and I’m spending a bit more time at the workshop sorting out replacement floors for my colonies prior to them settling down for Winter. It’s not so much the floors that need sorting, rather, the varroa inserts. I wonder how many of you out there are like me in that you have a range of kit, none of which is standard and so specific bits of equipment are not interchangeable. The main point of my focus this week has been setting up floors in preparation for December Oxalic Acid treatments. In order to carry out the treatment, I need to insert the varroa boards beneath my open mesh floors. You would think this to be a simple task, grab a board and slide it home, but no, over the years I’ve acquired equipment, bought at sales, been given some stuff too and of course, none of the manufacturers makes to the exact same spec. So specifically looking at floors I have inserts that will fit, for example,  an economy Thorne’s floor but that board is too small for a Maisemore open mesh floor and the board that fits the Maisemore open mesh floor is way too big for the floors I was given recently by a beekeeper who was retiring. Now last year, Pete and I walked around the apiaries and measured the floors in use and cut new varroa inserts for them all. We’ve used 5mm ply which worked great. Some of the floors I have came with plastic core inserts and over the years these have simply degraded and crumbled so we needed to replace some inserts anyway. All of the floor inserts were numbered and I managed to get some plastic numbers to staple onto the floors, only, we didn’t get round to stapling the numbers to the floors, I know, I only have myself to blame, well, actually I have Pete and Steph to blame but I take full responsibility and promise to do better this year. Add to that, we carried out the usual Spring cleaning and replaced most of the floors and the situation has become quite confused, and that’s the polite description of the muddle I find myself in. It’s obviously time to take action, it’s no good waiting until December when we want to treat with the ProVap Oxalic Acid Sublimator and end up with a truckload of plywood inserts and waste time offering up each size to the rear of the floors to see which one might fit, that’s not really how I want to spend my December days at all!

So, this week I’ve been getting organised, We’re going to visit each apiary site in turn and swap out each floor with a newly scraped, scorched, painted and numbered floor. Each one has been assigned a ply insert which has been numbered accordingly. It’s so simply you’ll be wondering why I didn’t do it last year, well that was indeed my intention but I do tend to get a little distracted as you may be aware.

Talking of distractions, I’m taking part in a challenge to cycle 300 miles during the month of September along with lots of other people in aid of Cancer Research UK, 300 miles might not seem a long way but when you’ve been away from cycling as long as I have it’s a good little challenge to have. I’ve not advertised the fundraising aspect as I wanted it as a personal challenge really but I will be making a personal donation to Cancer Research UK to thank them for their encouragement and the obvious good work