Bishops Stortford news by Alan Lewis

On Saturday afternoon in the middle of September we had a lovely day and opened my hives. On both hives I had removed all the supers, treated with thymol and fed several days earlier. The first hive we opened appeared to be reasonable for the time of year regarding the amount of brood and stored food and still had a lot of sugar in the feeder which had not been taken down and stored. It was thought that the thymol which was nearly under the feed hole position was restricting the access. The second hive that was opened was unbelievable as it had 4 frames covered with sealed brood on both sides, not a great deal of honey stored and an empty feeder. The Queen was found and there was even an uncapped drone cell in the middle of one frame. Both of my commercial hives were reassembled and the outer WBC sections were put in place to give the hives an extra skin for the winter. A small swarm that I had taken during the summer was inspected and found to be very healthy but in need of food. We all retired to have a cup of tea and generally discussed the various ways of controlling Varroa. We welcomed two prospective members John and Emma Dockerill and wish them good luck with their bee keeping.