http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022v2yw

Mrs Watson and I went to treat the bees for varroa this afternoon. we used a sugar solution mixed with a chemical called “Oxalic acid”  which doesn’t harm the bees but kills the varroa mites.

You can see that the bees were all clustered together in a ball. This is to keep warm because it is such a cold day.

There will be a hole in the middle which the queen will be in to keep her warm. She will be doing almost nothing.

On the top there is icing sugar that they haven’t eaten which means they aren’t too hungry.

Here is a short video of me checking the hive today. The bees have access to the fondant through a hole underneath it and another hole to access the top of the hive. You can’t see many bees through the hole because they are clustering down below because it is so cold.

The bees are clustering at the moment, which means they are huddled together in the middle of the hive and are not moving very much.

This is just like penguins – the bees on the outside vibrate their wings to create heat and then swap with the bees in the middle when they get cold or tired.

We are feeding them some icing sugar, but they have only eaten about 1/4 of it. They have lots of honey left so they should be fine for the next few weeks. We will keep an eye on them and if they run out of food, we will give them more!

The bees are all tucked up for the winter and are finally enjoying all the honey they made throughout the spring and summer.

To make sure they have enough food, however, we fed them some icing fondant. They don’t need as much water at this time of year so icing is the best way to feed them.

We placed it on top of the “crown board” where there is a little hole for the bees to get access to it.

This should keep them happy for at least a few weeks. We will keep checking them to see if they have enough food to get through the winter.

In the winter, the girl bees kick all the boy bees (called drones) out of the hive because they are lazy, don’t work and are messy.

This means that they boys are outside in the freezing cold and die!

I went out to check the bees this morning and there was a big pile of dead drone bees on the floor outside!

Poor guys.

The bees haven’t been up to much recently, they are just getting ready for the winter and there aren’t really any plants around to provide nectar or pollen.

However, I went to check them today and they were flying in and out of the hive because it was nice and sunny.

They were probably just going to the toilet and fetching a drink of water.

Very soon they will settle down and cluster like penguins for the winter.

Mr Green got us a fish eye lens for the iphone, so we can get up close a near to the bees!

First of all we found BEEYONCE super easy because of the white dot. We watched her, expecting her to lay eggs, however, we think she has stopped laying eggs now and is getting ready to relax over the winter. She will start laying more eggs in the new year.

We also got up close footage of the pollen which the bees store. This is their only source of protein and fats.

Finally, we have some up close footage of the bees running around.

Finally, The Primary 3 children were creating the last food for the year that we are giving the bees. They mixed 2 litre of water with 2 KG of sugar and then we went out to feed them!

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Well done!

Today was Roald Dahl day and we had a Grand Master Witch and George so they decided to make a potion for the bees!

They mixed 1 Litre of water with Sugar (plus some mice, children’s snot, toe nails, toothpaste and belly button fluff!)

Hopefully the bees don’t end up the same size as the chickens in George’s Marvellous Medicine.

Today we were able to find and mark BEEYONCE.

John, our bee trainer, was able to help us find her because he is a very experienced beekeeper and then he trapped her and marked her with a white dot.

Finally, we applied a treatment of Apiguard which is a varroa treatment. The gel contains a chemical called “thymol” which the bees don’t like but doesn’t harm them. They carry it out of the hive, killing the varroa mites which live on their bodies along the way. Hopefully this will kill most of the varroa mites in the hive and ensure that they can make it through the winter.