The End of the Beekeeping Season

It might be thought that the end of the beekeeping year would be a gentle affair.

Not a bit of it. In reality this is the beginning of the new year. All equipment has to be cleaned up and stored away.

Here you see the "supers" which are the boxes that have recently been used by the bees to store the honey that I have now extracted.

They have been left outside for a couple of days and the bees have flown to them and removed any last vestiges of honey. I have then removed propolis from each frame and finally they have been sprayed with a biological substance which attacks wax moth larvae. Here they are drying in the sun after that treatment.

If this final step is not taken then I have found, to my cost, that wax moth are quite capable of destroying the wax comb in the winter.

It goes without saying that the keeping of bees is not an easy option!