Well as this year draws to a close and preparations have begun for next year it's time for me to reflect on 2021 what went well, what didnt, what I'll do differently next year etc.

I believe that the beekeeping year starts mid august immediately after the summer honey is taken off, because that is when every decision and action you take will affect the following year.

August 2020

Having peaked in august with 50 colonies it was time for me to start thinking big.

Mite Treatments

For the first time I needed to but bulk packs of Api-Bioxal, for non beekeepers this is a licenced vetinary medicine of Oxalic Acid which is applied to the bees to kill varroa mites. The treatment of mites is essential to ensure that the winter bees that will be produced are as healthy as possible going into winter.

The mite treatments went well and the count of dead mites was as I expected (typically quite low on my bees)

September 2020

Feeding

A large number of hives meant more winter food was needed. So the purchase of a 200kg mixer was a godsend. No more standing slavishly over plans of water storing sugar in. Now just 2/5ths fill mixer with hosepipe,chuck 75kg of sugar in and turn it on.

With all the bees fed and treated the bees were ready for winter.

2021

Now came the challenge. With further expansion plans I needed more kit... and a lot of it. Most of 2021 was defined by running short of kit. Firstly I timed the spring preparations spot on and my bees were strong and ready just at the right time. I'd planned for 2 supers per hive (a super stores about 20lb of honey).... I sadly severely under estimated and found myself scrabbling around for spare boxes as my hives got taller and taller.

Time to get more kit.

All that kit needed building and painting so I needed to bring in some help

Unfortunately when making frames my electric nailer broke so I needed to upsize that also. A new air nailer was just the job but my helper had other ideas on what to use it for

With equipment ready, queen rearing started with my first batch planned to hatch at the start of may. Yes and guess what. That meant I needed more kit.

But wait.... where was I going to put all these new colonies..... it was time to find some new sites. Something in hindsight I should have done over winter and not in spring when I needed to be on top of the bees.

After a few long days of fencing and moving bees with the help of John Mowat two new out apiaries were set up.

That freed up space at home for the new colonies. But the may wet weather suddenly stalled everything.

Queens failed to mate causing a lot of new colonies to fail. Emergency feeding was needed on several hives in early june as they couldn't forage in may.

June came and went and it was back to putting supers on for summer honey, and yet again the kit shortages.

By end of july I'd decided that I needed to do something about the loss of all the queens that didnt mate, so booked on a course to learn how to artificially inseminate queens. Unsurprisingly....that meant more kit...

Taking a weekend out for the training course wasnt without other costs.... my girls who had largely been very good and not tried swarming waited till I wasnt around to prepare to swarm. Then after I was back the chaos began

Finally back under control and the summer season drawing to a close we were at 103 colonies. I'd done it. But wait..... it was time to take the honey off...I definately forgot to factor in how many honey buckets I'd need to store all the honey and how many jars, labels,etc I'd need. More kit needed again.

Just as things were back under control again I sadly had the awful job for the first time of having to destroy a colony. It wasnt pleasant but had to be done (wont share photos of this). I shed quite a few tears.

With the honey all in it was extraction time. In time to start jarring up the honey. With about 3/4tonne of honey, manually filling 1lb jars just wasnt going to work....time for more kit....

Season over.....take stock.

I've learned a lot more this year and got a lot more kit. Now I need to improve on my preparations for 2022. Making kit in the core periods just isn't an option any more so it all needs to be ready before spring and I really could do with another out apiary and MORE KIT!

But it was all worth it when you get this as a reward for all the hard work.