Today is the 1st of February, well, actually, it’s the 29th January but the first release of this episode is on the 1st of February, if you get what I mean. That means we are just weeks away from a possible start to the new season and our first inspections. Now I’m not suggesting you leap in to your hives in February and I’m also not suggesting that you don’t, but, from February onwards everything is so weather dependant. If we get a warm, Spring like day, then go ahead and have a quick look. If you’ve not listened to last week’s podcast, that’s podcast 49, check it out because that one explains what I do during my first inspections.

There are things to be getting on with and it won’t harm if you go around hefting each hive to heck up on it. That said, hefting needs some explanation because if you’re not experienced with it you may draw the wrong conclusions from it and lose colonies. That sounds rather dramatic, and I’m not trying to scare you but let me explain.

If you only have a few hives it’s quite possible you can remember the general feel of each colony as you heft them through the Winter, which reminds me, if you haven’t hefted any of your colonies at all over Winter it might not help that much if you start now. You see, what you’re looking for is a comparison between the last time you hefted and now, also, a comparison between colonies within the apiary is helpful. But this is where inexperience can give you a false impression. Let’s imagine I have an apiary with ten bee hives in it all the same type, Commercials.

I’ve been hefting them regularly throughout the Winter so far, every other week since the beginning of December. So far they have all appeared to be around the same weight, not overly heavy but not what you might call light.

This time however things have changed.

six of the colonies all appear to have about the same weight, one appears extremely light by comparison and three feel quite heavy.

Let’s start with the light one, remember if you’re going to remove the crown board always have your bee suit on and smoker lit and at the ready. You may never need them but the one day you don’t do this will be the day the colony gets grumpy and chases you down the garden path.

So, the light colony, when I look inside I find a reasonably large cluster, alive and well. I would do no more than pop a large pack of fondant on to the holes in the crown board and leave them to it. I have fondant in 1kg packages so I would place two packs on this colony. It appears they are well and healthy and just a bit light on stores. Close them up and check on them again next week.

The first of the heavy hives has a smaller cluster of bees than the one we just looked at however, checking on the frame next to the cluster I find it is full of liquid food stores and the bees have been using it. This colony appears to be fine, just a frugal colony that doesn’t use as much of their stores as other colonies. I can close them up without doing anything.

The second heavy hive has a smaller cluster, still alive but tight up against the side wall of the hive. Checking the frame nearest the cluster there is very little food in it apart from a large band of solid Ivy honey that has crystallised in the cells. looking at other frames in the box there appears to be plenty of liquid honey for them but the bees just don’t seem able to move over to it. This appears to be the start of isolation starvation and we’ve caught them just in time.

Isolation starvation is pretty common, a cluster of bees finds itself trapped away from food stores and for me I find it’s normally because they can’t bridge across solid stores of Ivy and get stuck in a spell of cold weather.

It could also be that the bees, having eaten their way through a couple of central frames, move the cluster towards the warm side of the hive whe