Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 70 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. June Gap, what June Gap? The Blackberries are in flower locally here and that hopefully signals the beginning of the Summer flow, All we need now is some warm weather and the supers will begin to fill again. This week, I’m looking forward to a weekend of queen rearing so keep listening to hear how I’m preparing for that.Catch up with the very latest podcasts on my Patreon page here.The Fondant Mentioned in the podcast can be found on the Happy Valley Honey Website

This past week I’ve seen a heap of chatter on social media about bees starving across the UK and to be honest it’s got me quite steamed up. I love the various social media feeds and get a lot of help and support from beekeepers across the world who I would never have been able to connect with if it wasn’t for the interweb.

But as with all things, there are always those who will not just impose themselves on it but almost bully their way along oblivious to how others might take their comments. They have the approach of, “You do it my way or you’re doing it the wrong way”. It’s not so much trolling, where someone picks on you specifically but rather a broad brush stroke attack, hitting as many people as possible with their self serving views. Steph has an expression for people like that but she’s told me I can’t repeat it on my podcast!

Anyway, before I get too deep into a rant I should pause and just rewind a little. We have this phenomenon called the June Gap, for those of you that haven’t heard it before it’s when the Spring forage finishes and we wait impatiently for the Summer flowering plants to get going. Sometimes the bees can get a little grumpy at this time, usually around mid-June as the name implies, so if your bees are being a little less friendly at the moment it may be due to the lack of forage.

That said, it’s a very variable problem if it’s a problem at all and here’s why you shouldn’t dash out and pour a gallon of sugar syrup into your bees without checking first.

If we look back at the Spring it’s been a very good start, the bees exploded into life and forage was abundant and varied. Sure we had some swarming issues and I’m still trying to get my head around the problems of new queens mating, or rather new queens not mating but that’s another issue. Specifically, the bees had plenty of time to fill up brood frames with honey and stash a surplus in the supers above.

But not all bees are made the same and this is one of the reasons you might be hearing cries of “Feed the bees”.

I have a range of what I term Norfolk Mixed bees, that is to say, a mixed gene pool with no specific subspecies dominating, all this despite my attempts to get back to near-native bees but that’s another tale. Within the various queens currently installed in my hives, I have dark bees, light bees and stripy bees, a real mix of genes and as a result a real mix of traits. One of these traits is a propensity to create brood, frames and frames and frames of brood. I have one particular colony that is in a commercial brood box and all twelve frames I have in it are full of brood. What I mean, to be specific is the frame is filled corner to corner with brood, not a drop of honey or pollen to be seen.

I have other colonies that are currently on about 6 frames of brood in a more traditional pattern of brood in the middle of the frame with an arc of pollen and honey around the top of the brood. The frames on the outside of the brood nest are full of stores, more honey and pollen.

More bees don’t necessarily mean more honey surplus though, the colony with only brood seems to be able to only produce brood, they didn’t contribute at all to the Sprin