June in the Sweet Drop Apiary

June should be a beautiful, sunny month with plentiful forage to help our colonies build up well and fill supers – time to book the extractor and order extra jars and labels! Well yes, but the hot, dry and windy weather in May brought everything forward and the bees have been busy and have built up fast, meaning honey aplenty and swarming to match.
June can bring abundance and anxiety in equal measure… we have all heard of the ‘June gap’. In some areas there may still be a gap in flowering between the spring flowers such as sycamore, blackthorn, hawthorn and oilseed rape, and the start of the summer flowers such as lime, clover, blackberry and sweet chestnut. There is a strong chance that we will see a proper June gap this year and beekeepers need to be vigilant, as always, that there is sufficient food in the hive to carry the colony through, especially if we have a spell of bad weather. This is a particularly important consideration when deciding to take off honey: last year colonies were left starving when poor weather prevented them from replenishing stores after the oilseed rape honey harvest was taken off. Please be mindful of forage and weather conditions and leave some honey for the bees.
Expanding colonies mean more brood to host varroa so be sure to monitor any fall. Despite our best efforts to prevent or control swarming our colonies may still swarm if we haven’t at least kept up with the need for more space for the bees to store nectar during a strong flow. If there has been any appreciable acreage of oilseed rape in the vicinity of your hives you will need to extract the honey before it sets in the comb. June’s a busy month!