Welcome to the tenth edition of Rubery beekeeper, Jas Payne’s monthly column. Take a fascinating glimpse into the beautiful, industrious and vital role of bees in nature and experience life as an apiarist.
Although daytime temperatures are still quite mild, the nights are getting colder, and we’ve already had one or two frosty mornings.
This is my cue to place ‘mouse guards’ on the entrances to my hives.
When the temperature drops, bees cluster tightly together and can’t defend their hive. This makes hives vulnerable to mice, who find them a cosy place to set up a home.
Mouse guards are thin metal strips with holes in – big enough for bees to come and go freely, but too small for mice to squeeze through – and I pin them to the front of my hives to stop mice getting inside.
It only takes a couple of days of very cold weather and a mouse can cause considerable damage inside a hive, so my priority over the last few days has been to get all the mouse guards firmly in place.
Through the year, during hive inspections, and also when I’m harvesting honey, I collect up every scrap of beeswax that’s surplus to the bees’ requirements.
Bees use a lot of energy to produce wax – around 8lb of honey consumed enables bees to produce 1lb of beeswax – so it’s a valuable commodity.
At this time of year I begin to render down all these bits of wax, gently heating it to melting point, and filtering it to remove any dirt and debris, until it’s beautifully clean and pure.
I store it in large blocks, and then remelt it and pour it into moulds to make beeswax candles.
Beeswax burns with a bright, pure flame, on the same part of the light spectrum as the sun. This means that if you’re using beeswax candles as a light source, they’ll minimise eye strain and reduce headaches (the Monks knew what they were doing when they worked with beeswax candles on their desks!)
I think it’s fair to say that the only thing I love about dark winter evenings is that they’re a good excuse to light candles. There’s something hypnotic about the flickering flame, and it’s another reason for me to appreciate my clever bees!
Written by Jas Payne
You can read Jas’ beekeeping column in the Bromsgrove Standard on the last Friday of every month.
It will also be released here online.
