gavin

Went round them all today - 15 colonies for the local association plus ten of my own. Trickling the 25 colonies in four apiaries up to 10 miles apart took 3 hours. Nice to see Lorna at the association apiary helping out. OK, I only did 24 as one of mine boiled out and flew in numbers at me when I prized off the corner of the crown board. I'll try it again in a few days. Otherwise they were mostly clustered to varying degrees of compaction.

My impressions? At three apiaries their stores were holding out well. At one, my main one, they've burnt most of the heather honey they brought home or the syrup stores they were given. There the colonies were stronger than I expected at this time of year, but that often happens with bees that were on the heather with young queens. Two at 8 seams of bees, one at 9, and the rest mostly 5 or 6. If it is the case that they've been using their heather stores to make bees, the young bees should get the colonies off to a good start in 2014 (barring any of the usual spring problems).

Of all the others there was one that stayed at 2 frames all summer and it is still that size. I'll probably lose it (and probably should!). The others at the association site may be viable, going into winter as about 4 to 9 frames and one or two frames down on that now, in a mixture of Paynes 6-frame boxes and Swienty 10-frame ones.

I have two single-colony apiaries in town in Dundee. One had shrunk a lot in size with plenty of dead bees out front but it still looks viable. The other has 5 seams. Both have plenty of stores, perhaps because they've been foraging through the mild autumn.

It is, of course, too early to be sure what the colonies will be like when spring arrives, but the signs are good so far - as long as I feed the light ones.