2024 has been a very tough year for all our wildlife. Bees and other pollinators much like ourselves prefer warm dry sunny days to go about their busy lives pollinating the vast variety of crops and flowers up and down the country. Like everyone else, the honeybees at Rockhill House Estate have come through a tough year. The spring was long and cold and continued into a summer that remained cool and was also very wet with dry sunny days at a premium.

With the cold Spring, the bees struggled to bring in an early honey crop anywhere near that of the last couple of years, this was followed by a lengthy “dearth” or shortage of available forage for the honeybees that had swarmed to build up sufficiently the new nest for going into the winter and, without direct beekeeper intervention some may well have been lost. With some TLC they have come on well and we have gone from 7 hives in the spring to 14 hives going into winter. Some of the stronger hives have managed all that was thrown at them by the weather and produced a high-quality honey crop, yields would be less than last year but having produced an excess is a testament to the black Irish bee’s ability to adapt to the local environment and thrive.

The Irish Black Bee has a strategy for poor weather. When they sense the weather outlook is poor the queen will reduce laying eggs or even stop laying all together, no point using scarce resources to raise young if they can’t continue to feed them. This is exactly what happened this summer, most queens went off the lay completely for a period of time in an effort to conserve food stores and it worked. The balmy, mainly dry weather of the last few weeks has been a bonus for the bees and they have been bringing in plenty of pollen which is a sign they are still rearing brood (young bees) to help get them through the coming winter. Worker bees live around 6 weeks in the spring/summer but from around September onwards they raise winter worker bees and it’s these bees that will get the queen safely through the winter. They can live around 6 months. They will keep the queen fed and warm and will also raise the new young to replace themselves when the time comes. They have also been collecting Ivy nectar since September. Ivy is the last major nectar source for the bees and probably the most important as the honey they make and store from it will be the last until around April of the following spring. They will sit out the worst of the weather in their cosy hives eating their honey, the reward for all their hard work.

After a brood break, come early January the queen will begin to lay eggs again. Small amounts at first and then gradually ratcheting up egg laying as the bees try to build up sufficient numbers to take advantage of the Spring nectar flow should the weather permit. And like every beekeeper in the country i look forward to another tilt at the roller coaster which is beekeeping here at Rockhill with hopes high and prayers said for the season ahead. Stay safe and thank you for the very kind comments on the quality of our honey during the year and the feedback from our Bee Safari Experience.

Frank Chaney Beekeeper at Rockhill Estate.