We have now passed the middle of November and the weather is still mild and the hard frosts of winter are yet to set in. The bees are still eating and flying.

The 2012 beekeeping season has been frustrating in that the weather has been most odd. Much of March was warm and sunny. In fact it was too warm and too sunny for that time of year. Although it did give me a chance to treat all of my colonies for Varroa.

Then April, May, June and half of July it rained much of the time with only a few days here and there when the bees could make honey. Every time the bees had a few days in which to make honey it was followed by a week of rain when they then ate the honey they had made.  Fortunately there were enough sunny days for the virgin queens to make their mating flights and I don't think queen mating was as badly effected as the honey production.

The only honey that my bees made in any quantity was late in the season from the end of the sweet chestnut flowering. Although the two hives I took to North Norfolk for the sea lavender did do well. Taking hives up to the coast for the sea lavender crop was a first for me this year and I may take a few more more colonies up next year.

The new apiary started in 2011 is going into the winter with twelve colonies. Hives 2,6,7,9, and 10 have bees from a selected 'gentle' queen that I first identified on the Bluebell allotment site in 2009. There are no bees at all on the allotment now.