December in the bee year
Tightest cluster, often broodless, core near 25 °C. Winter mite treatment, wax, planning the year — and the quiet start of new brood after the solstice.
- Colony strength
- c. 9,000
- Brood
- often broodless
- Forage
- none
December is the quietest month and the cleanest moment against varroa. In a broodless colony the mites sit on the bees. An authorised oxalic treatment at the right temperature reaches them. After that the colony has the best starting position beekeeping can offer.
Around the winter solstice many colonies start cautious brood. Anyone treating should know the window: after treatment and before new brood — or knowingly, with the understanding that brood reduces the effect. The rest of the month is the workshop, not the hive.
The bee year does not end on 31 December. It ends when the cluster sits.
In the colony
The cluster is at its tightest. Outer bees can freeze in hard frost; the core stays near 25 °C, nearer 35 °C if there is brood. Stores must be in the cluster. Colonies on too many empty combs beside full honey classically starve in January, not in December — the damage is done now by where they sit.
Dead bees at the entrance are winter. Heaps of bees with crumpled wings are virus, which is to say summer varroa. That changes nothing for the colony in December, but everything in the judgement of your own treatment.
Beekeeping work
Winter treatment by the instructions, protection, records. No second product 'to be sure' on top. Then quiet.
Melt wax, wire frames, paint hives, sell honey, write the year down: which colonies swarmed, which yielded, which died. Without that note every bee year remains a new rumour.
Forage and pollen
No forage. In gardens winter heath may bloom; on foehn days, hazel. That does not change feed use in any real way.
At the apiary
- Carry out the winter treatment in a broodless colony and record it
- Do not open hives again
- Prepare wax and kit for spring
- Close the colony records: losses, crop, swarms
- Spot-check weight from outside
Forage this month
Winter heath (occasionally) · Hazel (in a thaw)
