hottsfieldhoney.Co.uk

Winter is over (maybe) and spring has arrived. In 2025 we finished the year with too many hives – more than I could really look after.

I took the opportunity to combine a couple of hives late in the year to reduce the number – but in late February it was apparent that 2 hives were struggling and were very weak. Both had subsequently died by early March. Never-the-less I was able to give a hive to a colleague who had lost one of hers (actually – I gave it “back” to her as she had given me the swarm during the summer of 2025 and I had re-homed it).

Then in late March I lost another hive for unknown reasons – I found all the bees dead inside. It’s unusual for all the bees to die at once and it didn’t look like starvation. I’m wondering if the bees got trapped inside somehow.

Anyway that took me down to 6 hives .. enough to be getting on with for spring 2026.