Would you like the good news or the bad news first? Choose which section you’d prefer to begin with:
The Good News
Matt harvested the spring crop of honey and it came in at a whopping 60lbs! Each individual worker bee produces one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime, and they’ve given Matt enough to fill 60 pint glasses!
For comparison, last year’s harvest for spring and summer combined was ~40lbs. So, Matt has already achieved a 50% increase and he hasn’t even collected the summer haul yet. Actual Honey has come a long way over the past year.
How did Matt get here?
Well, more bees = more honey. Last year, he had 2 colonies. This year, he has 9! See the table from Matt’s Diary: June 2025 to get to know each of these colonies. But that’s not the only reason.
Matt has been learning as much as he possibly can through studying and teaching courses, sitting exams and through another year of experience with the bees. Looking back, he realises he made a few mistakes last year, like not giving the bees enough space to store honey.
Another contributing factor was the weather. This year’s spring was dry and sunny whereas last year’s spring was wet. Bees do not like going out in the rain, so they stayed home a lot more last year. This year, they can’t get enough of the Himalayan balsam growing nearby and have been foraging its nectar like crazy. Himalayan balsam is a troublesome invasive plant that causes problems for native flowers, but at least the bees are getting value out of it!
The Bad News
This was almost good news. Matt caught a new swarm, meaning he was up to 10 colonies. The Actual Honey empire was into double figures for the first time! I was fully expecting to update the table from Matt’s Diary: June 2025 to include the lovely new family living in Hive J.
You can tell this story doesn’t have a happy ending, can’t you?
Spring this year was warm and dry, which means the wasps were thriving. Droves of hungry young wasps have been flying to Matt’s apiaries to get a sweet snack. They were showing up uninvited, barging in, harassing any bees who defended the hive, and stealing honey. As you can imagine, this was a huge source of stress for the bees.
One colony in particular really struggled with the wasp invasion. Can you guess which one?
The residents of Hive J were a small swarm who had been settling in well at Windmill Hill, but they were still new and relatively weak, so the wasps were too much for them. They absconded a day or two before one of Matt’s visits to check on them. He discovered abandoned eggs in an otherwise empty hive and was overcome by a sense of having let them down.
Of course, Matt loves his bees and had done all he could to support them. It was just awful timing. This swarm had been seeking a home a little later than usual and the wasps were out a little earlier than usual. The bees just didn’t have time to become strong enough to defend themselves.
Thankfully, the other 9 colonies were more resilient. They had already made it through those vulnerable early days of getting established and were capable of fighting off the aggressive wasps.
Nevertheless, Matt wanted to give the bees the best chance of victory. Wasps are opportunistic and those blighters took advantage of the easy access to the honey whenever Matt needed to open up the hives, so he kept them closed as much as possible throughout July. In that spirit, he also installed entrance reducers to make it easier for the bee bouncers to guard the door.
Wasp season was tough this year.
Did you choose to read the good news or the bad news first? Make sure to catch up on both, then let’s reconvene to hear:
The Association Apiary News
Did you read ‘Matt the teacher: classroom edition‘ back in June? In that post, I mentioned that Matt would be leading practical sessions in the apiary as well. To find out how it went, look out for ‘Matt the teacher: apiary edition’ later this month! Why is this relevant? Well, during those teaching sessions in HRBKA’s apiary, Matt noticed that the bees seemed a little off-colour and not as happy as they deserved to be. So, he stepped up to become the temporary apiary manager for Harrogate and Ripon Beekeepers Association! Matt has always been a hero.
He and the team have been working hard to get things organised and make sure the bees thrive.
The Tech News
As if Matt hasn’t been busy enough, he’s also designing his own record keeping app especially for beekeepers! How does he fit in all these projects??
The app is called CombCensus and is made for desktop, mobile or a bit of both. It covers everything! It has all manner of features to assist beekeepers with organisation. For example, it displays an overview for a quick check on your colonies, but it also aids you with keeping track of the details, like which equipment is present on a hive and how old the reigning queen is. There’s a full list of the features here.
CombCensus is very much made by beekeepers for beekeepers.
For that exact reason, Matt has some fellow beekeepers trying it out to make sure it meets their needs. And then he’s planning to launch it for the public to use next year!
Check out the website here:
https://combcensus.co.uk/
