The remarkably unique Hawthorn year of 2023.

‘If you get Hawthorn honey, you’ll not get much else!’

As one highly respected beekeeper of many years said long ago.

This is a reflection of my beekeeping over the year 2023; observing how the bees and nature work closely in tandem, how to work with the bees and not by instruction, when and what to feed at what time based on what the bees are telling me. Trying to gain an understanding of how the bees live and helping them as much as I can. A year with a glut of spring Hawthorn honey, a very ‘swarmy’ year indeed, but a second half of the year when some colonies needed extra feeding because of higher tempertures when there was no or very little forage.

Nestled in the foothills of the Black Mountains in the heart of Breconshire, I have around 30 hives that produce honey and a similar number of nucs of varying size that I use for improving my stock by rearing queens, replacing colonies and for various other reasons.

The main ‘honey plants’ of a typical summer are; bramble, rosebay willowherb and clover. There are plenty of wildflowers to provide a wide diet of pollen to supplement these main plants.

After the summer flowers have finished; the nucs are fed with syrup as they have been rearing brood at a steady rate since they were created. By feeding what is called ‘invert’ syrup; syrup that contains the monosaccharides of glucose and fructose, it is easier for the bees to store it than if I make up syrup from cane sugar which is typically sucrose a more complex sugar that the bees have to reduce (invert) to glucose and fructose using enzymes so that is can be stored in cells

In contrast the honey producing colonies have been steadily reducing the amount of brood, typically from June 21^st onwards. These colonies concentrate on building up a store of honey in preparation for winter. If they didn’t swarm, then they should have an excess of honey. Usually, I take all honey bar one super and what is in the brood box, leaving at least 20kg is usually enough such that I don’t have to feed them. (A colony of bees can consume 0.5-0.7Kg per week)

The Spring of 2023 was exceptional! We had warm weather, plenty of sunshine after a wet first half of April, the following eight weeks up to mid-end June was glorious with very little rain or wind and temperatures of 20 deg C or above. This start to the year had quite a profound effect on those trees flowering at this time; apple, sycamore and hawthorn in particular, but it was also a good year for dandelion and many other flowers.

This was to be a very ‘swarmy’ year. I was getting 2-3 calls a day between May and June regarding honeybees taking residence in gable ends and chimneys. The ‘bait’ hives that I have were filled 6-7 times, in contrast to last yar, 2022, when I had none. The weather conditions being such that many tree blossoms and flowers had a ‘mast’ year providing a glut of nectar and pollen.

In my apiaries bordering the Black Mountains of Breconshire, the bees were on a continuous ‘flow’ during this time. I kept adding supers to the hives as the bees brought in Hawthorn nectar. The smell in the apiaries was intoxicating! I’d prepared extra supers over the winter, but hadn’t expected to use them all.

Hawthorn is a common ‘hedge’ tree, and as a result there are many very close to the hives. In previous years I have noted that it flowers from early May for about 10 days. This year it flowered for four weeks from 12th May to 12th June, a combination of sunny days above 20C and no wind or rain to knock the flowers off. But it didn’t just flower, the trees were absolutely blooming. If you looked around, you’d see dozens of them like bright white beacons, so much more than in previous years. Hawthorn comes into flower later the higher up it is growing and so my bees could move up to the trees at the base of the mountains as the trees nearby went over. The whole area was a mass of white blossom. Interestingly the flowers don’t smell particularly sweet and indeed can smell of semen! The honey, however, has a strong somewhat nutty flavour with a pleasant smell.

The Hawthorn in flower and then with red berries. This tree is covered in ivy and not the greatest specimen, but it’s a tree that I walk past every day, part of an old hedge.

I was driven to find out more about the wonderful Hawthorn and read; Hawthorn: The Tree That Has Nourished, Healed, and Inspired Through the Ages. By Bill Vaughn.  A fascinating read and I learnt a lot about our relationship with the tree over the ages. Bill talks about the strange smelling flowers that attract flies more than bees. It didn’t give any clues as to why the Hawthorn behaved like it did this year, nor did the Woodland Trust, and so I am left to feel that when conditions are just right, then it can be a Hawthorn year. It is interesting that bees in apple orchards also had a good honey yield. Apple blossom is notoriously fickle at yielding nectar.

I have not experienced Hawthorn or May like this in my time as a beekeeper; the bees filled all the supers very quickly. I harvested this honey by removing five super frames of honey from each of the two top supers at a time, replacing them with empty frames of drawn comb. I couldn’t just keep adding supers as they were all out with the bees and I didn’t want to remove a whole super for too long. I repeated this swapping out of frames weekly during this ‘flow’ as the bees kept on filling them with honey. I had over 1500lbs of mostly Hawthorn honey by the beginning of June. I’d not had any Hawthorn honey in my previous years of beekeeping. A fellow beekeeper of 50 years, with a similar number of hives, who lives nearby, has also never had Hawthorn honey before this year.

Some colonies also brought in some oak honeydew dark in colour and with a strong flavour, also for the first time in my experience.

From right to left: light summer honey from 2022, Hawthorn honey spring 2023, Honeydew/Hawthorn mix early summer 2023

In my opinion once the bees have filled the supers and indeed a lot of the brood box, their foraging can slow down and stop, but by swapping out full capped frames of honey for empty ones they kept going at full pace. Sometimes this is called ‘checkerboarding’, making sure that the bees always have space to fill and it can put them off swarming. By the end of this ‘honey flow’, I’d taken off plenty of honey and yet the bees still had several full supers

Following this wonderful Spring; July and August in contrast were a wash out, the bees didn’t bring any nectar into the hive during this time, or if they did, they consumed it. Any Spring honey was also mostly consumed which explains why many beekeepers who hadn’t taken off any Spring honey during or just after the Hawthorn flow had none to take off.

Such a contrast to the Spring as July is usually the time of the summer flow when we get most of our honey.

For the first time in my beekeeping, I had no summer honey.

June was the hottest since 1884, July the sixth wettest.

The Ling Heather on the mountains was poor in August too.

There was some Himalayan Balsam for the bees to forage in early September. The bees were also bringing in yellow pollen which I think was coming from a field of maize nearby.

The strong aroma as I walk through my home apiaries tells me that there’s an Ivy ‘flow’. The Ivy yielded both nectar and pollen starting on 15th Sept until 17th October as the temperature hit 17C and the bees managed to store quite a lot.

From the end of August, I was feeding nucs invert syrup, but didn’t need to feed the main colonies. The weather during the months of September, October and November remained wet, with the temperature remaining 10C or above for much of the time. With no spells of cold weather, the bees didn’t need to cluster and were often see out foraging and bringing in pollen.

‘The amount of sugar required by workers depends on their activity level; resting workers need only 0.7mg sugar/hr whereas those in flight require 11.5mg/hr (Olaerts, 1956; Heinrich 1979)’ Mark L Winston; The Biology of the Honey Bee.

We can see that during these warmer spells the bees were consuming more of their stores than if the temperature is 0C or lower.

I found that several main colonies were becoming quite light when hefted and so I fed invert syrup as the bees were active and would take it down and store it. Feeding syrup excites the bees to go out and gather pollen of which there was still quite a lot around; Ivy, Mahonia, Winter Jasmine around my apiaries.

Around the middle of November 2023, three main colonies had stopped taking down syrup, but still light when hefted, so I had no choice but to give them fondant. I have never previously given fondant until early in the new year and then only as a precaution.

If the hive is VERY light, then the bees may have consumed not only the honey but also the stored pollen (bee bread, which is pollen fermented with honey to prevent it spoiling). In this case I might also add some Candipolline which will help with low pollen levels, but not until early in the New Year as the first pollen becomes available (Although the protein level in Candipolline is around 4%, lower than many types of pollen, it is better than nothing and does give the bees a boost).

A fellow beekeeper who follows this feeding pattern failed to add Candipolline to his hives in an out apiary last year, and they all perished. We don’t know for certain that this was the reason the colonies died out, but it was the main difference between this apiary and his home apiary where all colonies survived.

Pollen gathered from flowers can vary in protein from 6-28% and from this protein the bees need 10 amino acids to live. The bees need a fairly wide and varied diet as no single pollen type contains all 10 amino acids.

‘Adult bees can rear brood for a short time when fed a pure carbohydrate diet, but they must break down their own body issues to produce larval food…..Lack of protein during the first 8-10 days of adult life results in shorter life spans’ Haydak, 1937, Maurizio, 1950. Mark L Wilson. The Biology of the Honey Bee.

Gile Budge, when speaking about CSPV, paralysis virus, at the WBKA convention this year, explained that lack of pollen in the early stages of bee adult life can be a cause.

Pollen availability as the colony starts to build up early in the year is vital.

In conclusion, the beekeeper needs to be observing the bees and hefting the hives regularly if the autumn/winter temperature remains higher than normal. This can be judged by whether the bees are flying and in what volumes; it can also be judged by looking at the inspection board and if the bees are uncapping cells and over how much of the brood box. Heft the hive and if light, feed. Ideally at this stage with syrup to encourage gathering of pollen for winter and early new year brood rearing. If the bees aren’t taking syrup, in a light hive put fondant onto the cover board hole. This will keep the bees alive, but you need to keep checking that they haven’t finished it and keep topping up with fondant as the bees continue to take it. Consider adding a pollen substitute early in the new year along with the fondant to give the bees a protein boost.

These are my notes for my beekeeping and I feel that beekeeping is all about observing the bees and the environment and adapting to it in order to keep the bees alive and ready for Spring.

As I complete this summary of 2023, we have just had a first frost, Nov 24^th, with the night time temperature at minus 3C, followed by a lovely sunny day. The bees didn’t come out. The cold weather is forecast to continue. The bees will have formed a cluster which is what we expect them to do in winter.

Why do you keep bees?

Beyond the appreciable facts of their life we know but little of bees. And the closer our acquaintance with them, the nearer is our ignorance brought to us of the depths of their real existence; but such ignorance is better than the other kind, which is unconscious, and satisfied. – Maurice Maeterlinck