The HOME bees are now abed for their long winter’s huddle.
Before HOME closed again, our in-house trained beekeepers Jenni and Alison tucked them in this week. We’ll check on them once over the winter and hopefully welcome them back in the Spring.
You can keep an eye on our hives on our live Beecam. Don’t worry if you spot lots of dead bees on the beecam as this is perfectly normal for this time of year. The colonies are rapidly reducing in size from 50,000+ in the height of summer down to around 8,000 for over-wintering.
The average lifespan increases from 6 weeks in the summer to 6 months in winter, huddling close, keeping the Queen warm in the middle of their cluster and taking it in turns to feed on the honey stores they’ve worked all season to forage.
Here’s one of the honey stores:
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