It was a dreary damp day and the wind was starting to get fairly brisk when we turned up to to carry out our annual apiary cleanup session



This year we had three colonies over wintering, all doing well, but as we have enough hives for eight and the spares were in need of a good scrape and torching we set about the job



A small team of scrapers were employed and as the weather was fairly inclement and the temperature around 7C the wax and propolis were easily removed. It wasn't long before a small pile of scraped boxes, queen excluders, crown boards, etc. were piling up ready to be torched.

One of our volunteers had brought along an industrial sized gas bottle and blow lamp to seriously take on the job of torching the hive parts



Despite the low temperatures, disturbing the colonies upset them a bit and some of our valiant volunteers decides to go into fully suited mode to stop the guard bees doing their job!



Many thanks to all of you who turned up to help, as we had plenty of help we just managed to finish, tidy up and leave as the first drop of rain started to fall.

Same time, same place next year