Beekeeping calendar: what to do in the apiary month by month in the UK

A UK beekeeping calendar follows the colony rather than the date: leave the cluster alone and heft the hives from December to February, make the first spring inspection when it reaches about 14°C in March or April, add supers and inspect every seven days through swarming season from late April to July, take the honey off and treat for varroa straight away in early to mid-August, then feed, fit mouse guards and settle the hives for winter in September and October. The same jobs fall two to four weeks later in Scotland and on high ground than on the south coast, and the heather moors add a crop of their own in August.

This guide sets out the British beekeeping year month by month, using National Bee Unit (NBU) fact sheets, VMD product information and association advice as they stand in October 2026. The reference point throughout is a single-brood National hive in lowland England; the second section explains how to shift it for where you keep bees.

The beekeeping calendar at a glance: month by month

The table assumes a lowland apiary in central or southern England, a National hive with British Standard frames and an average season; read it as checks, not fixed dates.

Month	What the colony is doing	Apiary jobs	Varroa	Feeding
January	Tight cluster; queen starts laying a small patch	Do not open. Check roofs, straps and mouse guards after storms; clear dead bees from entrances	Oxalic acid in the broodless spell if not done in December and the count justifies it	Heft every other week; fondant if light
February	Brood nest growing; cleansing flights on mild days	Watch the entrance for pollen; clean or replace floors; make up frames	Insert the varroa board for a baseline count	Fondant if light
March	Brood expanding fast; willow, blackthorn and gorse in flower	Quick look at 10°C, first full inspection at about 14°C; remove old comb; order nucs	Count natural drop; multiply by 100	Thin syrup only if stores are below 4 to 5 combs
April	Rapid build-up; drones appear; oil seed rape (OSR) and fruit blossom	Weekly inspections from mid-month; first super on OSR; queen excluder	Drone brood frame can go in	Stop syrup once a super is on
May	Peak swarming; colonies near full strength	Inspect every 7 days; artificial swarms; extract OSR honey promptly	Multiply drop by 30; no medicines with supers on	None in a flow
June	June gap between spring and summer flows	Keep inspecting; requeen or unite; extra supers once the summer flow starts	Alcohol wash or sugar roll on a sample of colonies	Check stores in colonies that have just swarmed or been split
July	Main summer flow (bramble, clover, lime, borage); laying slows	Add supers as needed; reduce entrances in weak colonies; prepare for the heather	Last drone brood removal; count before supers come off	None on strong colonies
August	Winter bees reared from late August	Take honey off; treat at once; colonies for the heather go up early in the month	Main treatment, early to mid-August	Thick syrup after treatment if stores are short
September	Brood shrinks; ivy starts to flower	Feed; unite weak colonies; heather colonies come home and are treated	Multiply drop by 100; check treatment worked	Thick syrup, aiming for about 20 kg of stores
October	Winter cluster forming; drones expelled	Mouse guards; woodpecker netting; secure roofs; remove empty supers	Post-treatment count	Finish syrup; fondant if still light at month end
November	Little or no brood	Leave alone; Hive Count opens on 1 November	Multiply drop by 400; plan winter treatment	None, or fondant
December	Broodless or nearly so in most colonies	Records; clean and store equipment; Hive Count closes 31 December	Oxalic acid in the broodless window if counts justify it	Heft; fondant if light

For syrup strengths, fondant and pollen supplements, see our guide to feeding bees.

How does the calendar shift between southern England and Scotland?

A colony in a Cornish valley and one on an Aberdeenshire hill farm live different years. The maritime climate keeps winters mild, but latitude, altitude and wind change the length of the season. Time your work against what you can observe: the first willow catkins, the first drones, the colour of the OSR fields, the end of the bramble flow.

Marker	Southern and central England	Wales, northern England, uplands	Scotland
First full inspection	Late March to April	April	Mid to late April, sometimes May
First super	April (OSR, fruit)	Late April to May	May, often on the summer flow rather than OSR
Swarming peak	Early to mid-May	Late May	End of May into June
Main summer flow	Late June to July (bramble, clover, lime)	July	July
Heather (ling)	Moors of the south-west and the New Forest, August	North York Moors, Pennines, Welsh hills, August	Widespread, August into September
Main varroa treatment	Early to mid-August	August, after the last crop	Late August or September after the heather
Autumn feeding	September	September	Late August to September, before it turns cold

SRUC’s bee advisers put the Scottish swarming peak at the end of May, about a month later than in southern England, and note that the 2025 season started unusually early. The other dates in the table are typical ranges rather than rules. A frost hollow can run two weeks behind a south-facing slope a mile away, and an urban apiary in London often runs ahead of the countryside around it. If you are new to beekeeping, your local association’s apiary meetings are the best guide to your own district’s timing.

What should you do with your bees in winter, from December to February?

Winter beekeeping is mostly about not opening the hive. The cluster keeps its core warm by burning honey, and every time the crown board comes off on a cold day it loses heat it has to replace from stores.

Checks you can make without opening the hive

• Heft the hive. Lift the back of each hive a few centimetres with one hand to judge its weight. The NBU suggests hefting every other week through winter. A hive that feels much lighter than its neighbours needs fondant.
• Look at the entrance. Make sure dead bees are not blocking it, especially behind a mouse guard.
• Check after storms. Roofs, straps and stands. A hive blown over in January rarely survives.
• Protect against woodpeckers. Where green woodpeckers are a problem, the NBU suggests chicken wire held at least 300 mm away from the hive walls, so the birds cannot reach the wood.
• Keep the varroa board clean. A board left in all winter gives you a free reading of mite drop, debris and the position of the cluster.

If you must look inside, the NBU’s advice is to choose a warm, sunny day when some bees are flying and keep the check to about 20 seconds.

Winter oxalic acid treatment

Most colonies in lowland Britain have little or no sealed brood for a few weeks around December and early January. That broodless spell is the best time of year to use oxalic acid, which kills mites on adult bees but does not reach mites under cappings. The NBU’s Managing Varroa booklet lists oxalic acid products for winter and broodless periods with an outside temperature above 3°C.

For Api-Bioxal, the VMD summary of product characteristics (SPC) sets:

• trickling: a 4.4% solution in 1:1 sugar syrup, for example a 31 g sachet in 500 ml of syrup for about 10 hives, at 5 ml per seam of bees, up to 50 ml per hive, with no more than two trickle treatments a year;
• sublimation (vaporising): 2 g per hive, once a year, not recommended in summer;
• no supers on the hive and no honey flow, and a honey withdrawal period of zero days.

Other authorised oxalic products such as Oxybee, Oxuvar and Dany’s BienenWohl have their own concentrations and doses, so follow the leaflet in the box. Use only medicines authorised by the VMD, and record every treatment: the VMD’s guidance says records must be kept for five years after the medicine is given to the bees, even if you no longer have the colonies.

Decide whether to treat from a count made in November. At that time of year the NBU multiplies the average daily drop by 400, so 2 or 3 mites a day already means a colony close to the NBU’s damage threshold of 1,000 mites.

Fondant and late winter

The NBU says not to feed sugar syrup in winter, because bees cannot process it in the cold. If a hive is light, put a block of fondant over the feed hole in the crown board or directly on the top bars, with a cut in the wrapping. Late February and March are when stores fall fastest: the colony is rearing brood again but there is little forage.

Winter is also the time to order a nucleus if you want to expand, because breeders take most orders for spring delivery in autumn and winter.

When should you do the first spring inspection?

Open the hive for a full inspection when it is warm enough to lift out brood frames without chilling them, there is little wind and bees are coming home with pollen. The London Beekeepers’ Association suggests about 14°C for a detailed inspection and at least 10°C for a quick look without removing brood frames; if March never gets that warm, wait until April. In most of England that falls between mid-March and mid-April, when willow and blackthorn are flowering.

What to check on the first inspection

1. Queen-right? Eggs and a compact patch of brood mean the queen is laying; you need not see her.
2. Stores. The NBU recommends at least 4 to 5 combs of stores in spring, about 9 kg. Below that, feed fondant or, once it is reliably mild, thin syrup.
3. Space. A colony covering six or more frames will soon need room. Keep a frame of foundation or drawn comb at the side of the brood nest.
4. Brood health. Look across the brood for a compact pattern and pearly white, C-shaped larvae. Anything sunken, greasy, discoloured or smelling wrong needs a call to your bee inspector.
5. Old comb. Move dark, empty brood combs to the edge so they can be removed later, and plan to replace two or three each year.
6. Floor and varroa board. Swap a dirty floor for a clean one and start a spring mite count.

The NBU advises monitoring varroa in early spring, after the spring flow, at the honey harvest and in late autumn. In March and April it multiplies the average daily drop by 100.

Stimulative feeding

The NBU’s feeding guideline says thin syrup, 1 kg of white granulated sugar dissolved in 1,260 ml of warm water, can be used for stimulative feeding once willow is flowering, and pollen patties may help if pollen is short. Stop feeding syrup as soon as a super goes on, or the bees will store sugar in the honey.

When should you put supers on, and how do you manage oil seed rape?

Put the first super on when the bees cover most of the brood box, about seven or eight frames on a National, and a flow is starting. In April, in arable England, that flow is usually oil seed rape. Add a queen excluder under the super if you use one, and add the next super before the bees have filled the first, so they always have spare room.

Before supering, remove any varroa medicine that cannot be used with honey supers. The Api-Bioxal SPC forbids use with supers or during a flow, and the NBU booklet says Apivar must not be used during a honey flow.

Oil seed rape honey

OSR yields well but sets hard in the comb within days of being capped. In a BBKA monthly guide, Master Beekeeper Jeremy Quinlan advises checking supers when the fields turn from yellow to green, testing ripeness by giving the frame a firm shake or using a refractometer, and taking the honey off promptly. He warns against Porter bee escapes on OSR, because the honey crystallises once the supers lose the warmth of the bees, and suggests shaking and brushing the bees off each frame instead.

Honey sold as honey must have a water content of no more than 20% under the Honey (England) Regulations 2015 and their equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so a ripe crop matters. OSR honey is usually sold as set or soft-set honey. Our guide to harvesting honey covers clearing supers, extraction and storage.

How do you manage swarming season, from late April to July?

Swarming is how a colony reproduces. The old queen leaves with a large part of the workers, SRUC says up to 75%, and the colony left behind raises a new queen. For the beekeeper it means losing most of the season’s foragers and, often, the crop.

Inspect every seven days

A queen cell is sealed about eight days after the egg is laid, and the prime swarm usually leaves around the time the first cells are capped. SRUC therefore advises inspecting every seven days during the season: if there were no queen cells at the last inspection, the colony is unlikely to swarm before the next. If you clip the queen’s wings, the colony usually cannot leave with her, which buys a few extra days but does not stop the process.

What to look for:

• Play cups (empty, open queen cups) are normal and mean little.
• Charged cells with an egg or a larva floating in royal jelly mean the colony is preparing to swarm: act now.
• Sealed queen cells may mean the swarm has already gone. The NBU warns that if queen cells are sealed it may be too late, so check for eggs and for the old queen before you destroy any cell.

Knocking down queen cells on its own rarely works. SRUC notes that the bees will simply build more, in harder-to-find places.

Artificial swarm

The classic UK response is the artificial swarm, which separates the flying bees from the brood. The NBU sets out a version that works even when you cannot find the queen, provided the queen cells still hold larvae:

1. Move the original brood box and floor at least one metre aside; this parent colony keeps the young bees.
2. Put a new floor and brood box of drawn comb or foundation on the old site, and hang in its centre one comb of eggs and young brood from the parent colony that carries no queen cells.
3. Fill the gap in the parent box with comb or foundation, and put the supers on the new box on the old site.
4. After seven days, inspect the new box. No queen cells there means the queen is probably in it; if there are cells, keep one with a visible larva and destroy the rest. In the parent colony, keep one open cell with a healthy larva if it is queenless.
5. Later in the season or the following spring, find and remove the older queen and reunite the colonies.

Variants such as the Pagden use the same principle; all need spare equipment ready by April. Our guide to swarming covers bait hives, collecting swarms and the signs that a colony is about to go.

Quinlan’s BBKA guide adds that colonies tend to swarm as soon as the OSR flow ends.

What happens in the June gap and the summer flow?

After the spring blossom, many districts have a lull before the summer flow. A 2019 study by Timberlake, Vaughan and Memmott of farmland in south-west England, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, found nectar supply peaking in May and July with a June gap in between, plus lean periods in early March and in late summer. The study measured nectar for bumblebees, but honey bees forage on the same flowers.

In practice, a colony that has just swarmed or been split can go hungry in June while its new queen gets going. Heft it, and if there is no sealed honey at the edge of the brood box, give that colony a little syrup. Strong colonies with supers on rarely need help.

The summer flow

From late June into July the main summer flow comes from bramble, white clover, lime trees, field beans in some areas, borage grown as a crop, and garden and hedgerow flowers. Lime can yield heavily in towns. Add supers as needed and keep inspecting, because July swarms are common in strong colonies.

July is the last month to remove a drone brood frame for varroa control. The NBU booklet says drone brood removal can reduce mite numbers by up to 50%, that the frame should be checked after about 18 to 20 days and never left for more than 24 days, and that it is not recommended after July.

Harvest, varroa treatment and the heather: July to September

August is the most important month of the British beekeeping year, and it starts in July.

Take the honey off, then treat straight away

The NBU’s winter preparation fact sheet explains why. Winter bees, which must live for several months, are reared in late August and early September. Mite populations can double every three to four weeks while brood rearing falls in July and August, so the remaining brood carries more and more mites. Treatment that goes in too late cannot repair damage already done to those winter bees.

The NBU therefore says varroa treatment is normally applied from early to mid-August, later where colonies work late flows such as heather or Himalayan balsam. Medicines cannot be used with honey supers on, so the sequence is: take off the summer crop, extract, then treat within days.

Product type	Examples (VMD-authorised)	NBU timing and conditions
Thymol	Apiguard, Apilife Var, Thymovar	Spring or late summer; above 15°C, so better in August than October
Formic acid	Formic Pro	May to August; not when outside temperature exceeds 30°C
Amitraz	Apivar	Any season, 6 to 10 weeks; not during a honey flow; best above 10°C with little brood
Oxalic acid	Api-Bioxal, Oxuvar, Oxybee, Dany’s BienenWohl, Varroxal	Winter and broodless periods, outside temperature above 3°C

Rotate products with different active substances from year to year and read the leaflet: doses and conditions differ between products. Our varroa mites guide gives full details, including resistance and husbandry methods.

Robbing and wasps

Once the flow stops, robbing starts. Reduce entrances on small colonies, never spill syrup or honey in the apiary and return wet supers only late in the day. Wasps peak in late August and September; a narrow entrance is the best defence.

Taking colonies to the heather

Ling heather (Calluna vulgaris) flowers on moorland from August into September, and its honey is the most prized British crop: thixotropic, jelly-like in the comb, and allowed up to 23% water under the Honey (England) Regulations 2015 against 20% for other honey. Beekeepers move strong colonies to the moors early in August and bring them home in September. Heather is unpredictable. In the Scottish Beekeepers Association’s survey of the 2024 harvest, heather yields averaged 8.43 lb per hive against 21.96 lb for runny honey, although heather sold for an average of £12.10 a 1 lb jar.

Colonies that go to the heather are treated for varroa on their return, which means later than lowland colonies. Choose a product that works in cooler weather, as thymol needs warmth.

Which varroa counts should you check each month?

The NBU’s fact sheet on estimating mite populations converts the average daily natural mite drop on a monitoring board into an estimate of the colony’s total population. Leave the board in for at least 7 days, longer in winter, count the mites, divide by the number of days and multiply:

Months	Multiply daily drop by	Daily drop that suggests about 1,000 mites
November to February	400	2 to 3
March, April, September, October	100	10
May to August	30	33

The NBU puts the maximum before serious harm at about 1,000 mites per colony. Act well before that, especially in July and August, when the population is about to double again.

Two other methods give a quicker answer:

• Alcohol wash or sugar roll on a sample of bees from the brood nest. The NBU treats more than 5 mites per 100 bees (5%) as a serious infestation and 3% or less as acceptable, and says the sugar roll gives comparable results.
• Drone brood uncapping. More than 5 mites per 100 drone pupae means treatment is urgently needed; fewer than 3 per 100 is acceptable.

The NBU booklet adds action levels for the proportion of drone brood infested that rise through the season: under 2% needs no action from April to June, under 3% in June and July and under 5% in August. Above 4% in spring, consider control; above 7% in June and July or 10% in August, effective control is needed.

How do you prepare hives for winter, from September to November?

Weigh up stores and feed

The NBU recommends about 20 kg of honey in autumn; its feeding guideline gives 18 to 22 kg, and more for large colonies with prolific queens. As a guide:

• a full British Standard brood frame holds about 2.3 kg;
• a full super frame about 1.2 kg;
• a full super at least 12 kg.

A full super plus three brood frames of honey is therefore usually enough. If a colony is short, feed thick syrup, 1 kg of white granulated sugar dissolved in 630 ml of water (2 lb to a pint). The NBU suggests September as a good month in many parts of the UK: feed too early and the bees turn it into brood, too late and they cannot evaporate and cap it. Use a rapid feeder, which holds up to 10 litres, and feed in the evening to limit robbing. Once the weather turns cold, switch to fondant.

Ivy flowers from September and is a major late source of pollen and nectar. In a Sussex study by Garbuzov and Ratnieks, about 89% of the pollen loads honey bees brought home in autumn came from ivy. It can top up stores in a mild autumn, but ivy honey sets hard in the comb, and the bees are not always able to use it in a cold snap.

Strength and queens

The NBU says colonies with fewer than about 9,000 bees have a poor chance of surviving winter, and recommends a minimum of five British Standard brood frames covered with bees. Unite small or queenless colonies with a strong one in September rather than nursing them through to spring, and consider replacing queens over two or three years old after the summer harvest.

Mouse guards, ventilation and roofs

• Fit mouse guards before the first cold nights, typically in October, to stop small rodents nesting in the combs.
• Ventilation from the entrance, floor and roof is usually enough. The NBU suggests tilting hives slightly forward or removing floor inserts so condensation drains. Open mesh floors can stay open in winter unless the site is windy.
• Insulation over the crown board can help in harsh winters, as long as ventilation is kept.
• Remove empty supers and store them where wax moth cannot get in.
• Strap down roofs or weight them with a brick before the autumn gales.

The yellow-legged hornet in autumn

The yellow-legged hornet (Vespa velutina), still often called the Asian hornet, hunts bees in front of hives most heavily from late summer into autumn. The NBU’s rolling update recorded 226 credible sightings and 85 nests found in the UK in 2026 as of 15 October. After the 2025 season, Fera Science estimated for the NBU that 32 nests destroyed in England on or after 30 September 2025 had an 18 to 50% probability of having already produced drones; the NBU passed those higher-risk areas to the BBKA teams coordinating spring trapping. If you see a suspect hornet, report it with the Asian Hornet Watch app or the online recording form, with a photograph. Our Asian hornet page explains how to tell it from the native hornet.

Legal and paperwork dates in the beekeeping year

When	What	Where it applies
Once, then whenever status changes	Report varroa, usually by marking the apiary varroa-positive on BeeBase; a legal duty since 21 April 2021	England, Wales, Scotland
Every treatment	Record each medicine bought, used and disposed of; keep records for 5 years	Whole UK
At once, any month	Notify a suspected notifiable disease or pest (American or European foulbrood, small hive beetle, Tropilaelaps)	Whole UK
1 November to 31 December	BeeBase Hive Count of colonies held on 1 November	All beekeepers using BeeBase
When selling honey	Moisture no more than 20% (23% for heather), labelling rules	Honey regulations in each nation

Registration on BeeBase is voluntary, but it means you get disease alerts for your area and free inspections. In Northern Ireland, AFBI states that varroa is no longer a statutory pest, while American and European foulbrood remain notifiable and small hive beetle and Tropilaelaps mites are notifiable pests; NI beekeepers can register voluntarily, free of charge, on DAERA’s DataBees system rather than on BeeBase. For the details nation by nation, see our guide on how to register your bees.

Use the quiet months to update each colony’s record card and your medicine record. The other guides in our seasons section go deeper into each part of the year.

Frequently asked questions

When should I do my first hive inspection in spring?

Wait for a calm, warm day when bees are flying well and bringing in pollen. The London Beekeepers' Association suggests about 14°C for a full inspection and at least 10°C for a quick look without lifting out brood frames. In southern England that usually means late March or April; in Scotland and on high ground it is often mid to late April.

How much honey does a colony need for winter in the UK?

The National Bee Unit recommends about 20 kg of stores in autumn, within a range of 18 to 22 kg, and more for a large colony with a prolific queen. A full super holds at least 12 kg and a full British Standard brood frame about 2.3 kg, so a full super plus three brood frames of honey is usually enough. Make up any shortfall with thick syrup in September.

When should I put a super on my hive?

Add the first super when the bees cover most of the brood box, around seven or eight frames, and a flow is starting. In much of England that is oil seed rape or fruit blossom in April. Remove any varroa treatment first, because most UK medicines must not be in the hive with honey supers. Add a further super before the one below is completely full.

When is swarming season in the UK?

Roughly from late April to July, with a peak in May in the south. SRUC notes that swarming in Scotland usually peaks at the end of May, about a month later than in southern England. Inspect every seven days through the season: if there were no queen cells at the last inspection, the colony is unlikely to swarm before the next.

When should I treat for varroa in the UK?

The key treatment goes on as soon as the summer honey is off, usually in early to mid-August, because the long-lived winter bees are reared in late August and early September. After heather or Himalayan balsam it goes on later. A second treatment with oxalic acid in a broodless spell in winter is common, and spring treatment is used if counts are already high.

When should I feed my bees sugar syrup?

Feed thick syrup, 1 kg of white sugar to 630 ml of water, in autumn after the honey is off if stores are short; September is a good month in most of the UK. Thin syrup, 1 kg to 1,260 ml, is for spring or emergencies. The NBU advises against feeding syrup in cold weather, because bees cannot process it; once it turns cold, give fondant instead.

What is the June gap?

It is a dip in nectar between the spring flowers and the summer flow. A 2019 study of farmland in south-west England found nectar peaks in May and July separated by a June gap. Colonies that have just swarmed or been split can run short, so heft hives and check stores in June even if the supers were heavy in May.

Do I have to tell anyone how many hives I have?

Registering on BeeBase is voluntary, but the NBU asks all beekeepers to record their colony numbers during the annual Hive Count, which runs from 1 November to 31 December and records hives held on 1 November. Separately, beekeepers in England, Wales and Scotland must report varroa once, which most do by marking their apiary as varroa-positive on BeeBase.

Sources

1. Preparing your hives for winter (Fact sheet 19), Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
2. Feeding bees: sugar (Best Practice Guideline 7a), Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
3. Estimating Varroa mite populations (Fact sheet 13), Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
4. Managing Varroa (advisory booklet), Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
5. Swarm control when you can't find the queen (Fact sheet 24), Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
6. API-Bioxal 0.71 g/g bee-hive powder: summary of product characteristics, Veterinary Medicines Directorate
7. Bee medicines: availability in the UK, Veterinary Medicines Directorate, GOV.UK
8. How to spot, stop and safely handle honeybee swarming (June 2025), SRUC, SAC Consulting
9. May in the apiary (Jeremy Quinlan), British Beekeepers Association
10. March in the apiary (Howard Nichols), London Beekeepers' Association
11. Phenology of farmland floral resources reveals seasonal gaps in nectar availability for bumblebees (Timberlake, Vaughan, Memmott, Journal of Applied Ecology 56, 2019), University of Bristol, via Cardiff University ORCA
12. Ivy: an underappreciated key resource to flower-visiting insects in autumn (Garbuzov and Ratnieks, Insect Conservation and Diversity 7, 2014), University of Sussex
13. The Honey (England) Regulations 2015: schedules, legislation.gov.uk
14. 2024 Scottish Honey Survey results, Scottish Beekeepers Association
15. Hive Count, Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
16. Report Varroa, Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
17. Bee health, Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), Northern Ireland
18. Yellow-legged hornet 2026 rolling update, Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
19. Risk areas for yellow-legged hornets: spring trapping 2026, Animal and Plant Health Agency, National Bee Unit
20. Beekeepers: voluntary registration (DataBees), Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Northern Ireland