From Christmas to the end of January bees are usually clustered together in warm hives with winter stores of honey to sustain them until spring.
It is also the ideal time to eradicate the Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that sucks the blood of bees and spreads deadly viruses among populations.
However, the treatment is also harmful to young bee grubs, and the recent recording-breaking high temperatures have resulted in bees producing more young than normal, so it cannot be used this year.
Honey bees have suffered badly in recent years from poor summers, the loss of wildflowers to pollinate and diseases such as American foulbrood which in 2010 wiped out about a quarter of the Island’s population.
Beekeeper Bob Tompkins said that as well as encouraging bees to breed, the warm weather has been enticing them outside when natural sources of pollen are in scarce supply.
