JANUARY is named after Janus the Roman god of beginnings and endings who is rather unusual because he has two faces. One face looks forwards into the New Year, while the other face still looks backwards on the year that has just ended. So January is a good time for us to do the same thing and look both ways. Plans for the spring and summer ahead need to be made before we forget how the bees performed last year.

There is a lot to learn for new beekeepers and a lot to remember. So to help with planning the coming honey season I have put together a list of ten things. They are not resolutions, but they are worth trying to remember to do. They should save you time as well as helping you towards having a good honey crop in 2007.

The replacement of old queen bees is one of the suggestions on the list, but can you tell the age of your queen at a glance? There is an easy way if you know the beekeeper's special code. We'll look at that in a moment.

What do beekeepers do in January? Well, apart from all the usual chores, I have an invitation that I cannot resist. I am going wassailing.

The custom of wassailing To the casual onlooker the wassail ceremony is quite bizarre, involving drinking, singing and blasting away at an elderly apple tree with a shotgun.

The roots of the ceremony go back to long before Christianity as do many of our other unfathomable customs. The origins of wassailing are vague, but probably come from the ancient winter celebrations of northern Europe, and the drinking toast of "Waes hael" meaning "Be of good health".

The practice of wassailing as it survives today is usually associated with cider apple orchards. But in times past it involved the prosperity of fields, crops and all sorts of livestock, including bees. The wassailing of apple trees usually takes place around Old Twelfth Night, January 17th, and this year I'll be joining a group of beekeepers who gather together on the nearest Sunday morning to continue the custom in the old orchard where they have their apiary.

According to old beliefs, dark spirits lurking in the orchard need to be driven away and the trees woken up from their winter sleep and charmed to produce a good crop of fruit the following season. There was a fear that if this was not done, the trees would not bear any fruit at all. Today wassailing is having a surprising revival as a fund raiser.

The ceremony varies from place to place but usually includes a bonfire and lots of hot punch to keep out the January cold. An Apple Queen is chosen and she carries out various duties which include anointing the oldest tree in the orchard with cider. A piece of toast or cake is placed up in the branches for the good spirits of the orchard and everyone joins in singing a traditional wassail song to weave a spell and charm the trees.

To chase away any bad spirits that might be hiding up in the trees, shots are fired into the branches and sometimes people shout, bang pots and pans and generally make a din.

Morris men lead a procession that winds its way through the orchard to the apiary area, chanting "Gentle bees, we wish you no harm. We'm just come a-wassailing", keeping up the tradition of telling the bees what is going on. Later, the Morris men will dance. Their white handkerchiefs and bells, I am told, are another time-honoured way of warding off evil spirits.

The orchard can then be left in peace to produce bountiful blossom to get the bees off to a good start as soon as the weather warms up.

Beekeeper's code.

The queen is the most important bee in the hive. The success of the colony, and of your honey crop, depends largely on her performance, so it is important to ensure that your queen is not getting too old to keep the colony up to strength. Regular replacement of queens (at least every other year) should be on every beekeeper's action plan.

Some beekeepers find it helpful to mark the queen with a coloured spot on her thorax (middle section) but this isn't just so that she will be easier to find. It is also a code. There is an internationally recognised colour code for marking queen bees, and from this code beekeepers can tell the ages of their individual queens.

This is how it works. Five different colours are used in turn in a five year cycle. Five colours are enough because queen bees do not usually live longer than five years. White is used for years ending 1 and 6, yellow is used for 2 and 7, red for 3 and 8, green for 4 and 9 and finally blue for 5 and 0.

So 2001 was a white year, 2002 was a yellow year, 2003 red, 2004 green and 2005 blue. Then we started the colours once more. Last year ended with a 6, so queens raised last year should be marked with a white dot. Queens raised this year, 2007, should be marked yellow.

There are various mnemonics to help jog your memory. A good one is: Will You Rear Good Bees. The first letters of the words are the first letters of the colours in the right order: white, yellow, red, green, blue. Then all you have to remember is 1,2,3,4,5. Easy when you know how.

Save time and improve your honey crop in 2007.