Its funny isn’t it. You start feeling a little confident over the winter time. You sit there each day putting some of your own honey on toast in the morning with a nice mug of coffee and you come to the conclusion that it is all alright and that beekeeping is relatively straightforward. It was my first year last year and so I was feeling pretty confident going into this year safe in the knowledge that I had one year under my belt and a wealth of experience……then the season starts again and you realise you will forever be learning.
In the three weeks I have seriously been putting my beekeeper veil back on this year I have come to the conclusion that I will never know all there is to know and that the learning curve will keep on growing! You realise just how much there is to learn about this fascinating topic. Read the rest of this entry »
My god. The weather has been gorgeous these last few days and as a result the bees have been very very active. Quickly popped up to the hives yesterday and there was a lot of activity going on. Pollen was being brought in by the bundle. Looked rather funny at points as it looked as though the bees had pollen the same size as their bodies attached to their legs! They found walking difficult as they landed on the entrance to the hive – just as well they didn’t have far to go! Read the rest of this entry »
So the time has come for feeding my bees in Spring (or thereabouts anyway!) and so I had looked at the research. Appartently feeding bees with sugar syrup is a bad idea this early in the year because the syrup can freeze. Therefore Bakers Fondant was the recommended feed for bees. One slight problem however was not having the slightest clue what bakers fondant actually was.
As it turns out it is basically icing that goes on the top of cakes (as you can see from the pictures) but is appartently the best for feeding bees in Spring. So I did a little bit of research (as well as visiting various supermarkets and asking around with the response of several blank faces……fondant for bees? You’ve got to be kidding…..) and found that a great place for fondant (in the UK) was Bako which is essentially a wholesaler of baking products. Read the rest of this entry »
So the winter is upon us and the gardening and beekeeping world is shutting down. Its funny, I have a mixture of slight melancholy about it. Part of me is sad that it all now slows down, the garden doesn’t look as nice as it did several weeks ago, the bees are less active and are all tucked up trying to keep Queenie warm (at a constant 35 degrees) and yet there is also the other side of me that is a little bit happy about it all. It is the tidy up time (I know, I know, the fashion at the moment is to leave the garden relatively undisturbed to allow wildlife to thrive but I really struggle with this) and the beds start to look nice again without all the rather sad looking dead plants which were once proud to fill the beds. Read the rest of this entry »
When I first stated beekeeping I didn’t have a clue. I thought you simply put a beehive at the bottom of the garden andthen simply drained the honey out of the side every so often from one of those beer tap type systems. I presumed beekeepers dressed up for a little bit of fun making out it was more serious than it was and felt it was more like a secret club of white boiler suited, bearded, morris men liking men over 50. How wrong could I be and especially when you consider you actually have to feed bees. Read the rest of this entry »
So D Day. Two major events were happening today. Firstly it was the rematch between me and my traditional hive. They won last week and I had to retreat but narrowly avoided a mad dash into the nearest pond. With my pride hurt I had taken stock and today was the day. Secondly it was also the day that I was due to open up the Omlet Beehaus for the first time since the nucleus was transplanted. Two things I was interested in here. Firstly had they settled okay and was the queen laying okay and secondly, as I had only transplanted “standard” frames into a 14*12 box what was going on with the extra space they had at the bottom of the frames. I was actually nervously looking forward to it.
Its pretty horrible outside today after having three days of absolutely stunning weather. In a way it is quite nice as it means that firstly the garden gets watered for you and secondly it gives me a little bit of time to ponder things. With Sebastian put to bed I have time to reflect on what it is I have done this last week – as predicted it has been an exciting one. There is one problem however, I have no real memory of what it is exactly I have done with the bees. Now this isn’t as daft as it sounds. I know I went to get the bees exactly 8 days ago and that I messed up pretty bad in giving them the wrong sugar but aside from that I cannot remember exactly what I have done. I knew this would happen and so today I did some rather exciting….. Read the rest of this entry »
The bees seem pretty hungry I have to say. In only 24 hours they have been through 1.5ltrs of sugar syrup. Now that seems a lot to me but apparently this is a good sign (as is flying with pollen sacs which I have also seen) and you apparently just have to keep feeding them. Therefore I gave them another 2 litres this morning. It will be interesting to see how quickly they get through that as well. There was one event today however which made me realise I have a long way to go in feeling completely comfortable around the bees. Read the rest of this entry »
I thought I would go and check on the bees this morning just to see how they were getting on. I also noticed that they had got through a lot of the syrup that I gave them yesterday morning. Therefore I felt I needed to give them a little bit more.
Its funny isn’t it. You start feeling a little confident over the winter time. You sit there each day putting some of your own honey on toast in the morning with a nice mug of coffee and you come to the conclusion that it is all alright and that beekeeping is relatively straightforward. It was my first year last year and so I was feeling pretty confident going into this year safe in the knowledge that I had one year under my belt and a wealth of experience……then the season starts again and you realise you will forever be learning.
