Monday 30 April 2012

Working from home

So there I was, quietly getting on with stuff from work, which I can occasionally do from the relative comfort of the spare bedroom, when the doorbell rang.....
Mostly expecting it to be a delivery of an internet purchase I shimmied down the stairs and opened the front door.  Only to be surprised by the sight of a rather agitated bee keeper..


You see Peter across the road, has 6 hives already, and rather unexpectedly one of his hives had produced a swarm of bees.  In all probability his one very prolific queen had been busily laying and as the colony hadn't been able to get out and fly much in the last week, thanks to all the droughty weather we've been having.  So, thinking they were rather housebound the colony had set about producing a new queen and newly hatched she had rounded up some supporters and with their tummy's filled with honey they had upped and left!
Only to land in a garden 5 doors down the road
Enter the agitated bee- keeper


Agitated Bee keeper: " Great!  you're in"
Me: " Is there a problem?"
Agitated bee keeper: " My bees have swarmed, they've landed over the road, I daren't go and bring them home  - the wife'll kill me if I start a 7th hive......have you made up that hive hubby bought for your birthday?"
me: " errrr......er....er ..this is all rather sudden...... I thought I was best waiting for another season and practicing with the hives in the training apiary this year.... and er...er.  errr.. .. no I don't know where he keeps the hammer.."
Agitated bee keeper: " Never mind ...can you make 5 frames by this evening? - I'll lend you the other bits....."
me:  " err yes.....errrr  I guess so......"
agitated bee keeper:  " Great - see you at 7pm!"
And with that ...he was off....


When I started thinking about keeping my own bees I hadn't really thought through exactly how the bees would arrive.  I'd read some articles on bait hives so I suppose some part of me thought I'd just make a hive, bait it and hope.  But you can actually order colonies and starter colonies of bees, called nucs, short for nucleus.  With increasing awareness of the value of bees to both the environment and economy and the need to keep bees healthy and disease resistant there are now bee farmers and bee keepers who consciously seek to breed healthy, prolific bees for onward sale to bee keepers.  The very best of these people have waiting lists for their colonies and having been a bit slow to start to get my thinking hat on about this I'd missed the boat for this years available nucs so had only just booked a nuc for 2013 the previous Thursday.


But here was an opportunity not to be missed
Possible free bees in 2012!
All I had to do was get ready for 7pm

There's nothing like a deadline to focus the mind.


With only the commute downstairs from the spare bedroom to deal with I had nothing to hold me back from making frames as soon as the day's work was done...


I gathered all the pieces of frame...

I found the workbench from the garage - even I worked out hammering bits of wood together on a glass table wasn't a great idea...

Nearly there...... 
Even 'im indoors helped to ensure the deadline was met...
Then 7pm arrived and the box of bees was delivered by less agitated beekeeper..
There really isn't a microwave in that box - honest!
So how do you persuade 5,000+ bees to leave a cardboard box-  where they are so comfortable they've started making wax, to the hive ?
...By the simple use of a board and a cloth....
 You open the box and let natural instinct take over...  they will walk to the place that looks warm and dark and safe ... the hive...
The speed walkers reach the front door.....
 

It takes a little while...
 

Now has anyone see the Queen yet?
Watch carefully ...see if you can spot her walking in before I do....





A few stragglers needed a helping hand to get into the hive as it was getting significantly colder as the sun dropped, but all were eventually safely bedded in..

Now fingers crossed they stay and start making wax!

Saturday 21 April 2012

Honeycomb Heart

Today promised to be a typical April showers kind of a day so I wasn't really sure if we'd get to open he hives at the apiary as all.  I'm quite like a bee in that I don't much like to be out and about in the rain....so I was delighted when the showers held off long enough for a few hours bee keeping.

After last weeks "Shook Swarm" we were expecting to find the bees busy building honeycomb on the new frames ready for the queen to start laying in... early signs of bees in "strings" looked good ....

Some of them had been very busy and built some rather wonderful, if somewhat wasteful honeycomb shapes....

 Can you see the shape?

We also found an intruder the bees had dealt with!!
This is an invading bumble bee - she probably went in to rob a drop or two of honey - but she was dispatched with a sting and the covered in propolis - can't have been a nice way to go - but its certainly an effective way to deal with thieves

The day ended with a demonstration of "hiving a swarm".  A swarm had taken advantage of the warm weather earlier in the week and made a break from where they were but had happily fallen into a friendly bee keepers hands.  So - how to get them from the cardboard box into the hive???

The answer - shake them onto a plank of wood and let them walk in!



This is surely where the science of bee keeping meets the art of keeping bees - allowing the bees natural behaviour to work for you - they walk up and into the dark place that looks like a great home - hey presto - the swarm are in your hive!

Saturday 14 April 2012

Playing out with bees

The weather improved rapidly through the week so I had high hopes of being able to get my hands in a hive today.  :)  I wasn't disappointed!!


First of all - time to kit up.  There's nothing at all glamorous about a bee keeping suit, but it's suit up or be stung - so best to make the best of it - here I am happy to be suited and booted.  Yes the second least glamorous thing about bee keeping is Wellie boots, preferably not black as the bees tend to go for black clothing - being confused with a honey thieving bear is not something I fancied so I went for purple Wellies.  Just to be on the safe side.






As soon as we got the roofs off the hives it was clear the hives were full of thriving bees - there was honeycomb being built out of the crown board as the bees searched for more space and they'd even tried to build brood cells between the frames - sadly we pulled these apart as we opened the hives.




So on with the job in hand - to take out old brood frames that might be harbouring disease and the bees worst enemy - the varroa mite, and to replace them with fresh new frames of foundation wax.
So out with the old.....


And then shake the bees into the new brood box



Some of them took a while to settle into the new hive .....


Which left me with a few minutes whilst they calmed down to take a few pictures of a newly hatching baby bee....

What a lovely ending to a busy day...


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