Let the season commence....

I've got a new bee suit and I'm determined to use it!!

The temperature hit 14'c a little after noon so the bees were out flying and it seemed the perfect opportunity to get into each hive and check that the queens had made it through the winter and are starting to get laying.

For me, there is also the additional job of clearing out all the remaining brace comb from my school girl error at the end of last year.

So.....no time like the present -  get on and scrape, chip and scoop all that excess brace comb off the top of the brood frames...

nearly gone....

It didn't take too long till I had a trough full of honey comb...

probably because I had some help from 'im indoors....

We had a visit from a Queen bumble,not my best picture ...but you kind of get the scale of her in comparison to the worker honey bees behind...

I remember reading somewhere that bumblebees are never more than 45 minutes away from starvation, being limited by the size of their stomach.  So I figure we can share some of this honey with her. (Isn't she magnificent?)

I've left the trough of honeycomb in the sunshine in the hope that every bee in the area comes and helps itself.  Then I'll be able to make something interesting from the comb.

oh - nearly forgot - yes it looks like all four of my queens have made it through the winter.  Actually only saw two of them but there are eggs and capped brood in all four hives, so I reckon the other two ran away and hid whilst I spring cleaned!

Urgent repairs....

There's only one thing worse than discovering there's a hole in your bee suit....

And that's discovering the whole zip round the hood has come apart during the last trip round the washing machine...

What a good job I've got a free morning and a box of good pins...

Now ....how am I going to sew it back on there securely?...

Ah yes, if in doubt squish the hood ....(this may have been the cause of the problem in the first place)

Right.... lots of small stitches to make sure there are no bee sizes gaps....

 

 

...and a chance to try out the new camera and its zoom and macro functions....not quite all in focus there....

Now about that original hole...

On second examination its nothing that a bit of darning....

and a funny bit of pretend measuring tape won't cure....

Bumble ...bumble....bumble......

I should say right at the start of this post that bumble bees are not at all aggressive, very rarely sting and are very easy to live alongside.  That said, if they decide to make a nest right next to where you need to be it can be very annoying to have to duck and dive past them as you go about your business and they try to go about theirs.

So it isn't unusual for honey bee keepers to get the odd call from worried members of the public wanting a nest moved...when that call comes from 'im doors boss ..there really is only one possible reaction.  It was move them or call in the pest controllers, who would simply kill off the nest and charge silly money for doing so.

I looked up the Bumble bee conservation trust website for some advice on moving bumble nests... only to find the advice is pretty much "don't".

Undeterred I shared out some spare suits to willing and curious helpers, and found myself suited and booted on Sunday evening and investigating a buzzing bird box at dusk....

After blocking the main entrance with some foam and the back with some cardboard and gaffer tape, and with a bit of screwdriver wiggling, and the brief application of a crowbar 'im indoors prized the bird box slowly from the wall....

I was then trusted to hold it carefully and safely (still buzzing) whilst the new site in the apple tree on the other side of the garden was prepared....

 

Having completed my holding duties to the required standard I was allowed the honour of placing the box in its super new location...

Facing back into the bushes they should be safely hidden away and no longer flying straight into the path of anyone walking down the garden....

Hopefully the few that were still flying when we moved the nest will soon find it again...

A weekend of hands, feet and lessons learned...

The weather forecasters are about to declare March 2013 as the coldest since 1962, and there has been nothing going on here to contradict them. :(  In fact there has been far too many days when this has been the view of the garden...

The whole weekend was forecast to be much of the same so I really rather fancied spending most of it like this...

But son #1 had a fun family fitness day at the school sports field to raise money for a very worthy local charity.  We checked Dad's email, we checked my email, we checked the school website AND the twitter feed.... not cancellation notification anywhere to be seen. So despite the temptation to simply mail them a cheque to assuage our conscience we wrapped up and headed out...

Only to get there and find a half frozen head of house turning folk away - Hoorah! for health and safety rules about wind chill! 

LESSON LEARNT:  Check son #1s email.

To be honest, I panicked about the temperature when I walked in.  "No time like the present to feed the bees," thought I...."whilst I've still got my coat on".  So I nipped out...I was only going to be a few minutes... no point changing into a bee suit....

OUCH!!!!

I know it doesn't look like much but it really REALLY hurt.

It was all my own fault. 

Really the hive should not be opened in inclement weather - and 0'c, which feels like -5'c has got to be inclement by anyone's standards. And what was I thinking by putting my hand in whilst wearing a black coat? - of course I look just like a bear nicking honey so I really do deserve to be stung  :(

LESSON LEARNT: Don't open the hive in cold weather

LESSON LEARNT: Wear gloves at the least and preferably a bee suit

LESSON LEARNT: Don't wear black.

Oh well at least there is nothing to stop me from enjoying an afternoon of ...

(Can you see the fire glowing in the back ground? - If I tell you that we last lit the fire about 12 years ago does that help put into context just how cold it has been?)

Sunday was a bit of a special day,  I'd volunteered to help at a bee-keeping stall at the RHS Wisley garden "grow your own event".  We had a fabulous day and you can read more about it here.

But ...oh my ....look at the state of my hand when I got home...

Honestly...my hand doesn't normally look like this... look! ...its even worse when you compare it to the other one...

 

So it was a trip to the local A&E for me :(
After a very dull and extremely cold three hour wait (thank heavens for Kindles) a very nice nurse practioner confirmed I'd got a cellulitis infection and needed some rather large antibiotics, full doses of antihistamines, ice and a sling to raise my arm to assist the drainage of excess fluid out of my hand.
I came home took my meds and went to bed.

LESSON LEANT:  clean any bee sting carefully.

Properly official

It seems I really am a fully fledged bee keeper!  My membership card for the British Bee Keepers association arrived in the post earlier this week,  my very own bee keeping suit arrived (plus a spare for anyone who wants to take a closer look in the hives next to me) and 'im indoors excelled himself with a "well done you" present...

This gorgeous sun catcher was designed and made by the very lovely bexbydesign.  Didn't she do well? Could there be a more perfect combination of quilting and bee keeping in a piece of glass?  I've been waiting for a decent sunny day to take its picture so you could see all those gorgeous honeycomb bubbles in the golden glass glow...but impatience got the better of me so here it is in the pale and dappled sunshine we had today.

There was no bee keeping school at the apiary yesterday as it was the annual open day so this weekend's bee keeping was entirely confined to my own hives.

Last week, in the spirit of pure hopeful optimism I'd put a super full of empty frames on top of the larger of the two colonies.  I hoped that just a little bit of warm weather and a few sunny days to encourage the flowers to bloom might give them just enough nectar to stimulate wax making and get them thinking about making some cells to store honey in, hopefully with more space to move around they'd also be less inclined to swarm and move on elsewhere.

As soon as I took the roof off  there were good signs of bees crowding together to make wax...

Sadly the frames at the very edge were only being walked on and investigated by a few stragglers.. no signs of wax making ...

But the next one in was already having wax drawn on it...

And the next one had not only had all the wax drawn out into cells but those cells were full of glistening nectar all ready to be evaporated into HONEY!!

And the next one was starting to be capped - that means the bees have evaporated at least 20% of the water out of the nectar and it is officially, properly HONEY 

Yup let me type that again - properly officially H-O-N-E-Y !!

By the time I got to the next frame I was positively giddy with excitement... A whole side of a frame of capped honey!!  The smell was AMAZING!

I was giddy with the smell!  And the possibilities of them managing to do all this in a week that wasn't great weather-wise when there is still the possibility of a few more weeks of honey making weather ahead of us sent me into a giddy spin!  Giddylicious excitement abounded! so much so that 'im indoors grabbed a spare suit and came for a look see...

 

... and provided a handy stopping off point for a couple of girls who needed a rest before the final flight home. What a gent!

And then there were two......

Its been roasting in London this week so I was incredibly happy when I managed to get away from the office a little early on Friday afternoon.  Little did I know that it was going to be a fortunate start to a great weekend.


I was quietly enjoying a mug of tea and reading the local paper when I got a text from a friend:


"There's a swarm of bees on a small tree at the end of the driveway at number x on the main road...are any of yours missing?"

Well mine haven't filled their hive yet so the chances of them being so crowded that they felt the need to swarm was pretty unlikely...but when it comes to bees (s)he who collects the swarm gets to keep the swarm.... I've NEVER collected a swarm ...but I know a man who has.  A quick jog across the road to explain the situation and the ghost-busters Swarm Busters swang into action.
They took a minute or three to find (note to self always triple check the house number) but there they were...

So a quick conversation with the householder to check she was happy for us to snip a branch off her tree (she couldn't have looked more relieved) and we suited up (traffic chaos ensued) and set about the job.

In the box.... easy as one, two,snip...

A few scouting bees continued to circle - hopefully they will find their way home and be accepted back into their original hive.  But these girls were coming home with me...

A quick trip to borrow another piece of kit from across the road-  this time a nucleus box, or nuc, and we were ready to home them.  Or we would have been if I'd have had more kit ready ... first I needed to steal some frames from my first hive so they would have something to get started on..

 

Then we rather unceremoniously tipped them in.... well it was nearly tea time and we were getting hungry..

 
And those that didn't fall into the nuc? ..well they just have to find their own way home, most of them walked in...

 

So my plans for a relaxing weekend of quilting in the sunshine appeared to be shot to pieces... well nearly .....'im indoors has rallied to the the rescue and is bravely going to take a very long shopping list for bee hive kit to the apiary tomorrow afternoon so that I can spend tomorrow evening (when I get home from quilting day) making hive number 2.