I am, oh gentle reader, acutely aware of the responsibility I have to you, my adoring and adorable public and I've a few areas where, let's be honest, I owe you updates as we trip, you and I, hand in hand through this delightful, and much delayed Surrey summertime.
The delay of summer is key to this particular post, an update on the bee situation here at the barn. Despite struggling valiantly through the winter you will recall that our little chums fell foul of a false spring and shuffled in their thousands off this mortal coil. I took the opportunity to do some beehousekeeping and I cleaned, repaired and refurbished the hives with fresh foundation (the beeswax basis of their building and honey storage).
I've had a colony on order from some chaps in Gloucestershire but they were suffering, as we all were from the weather induced delays to the start of the serious beekeeping year. In the meantime I'd established a 'bait hive'.
I'd collected all the manky old frames and foundation in a hive base (a box basically) and stuck that up on the roof of one of the barns.
The thinking here is that if a wild colony or more likely another beekeeepers bees decide they're a bit overpopulated, or they need to refresh their queen then half the colony and the old queen skedaddle and look for a new place to live. Putting a smelly old hive in a high place makes it an easy bit of house hunting for the bee estate agents and much to my surprise my bait hive collected a swarm about a week before I was due to collect the new colony from Gloucestershire.
So, in short order I was making a precarious dusky ladder ascent and transferred an indeterminate number of bees, of unknown provenance and yet to be discovered temperament from the idyllic location they'd selected for themselves and moved them, despite their protestations, to a more convenient, for me, locale.
Then within a couple of days I delivered unto them their new neighbours, a thriving colony of rural bees of italian extraction. Thus far both hives seem to be responding well and thriving despite a hectic and stressful couple of weeks for your correspondent, still very much a tyro apiarist, acutely aware of how little I know and how much I need to.
Survival, likelihood of honey and all other considerations will depend on how well the ladies and I settle into our ongoing regime and how well they like their new waxy palaces, I'll keep you posted.
It's a countryside dilemma for me, I'm by inclination uncomfortable with the taking of life, (obviously I'd make an exception for folk who drive in the middle lane of the motorway) but I do enjoy a bit of shooting, the taste of game, I believe that as a cook I should be prepared to eat what I kill, and kill what I eat ( this works surprisingly well for pheasant and partridge shoots where I rarely manage to hit more than a couple of birds on a good day). But I did go through a vegetarian/Buddhist phase in my twenties, (yes really) being at one with all life and I still feel a little uncomfortable taking a life be it vermin, (rabbit, rat, squirrel, TV presenter, that sort of thing) or game bird, I can do it, I do, but there's a certain undeniable discomfort.
On the other hand, over the past three years or so, I and many of my friends and family have enjoyed the superb eggs produced by my chickens. However as is often the way the local vulpine population have equally, on occasion, enjoyed my chickens. I've invested heavily in replacement chickens, wire-netting, bird-netting, infra-red camera, cement, fenceposts, stones, blood, sweat and tears, I've done fox repelling, fox proofing, fox scaring and since our local vixen has discovered that she can bite and wriggle her way through chicken wire I've spent many joyful evenings cold, wet and irritable hiding in the woods with a twelve-bore on the off-chance.
After startling the fox a week or so ago with her jaws on one of my birds, a very close call, pure chance and a lucky escape for the black hen, I spent an hour or so chatting to some chaps in Germany (good practice of my very minimal German language skills, (basically Würden Sie bitte Englisch sprechen) and I selected and ordered a fox trap.
Inevitably once Paypal had taken my €uros and my new German chums had dispatched the item I happened to glance out of the window toward the chicken run as I was off to bed and spotted the tell tale reflection of fox eyes in the darkness. I knew she'd be well away by the time I was booted and and armed but ever the optimist, grabbed wellies and weapon and headed out. Madam fox had, for once, miscalculated and as I approached, Nemesis in a ski-jacket, she was still trying to wriggle through the wire. She'd jumped in from the top of the fence through the bird netting but escaping that way was too much of a leap for her. Bad day for Mrs Fox and I dispatched her as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Inevitably more foxes have appeared at the Barn, they're territorial and if you remove one, the gap gets filled, the occasional night time yipping continues unabated but the new intake have not yet worked out the vixenish methods for coop entry, I'm sure it's just a matter of time. The trap has arrived from Germany and is set up and baited (had a tin of pilchards sitting in the larder for way too long) but recent video capture suggest to me that caution prevails for the moment and the fox I've seen on the video below looks too damn wary and frankly too damn big to get in the trap.
We shall see.
I felt a little uncomfortable taking out Mrs Fox, after all, she was just doing what a fox does, but she has taken the lives of eight of my birds over the years so I think it was about her time, I'd spent a lot of effort making it as hard as I could for her and she persisted.
Bee update, honey, health and Her Majesty's inspectorate of beekeepers...
It has, gentle reader, been too long, do I have excuses for my lack of blogging, of course I do, are they credible, do you care? Probably not, so, in the style of an ineffectual liberal democrat party leader I shall simply, and sincerely, apologise, and get on with the job at hand. Today we shall be talking about honey, yes indeed the hardworking team in the Oakwood hives have, bless their little yellow and black socks, been industrious (which does kind of go with the job description 'bee') and surprisingly productive. Why surprising? Well it's been a bad summer for bees generally, lots of rain, occasional cold, minimal sunlight, very little blossom staying in place in storm-wracked orchards. My girls however seem to have thrived. I was planning on leaving them alone, to weather the summer and winter as best they could but beekeeping and cycling chum Ian suggested that it might be worth having a look, he's very wise, sure enough, 10 frames of capped, golden honey ready for the thieving. Now, the extraction process is not a complicated one but there are a number of things that can make it easier. The caps that the bees place over each morsel of honey are cut off, the frames are loaded in pairs into a bucket fitted with an ingenious manually operated spinning mechanism which, in theory, with a lot of effort from the beekeeper, spins the golden harvest toward the walls collecting in a pool of sweet goodness at the bottom. You then take out the frames with the beeswax and cells intact and jar up the honey.
Simples yes? No. That only works if you've used the right sort of foundation, thus giving the bees a strong wired base on which to construct their honey stores. If, like me. you made the mistake of putting unwired foundation in, you end up with a waxy, honey melange as the spinning throws everything out of the frames. It's not the end of the world but it is the start of a three stage, very messy, filtering process which covers the floor, the very helpful brother, the walls, some of the ceiling, much of the conservatory, any passing family or animals and all furniture within 20 metres with sticky, stubborn goodness. Despite the tough lessons learned and the rivers of honey wasted through my incompetence, mischance and the sheer bad design of much beekeeping equipment we did manage to extract about 25 lbs of some rather lovely honey, to be given to family and friends as presents, and to flavour my occasional toast and porage. I do owe an enormous debt of gratitude (and a couple of jars of honig) to mein deutsch bruder Chris who ably assisted me through the whole honey extraction process, to, as they say, a very sticky end.
I was contacted shortly after this glutinous marathon by a lady from the government who'd spotted my hives whilst checking up on a neighbouring farm and was looking to inspect my girls to ensure an absence of horrible bee diseases. Having just done the extraction I was pretty sure they were in good shape but despite my general antipathy to any form of governmental interference I arranged a visit and a very nice lady turned up. She was obviously very experienced and, suited up, the pair of us went through the process of checking the health of the bees, the good news is that my little apiary is home to a very health load of bees, she was very helpful and full of advice but she did get stung once and I naturally enquired "how often does that happen"? apparently "pretty much every day," good grief get another job woman!
So despite the weather, it's been a good year for the Oakwood bees, the more healthy hives there are the better for our fruit and veg health and emboldened by success (truthfully it's all down to the bees, Ian the bee man, Chris the honey king and a little bit of me) I've just ordered a new queen and starter colony for next spring to populate my third hive.
... an aimless wander through the dusty and moth-eaten corridors of a once beautiful mind, alternating between grumpy optimism and cheerful misanthropy...
Ramblings from the dusty and neglected corridors of a once beautiful mind, alternating 'tween cheerful misanthropy and grumpy optimism, enjoy, or enjoy not, as you wish ...
I am, oh gentle reader, acutely aware of the responsibility I have to you, my adoring and adorable public and I've a few areas where, let's be honest, I owe you updates as we trip, you and I, hand in hand through this delightful, and much delayed Surrey summertime.
I've had a colony on order from some chaps in Gloucestershire but they were suffering, as we all were from the weather induced delays to the start of the serious beekeeping year. In the meantime I'd established a 'bait hive'.
So, in short order I was making a precarious dusky ladder ascent and transferred an indeterminate number of bees, of unknown provenance and yet to be discovered temperament from the idyllic location they'd selected for themselves and moved them, despite their protestations, to a more convenient, for me, locale.
