If Summer comes can ... oh, it's gone again
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.
Labels: beekeeping, bees, blog from the barn, blogfromthebarn, chickens Stuffy Oakwood barn smallholding, colony collapse, honey, honeycomb
To Bee, or, maybe not, ... sorry
To Bee, or, maybe not, ... sorry
Once again, the bee season (our second) draws to a close, the hardworking little ladies of the Oakwood Apiary prepare for the winter so I thought I'd share a brief review of the season, our successes and as trendy educationalists would have it, not our failures but our learning points (which coincidentally, I've discovered through failing).
Things we've achieved, me and the girls
We've split the original hive into two and grown new queens, one of whom promptly and a little unkindly in my view, took half the second hive off on an adventure. Uncle David thinks he's discovered their new home, there's a colony in a hole in an oak in the wood, now that's not necessarily a bad thing, certainly for the planet, but did make it a bit touch and go for hive two (the plastic Beehaus) as it meant that we had to grow yet another queen to take over the management of the remaining 1/4 of the population, this meant that the Beehaus colony has been pretty much in recovery mode for most of the summer but they're now looking healthy and numerous enough to make it through the winter with a little bit of help from me, (sugar syrup to supplement their honey stores) and a bit of luck. The weakness of this hive results from two contributory factors, both my fault, I split them too early and then they swarmed, which I didn't see coming, this means that there was no surplus of honey from the Beehaus team but hopefully next year will be better, healthier, stronger and fruitful.
The original wooden-hived colony had a very strong year and produced a good crop of honey, but, (and we always knew there'd be a 'but' didn't we?), there are two types of beeswax foundation the beekeeper can supply to his or her bees. The bees build cells on the foundation and fill them with new bees, honey, nectar, pollen, depending on the need. Now, of the two types of foundation used for honey one has thin wire running through it which makes it robust enough to spin the heavy frames full of honeycomb and thus expel the honey, the other, unwired, is too fragile and is intended for the creation of cut-comb. As a novice beekeeper, I was unaware of the bees apparent preference for unwired foundation and gave them a choice, so although very productive I've only gleaned 4 jars of liquid honey, (enough, to be honest, to easily see the Barn through to next autumn) and around 15 pieces of cut comb, honey still in the comb, great on toast or with yoghurt. So another lesson learned and they'll not get the choice next year.
In the meantime, despite their evident reluctance, friends and family will be receiving little gift boxes of goldenly oozing honeycomb, if you can cope with the tiny amounts of wax, the honey is, to my taste, delightful.
So, as November commences the bees are making the most of late warmish weather and topping up their stores for the winter. I've treated both hives for varroa, a nasty parasitic mite that destroys colonies and I've put guards in place to prevent naughty mice from taking up residence in a nice warm winter retreat with a constant supply of sweet comestibles. I suffered a lot of mice damage to the frames in the wooden hive last winter and that's partly why one of my winter projects is the building of another wooden beehive, to which I'll transfer the strong colony next spring. That will free up the old wooden hive for cleaning and enable me to do some much needed housekeeping. I'll then transfer the Beehaus bees to the refreshed old hive and fit the upgrades supplied by the manufacturers to the Beehaus. Honestly it's worse than software (Windows, not Mac obv) Anyway, beekeeping wisdom is that one always needs a spare hive to address the swarming problem and I'm not keen to have more than two active colonies.
Right, that's enough for now, I'm in desperate need of a cup of tea, toast and honey. Definitely time to enjoy the fruits of my (and the bees) labours.
Labels: Beehaus, beekeeping, bees, blogfromthebarn, honey, honeycomb, oakwood barn stuffy, Omlet, omlet eglu smallholding
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.
