My introduction to beekeeping!

I don't think I really knew it at the time but when I think about it my introduction to beekeeping really started thanks to Haslemere Educational Museum.  The museum has had a remarkable observation bee hive for as long as I can remember!  Not just single frames of brood and honey behind some perspex you understand, but a full blown hive with windows on all 4 sides.  You can remove any, or all, of the panels and get a really good look at what's going on inside. I was always fascinated by this.

When I was a kid the hive used to be housed inside the museum, nowadays it has it's own shed in the grounds.  You can while away many hours inside a warm dry shed and watch the bees come and go about their business.

A good friend of mine took her daughters to see the bees this year and they kindly took these pics for me to blog. The Museum is a brilliant local attraction and in 2012 won "The Telegraph Family Friendly Museum Award" or "Britains number one museum for families", as voted by families.  This is a big deal as it was voted No.1 from a not-so-short-list of 600!

All these amazing things we find out about bees and we let this happen...

I despair.  I really do sometimes.

As this article points out scientific data can be, and often sadly is, manipulated to suit the interests of polititians (and the major interest groups that fund them). It seems even the UK government (like all governents they are supposedly there to support the people) is paying no heed to the warnings being made about bee health.

When will a disaster be sufficiently significant for them to take action? Our bees are already struggling to cope against what are proving to be very damaging chemicals. Our urban areas are quickly becoming major sanctuaries for bees, let's hope we won't find they become the only habitat they can survive in.

Why bees behave differently

I always wondered what happened when you made a nuc...

If you remove young bees from a hive for example by relocating one or more frames of bees to a nuc box, the older bees on those frames will fly back to their original home, the donor hive.  So, you would therefore expect to have a surplus of older foraging bees in the donor hive.  I always assumed that some of these older bees went off and did some other jobs for a bit; at least until there were more new bees.  But I didn't know what actually happened. It appears it's all to do with patterns of chemicals that latch on to and regulate certain genes in the bees brains...

So here we have the answer!

BeeMatch.com...

Here's a neat idea reported in the Guardian the other day. If you're an aspiring beekeeper, or a beekeeper wanting to help or assist others then you can take a look at this map and see who is in your area. It was pos

OK, so this is an iniative from the UK but there's no reason why it shouldn't be adopted and applied elsewhere.  It's supposed to provide an outlet for people who want to keep bees but do not have the space, and for people who have space but do not have bees!

BeeMatch.com!  or something like that!  I hope it takes off.  Check out the map.

Vacation

This week my observation hive spent a week at Tillman Elementary School, in the attentive care of Helen Ermel's 3rd grade class.

The kids asked loads of great questions and wrote me some brilliant letters! Thank you guys!

We're already planning a spring break in the class in 2013!

Honey Harvest - Update

It's been a while since I last posted. I have treated my hives for mites and have lost two queens! Is my queen loss related to the treatment? I don't know, but My feeling is that it is. Next year I will be trying a different non-chemical method of mite management. My preference right now is to cage the queen, but this needs research.

Anyway last Sunday I took off the final supers from my hives at the gardens. Two supers yielded 35lbs (16kgs) of honey. That's a total of about 90lbs (40kgs) in total from one hive - I'm happy with that.

Soy overall haul for 2012 is 255lbs (116kgs) from 3 hives. Great going given the dry mixed up weather.

Honey Harvest!

I spent an excellent (and enjoyable Saturday and Sunday morning) harvesting my honey. It was reasonably hard work lifting the frames and picking away at the combs removing the cappings, but with the help of others (and a few beers) the time passed quite swiftly!

However, before I could enjoy myself and conduct all this fun stuff I had to go and take the supers off my hives. I first went to the Botanical Gardens and removed 3 supers on the afternoon of 4th July. What a nice way to spend the day you might think... I'd agree, if it wasn't 41C (105F) and I didn't have to do all that lifting and hauling around of the supers! I was soaked with sweat within minutes! The good news was that my girls didn't seem to mind me doing it!

While I was at the gardens I checked my nuc and found the "squashed" swarm cell was still in place but that the bees in the nuc had started to form a new queen cell. I removed this as I found the queen and I plan to combine the hives sometime later this week.

I removed 5 supers from my hive at home on Saturday morning; at 6.30am it was already about 30C (85F) and again it proved to be really hot and really unpleasant. by the time Sunday came and I had to remove my final 2 supers I really didn't have the appetite to get fully kitted up. Anyway, thankfully, the hot weather here broke on Saturday evening (daily highs had been over 38C for 10 days running) and it was a much cooler 20F (70F) at 6.30am. It was still hot but I managed to remove the supers easily enough. Who has a good idea for a refrigerated beekeeping suit?

Once again the honey from the three sources was quite different in colour and flavour. The Botanical Garden Honey being quite "strong", the honey from home "sweeter". To summarize:

Botanical Garden Honey = 24.5 kgs (54 lbs)
"Big" Hive Honey = 50 kgs (110 lbs)
"Small" Hive Honey = 22.5 kgs (50 lbs)
"Observation" Hive = 3 kgs (7 lbs) - from one deep frame.

Total = 100 kg (220 lbs)

Nice Job Girls!

The 2012 Haul!

My Motley Crew