“Keeping a diary” seems to be something that most people
have done, in one way or another, at some point in their lives. It’s usually as
angst-ridden teenagers that we scribbled down incredible insights (hands up
those who admit to identifying ever-so-slightly with Sue Townsend’s Adrian
Mole, aged 13 and three quarters). Those diaries were always supposed to be
secret, but as we got older we didn’t have the time or inclination to retain
the habit. Perhaps social media, with its instant access and global reach, has
replaced the traditional form of diary-keeping, but there is definitely still a
place for old-fashioned observation in the world of beekeeping. Fictional
diaries such as ‘The Diary of a Provincial Lady’ (E M Delafield) and ‘Diary of
a Nobody’ (G&W Grossmith) are amusing and tell a good story, dealing as
they do with the comings and goings of ‘ordinary people’, whereas Samuel
Pepys’s Diary and Daniel Defoe’s ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ are informative
and useful in helping us understand life in a definite place and time. The
‘diaries’ or records kept by scientists are even more so, and this is where the
link with beekeeping comes in.
When you start your beekeeping life, you may only have one
or two colonies and so it will be fairly
easy to remember what’s going on, when
and where. Having said that, we have been known to mis-remember things e.g.
which queen bee is in which hive, even when there are only two of them! As time
goes on, and as the number of colonies rises, remembering becomes more
difficult, and so we urge people to get into the habit of record-keeping right
from the start. Records are not just for checking what you did last time you
did a hive inspection, but they are essential when you want to look at
performance – colony build-up, productivity (bees and honey), resistance to
disease etc.
