Cheeky Blighters!

Last week we moved a couple of hives to a new location elsewhere in our meadow. The colonies in these hives have grown quickly this Spring and all of a sudden there were far too many bees flying close to the house for my comfort.

A Surprise Visitor!

At this time of year we are usually very busy running our beekeeping taster sessions and other courses but, due to the current lock-down situation, we have had to postpone those. Our work as beekeepers doesn’t stop though, and we still have the challenges of ‘swarm season’ to face, as well as ensuring our colonies are healthy. We also keep an eye out for predators and pests, and have the perennial debate over the issue of whether or not to put out hornet traps. 

While Asian hornets are an acknowledged threat to honeybees, and in our experience a very real problem, we also are keen to avoid killing any ‘innocent bystanders’

Hello and Goodbye!

Thanks to the current virus pandemic, 2020 is turning out to be quite a different year from the one we had planned, but our bees are carrying on as if nothing has changed. Lockdown caused by adverse weather is the only thing they are experiencing and, like us, when they can get out, they do!

Spring is always an exciting time of year; we’ve got our colonies through the winter, we’ve found the queens and checked that they are laying, and we’ve seen pollen being brought in by the foragers. We’ve noted how rapidly the numbers of bees are increasing – it’s still amazing to see a baby bee hatching, pushing its way out of a wax cell, and to see newly-emerged fluffy pale drones wandering around on the frames. It’s now that we have to pay attention to what the bees’ plans are, and to keep an eye open for queen cells, and if the bees are planning to swarm and propagate the colony, or replace the queen without dividing the colony.

Honeybee swarm hanging 5 metres up!

Typically, if we judge the bees are planning to swarm, we try to beat them to it, and split the colony so that we don’t lose the majority of them. I swear our bees wait until our backs are turned and then they’re off! There they are, quietly getting on with the business of constructing comb, storing nectar, generally moseying around – we say ‘hello’, don’t spot the queen cell (usually covered in bees) and the next thing we know, they’re cheerily waving ‘goodbye’ as they thrum up into the air. Well, this year we were ready for them, and within a matter of days we went from six colonies to ten. During the current situation, beekeepers are allowed ‘out’ with the correct paperwork, and in the past fortnight we have been asked to collect four more swarms. We’ve seen queens in all of the swarms we captured, so now we just have to check that they are laying in their new homes….wish us luck!

Stay safe and enjoy your beekeeping. If you have any questions about bees, please call us or email us and we’ll try out best to help.

What is a bee's favourite take-away food?

When the weather isn't great, it seems unfair that bees have to go looking for their food when the rest of us have so many easier options... (well some options for those of us living in rural France!).  As Spring approaches though, things on the food front do change for the better for our girls and as more plants and trees start to come to life, the range of pollen and nectar available grows which means a varied diet and (hopefully) healthy young bees.

We have a challenge for the eagle-eyed this week!  How many different 'take-aways' are the bees bringing back to their hives where you are?  Or, how many different colours of pollen can you see on the bees' back legs, just flying around the garden?

You know when your bees have been ‘tanged’!

Firstly, Happy New Year to all!  We hope you had a chance for some relaxation recently and are as keen as we are to embrace 2020 with gusto :-)  To get the ball rolling, here's a first blog which was inspired by our swarm planning for this year... it's amazing what you can find!
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Winter is almost behind us, so we’re now looking forward to the challenges of the new beekeeping season. In no time at all the bees will be flying and, if all goes well, swarming. Despite careful checks and the utmost vigilance, everyone who has ever kept bees will have, at some point, missed a swarm. The noise bees make when swarming is incredible and unmistakeable, a large thrumming dark cloud, growing bigger and bigger as more bees leave the hive.

How was it for you?

Ok, so it's not quite year-end, but it's the middle of November and cold enough and wet enough to look back on 2019 and weigh up the year as a whole. Even though it happens every year, I am still taken aback in the autumn to realise that only a few weeks ago I was sweltering in my bee suit as I placed parasols over the hives to provide them with some shade from the relentless sunshine. How things change - it's 4c outside now, but two months ago we were harvesting honey in 32c!

The warm wet Spring meant that there was an abundance of forage (in this area, at least) for our bees. Our meadow was chock-full of the usual borage,

Cheapest is not always best

Whilst reviewing some of our old blogs (you can still find them here) and figuring out which, if any, to copy across to our new site, we came across this picture of a lovely colony of Ligustica bees that we removed from a window space.

Nearly a year on and the bees are doing fine in their new home but it reminded us of the state of the first new home we tried to move them into and on digging out that particular brood box this month, it looks even sorrier!

We bought 3 or 4 of these Dadant brood boxes as part of a 'special offer' deal from a supplier we no longer use and the old adage of getting what you pay for seems to ring true in this case. Purists will notice that the box is built with nails rather than tenon joints and from pine rather than age-old cedar, but those options make hives very, very expensive.  We hoped we had found a cheaper compromise between quality and price but some of the boxes now need some remedial work - after only one summer.

What you can see on the outside of the box is resin which seeped out of the wood, underneath the hive paint which was supposed to offer some protection. Evidently the wood wasn't as seasoned as it should have been, the sun was stronger than I think anyone anticipated here in the Charente last summer and lastly, the 'protection' in the hive paint wasn't up to coping with the previous two points!

After a winter in our storage room, the resin is solid and will have to be sanded off with some heavy duty disks or paper.  Then, I think we will leave this box along with it's offending partner, in a dry place and let it season for the whole of 2019 before re-painting ready for use in 2020.

So, we won't be looking for the cheapest pine hives we can find from now on. But neither will we be paying the exorbitant prices some 'craftsmen' charge for hives which are not sufficiently superior to justify the premium asked.  It's mid-market, high-review-score products for us from now on.  Although, the leaking pine resin did smell lovely :-)

We know many people make their own hives and if we had the time and the precision woodworking equipment, we'd probably do that too but it's just as effective (for us) to buy Dadant equipment ready-made.  That said, we will be building a bespoke Layens hive later this year ourselves and will share pictures as we go along...