From A to Bee (26 page)

  Secondly, I have concerns about the feeding of my bees. I have been feeding them with gallons of sugar syrup – they have practically eaten all of the sugar from my local Sainsbury's – but I am unsure when I need to stop. My mind was telling me that they should draw out the entire comb in the brood box first and then perhaps I should remove the feed. This has been confirmed by my great bee friend Adam, who mentioned that you should feed them until you need to put the super on top. I will have a look at the frames tomorrow and if they have drawn the entire comb, I will pop one on top. Exciting!

  Lastly, I am worried about the closed floor that Adam put on. As I now know, when housing a swarm you should put a solid floor on the hive's open-mesh floor to give them a little more darkness while they are getting settled – which mine now appear to be.

  What I am concerned about is the changing of the floors and how I do this on my own, especially as Adam screwed this floor to the hive. I assume I have to remove the screws first from each side and that is where I get a slight pang of fear. I can't quite imagine picking up the hive filled with bees, placing it on the ground away from the stand, taking off the closed floor, replacing it with the open floor and then lifting the hive back on top. I just find the thought of this quite scary. Surely this is going to make them incredibly angry and I will find myself running towards the pond quicker than I can say beehive. How on earth do I swap the floors with just me for company and a herd of slightly prickly bees? More planning is needed before I do this, methinks!

Crikey, the day before Father's Day, which has taken on a whole new meaning since I became one. Not only is it a special day but I also think fathers need it simply to rest after the day before Father's Day. I had so many jobs to do today; put up shelves, put up pictures, fix cupboard doors, mow the lawn, plant out various plants and dig over the allotment. OK the last few were self-induced but I'm not so sure about the first lot of chores. I am sure my workload multiplied today just so that I could take the day off tomorrow. However, I did accomplish another hive inspection unaided. I have to say it is quite a different animal doing it on your own and you feel a lot more exposed without a shoulder to lean on. It all started with a very humorous lighting of the smoker and the afternoon took quite an unexpected turn, involving a tin of paint and a bee…

  I was only thinking as I went to light the smoker that I hadn't had any trouble lighting the thing and that I didn't know what all the fuss was about. As a result of then going through about nine matches with no success and finding that I was down to the last one in the box, I started to reassess my initial cockiness. Allowing the paper and cardboard to catch light to such an extent that you can throw a handful of the most delicious smelling cocoa shells on top to produce the smoke is not as easy as it had been before. This was fate – but fortunately the last match caught and I was away, confident that my smoke looked good and I would have no more troubles… little did I know.

  I was slightly apprehensive and interested to see what the bees were like again. Would they be as feisty? At least this time I knew my way around – it sounds funny but the first time you deal with a hive 'in anger' is a strange one. Small things like knowing how heavy the frames would be and how much pressure I would need to apply with the hive tool to separate the propolis and, ultimately, knowing the temperament of the bees were factors that I now knew a little more about.

  I tried a few different techniques of smoking the hive this time as recommended by a good bee friend, Bernie (@thechoirboy on Twitter). He stated I should smoke the entrance as well before going in. Having left them for a couple of minutes I lifted the roof and as Bernie had predicted there were none on the crown board, not as many 'hangers on' and the kamikaze lot didn't start up immediately either. Thanks, Bernie.

  I felt pretty confident going into this hive inspection as my smoke looked fantastic (if you are a beekeeper you will know what I mean by this). The smoke gently escapes the smoker in lovely wisps and folds like a cloud. It hangs around like smoke from a cigar; thick, white and just hanging there in the air. It really is a lovely sight.

  It was evident a few frames hadn't been drawn out therefore I decided to keep feeding them a little while longer. This means that I won't be adding a super this week, which is a shame as I would love to see if I could get this one jar of honey. Apparently a beekeeper will add a super when the brood box is filled with bees and all frames have been drawn out. This is the trigger for adding the super and it means that the bees are ready to start drawing out the super to deposit the honey inside. At the end of the season the beekeeper will then remove the super, which is where the excess honey is stored. I have this nagging feeling that I should be replacing the floor now that the colony is established but I still have my reservations on how to do it.

  As I worked my way through the hive I started to feel a little bit more in control than I did last week, though I was still not 100 per cent comfortable. I am conscious that I need to monitor what I see and record how many frames have bees on, how many have brood, how many have stores, etc. etc. However, my mind just tends to become a blur. I am concentrating so much on (a) finding the queen and (b) being careful not to hurt or maim any bees that I find while counting the frames and retaining the vital information. It's surprisingly difficult. I think this is perhaps a skill that you learn with experience or perhaps one that comes with swigging a little whiskey beforehand to calm the nerves. Though maybe that would aggravate them more, as I hear they don't like the smell of alcohol.

  It was all looking good; I continued smoking, as you are encouraged to do (though not always smoking the bees). I then got side-tracked as my attention was drawn to simply getting through the inspection. My smoker started to suffer and I realised that nothing was coming out. I struggle to describe what happened next as it was genuinely quite unique. It was as if the bees had sensed that my defences were down! Let me first say that I was told that bees do not, under any circumstances, like you even blowing on them (I had this reinforced earlier today when I let out a sigh of nervousness while looking closely at a frame and promptly saw about two hundred bees desert the frame they were on and head straight for my veil!). Here I was essentially blowing a mass of hot air on them with little or no smoke. If you can imagine a scene from
The Lord of the Rings
with the orcs coming out of the woods; a few at first, and then, sensing the path is clear, they literally stream out of all possible gaps. This description is not far from what I witnessed today. There were a few on the tops of the frames and then suddenly as they realised (a) I had run out of smoke and (b) I had just annoyed a few of them with a hurricane-force wind directed straight at them, they all started filing out of the frames and on to the top. The buzzing sounds started to increase, which happened to be in direct correlation with my heart rate. Keeping calm, I just had to finish off the final few frames.

  I realised that I had again not seen the queen. Laura, Suzy's daughter, had mentioned to me during the week that I should be able to see Cleopatra quite easily, as the blue spot on her thorax is very noticeable. Therefore I can only assume that I have Nefertiti (incidentally they have now named their new queen Hatshepsut) but I just can't spot her. I am sure this is a combination of my eyesight being akin to that of a bat and also my lack of experience.

  Anyway, I rather anxiously put the hive back together again and tried to estimate what I had seen. I am pretty sure that I have bees covering at least seven frames and have eggs and larvae in at least six of those. I remember seeing sealed brood on about three frames which means I should have an interesting inspection next week. My colony will have multiplied considerably, I would have thought. I am looking forward to that. I learned one major lesson today, though: keep your smoker smoking!

  Many people describe beekeeping as relaxing and totally absorbing. The latter I can agree with, but the former is yet to be accomplished. I am sure it will be in time but I am still finding it pretty scary each time I enter the hive. Even so, I felt pretty pleased with myself as I left the hive, followed by about twenty bees wanting to make sure I was going.

  In the afternoon, among many of my pre-Father's Day jobs, I sneaked in one of my own, to paint a couple of doors. My main target was the Man Shed door. It had obviously been painted before but it looked more than a little distressed – as if a bear had been using it as a scratching post for the last year. Therefore I went to paint it; but it was about 10 feet from the hive I had inspected only an hour earlier.

  I thought an hour would be plenty of time for the bees to have calmed down but as I started painting, I got attacked; they must have remembered me. The thing about bee attacks (that does sound a little extreme, but at the time that is what it feels like) is they are rather sudden, you never know it is about to happen. Therefore, in this instant, as I had a paintbrush in one hand and a tin of paint in the other, a bee made a beeline for my ear and kept on flying at me.

  A saucepan in your hand is one thing but a full tin of paint and a paintbrush is quite another. Off I went (I have a planned escape route now) but this time to dire consequences. I was desperately trying to keep the tin of paint still while waving foolishly with my other hand complete with paint-covered paintbrush. Stupidly I should have remembered that bees are attracted by movement but this all goes out of the window when you have no veil for protection! It was also pretty stupid to be waving a paintbrush around. I was covered. Paint in my hair, paint on my clothing, paint on the mangetout and pumpkins. Paint everywhere. At least my escape route worked and I was unscathed. Suffice to say, that 'man's job' can wait a while longer!

  I therefore got on with building my fridge-freezer of a Beehaus. Despite there being more pieces than I initially thought, I have to say it was a joy to put together given the glorious weather. It was like constructing a Lego kit and it all slotted in place very easily.

  Jo, Sebastian and I were just lazing around in the garden as I took my time over building it. A couple of cold beers were shared and the garden enjoyed. There is something about lying on the lawn on a summer's day, shoes and socks off with your toes enjoying their new-found freedom amongst the newly mown grass, and sipping an ice-cold beer. It really was bliss, though it was just slightly strange to have this sparkly Beehaus next to us. Still, once it was built, I thought it looked fantastic and couldn't wait to have it next to my traditional National hive. I will move the Beehaus into position tomorrow I think, and enjoy today for what it is. Loads of bees are flying around, incidentally. I wonder if any of them are mine.

So… you can get stung in the eye.

  I had always thought this was a fallacy as part of my initiation but seemingly not, as I have found out at my association training tonight.

  It was the most glorious evening to be beekeeping and was my first evening at a new apiary for the Reigate Beekeepers. They have been in the process of moving to a new apiary for some time now and it was worth all the effort they have put into it. It was a stunningly beautiful sight. There are about ten hives now in total, all set out in a large circle measuring about thirty metres wide, which makes for quite a spectacle and a great training ground as there is ample space to move around. It is in the most glorious grounds surrounded by trees and meadows. There really couldn't be a better setting.

  I haven't been for a couple of weeks and so it was really nice to meet up and get down to business with our regular hives. It was refreshing to deal with some calm bees. They seemed so relaxed compared to mine and it was a joy to handle them; I even considered picking one of them up but that thought quickly passed.