Honey time 2016

Yummy honey, a busy day extracting, expected count 180 half pond jars, not as many as I thought but not bad!

A tip from a beekeeper, never think you are invincible and never ever walk in your garden in bare feet, bee's have long memories, one got pay back for me taking their honey stinging me on the sole of my foot, ouch!

My dottir Robyn and her cousins Amanda and Ashlie, (plus about 20 others), at Heathrow departures this morning, bound for Kilimanjaro.
Last years honey contributed towards the amazing sponsorship Robyn raised in aid of  Dig Deep, http://digdeep.org.uk/  providing a drinking water supply to an African village.
Have a great time dottir, the bees send their love xx

It's that time again, gimme the honey

It's that time of the year again, my ladies have been working their little socks off and now the honey is ready to harvest.
On Thursday night I lowered the crown boards on my three colonies, put in the one way valves so the bees can't return to the supers and the honey.
Then last night, (a day later), I decided it was time to relieve the bees of their honey. A local beekeeper in training wanted to watch so she could do hers. I'm glad she did, one day wasn't really long enough, there were a lot of bees still in the supers. That said got the frames out and into some plastic crates.
Colony no 2 I decided to leave another day to clear as they are angry ladies.

My best guess is that hive one = 110-120 jars, hive three = 40 jars and hive two = 15-20jars.
Honey extraction today, jarring up next couple of days, exciting.

PS last years honey was sold for charity "Dig Deep", my daughter leaves for Kilimanjaro on Monday with a little help from my ladies.

The £160,000 jar of honey, bees truly are priceless!

My daughter showed me this picture last night and it got me thinking, ok this is obviously generated in the States but I wondered how about here in the UK? $182,000, no way!

Google time, starting with what I know:

- one jar of honey equals 250grams

- one bee makes a teaspoon of honey in it's life

- a bee lives on average 40 days in the summer, during that time they work every waking hour on varies duties from the day they are born;

• 1-2 days - Cleans cells and keeps the brood warm
• 3-5 days - Feeds older larvae
• 6-11 days - Feeds youngest larvae
• 12-17 days - Produces wax, Builds comb, Carries food, Undertaker duties
• 18-21 days - Guards the hive entrance
• 22+ days - Flying from hive begins, Pollinates plants, Collects pollen, nectar and water.
• Day 40 - Their work is done...........

Now what I needed Google for:

- one 250 gram jar equals 50 teaspoons of honey, sounded about right with my experience of eating a teaspoon a day.

- the minimum wage in UK is £6.70 per hour.

But the question is just how long is a bees working day? Not wishing to be too controversial most people who are exploited on the minimum wage often do a 12 hour day. A bee works their entire life so technically that's 40 x 12 hour days for one teaspoon of honey, a grand total of 480 bee hours for one teaspoon of honey.

480 bee hours at £6.70/hour equates to £3216.00. With 50 teaspoons in a 250 gram jar that's £160,800.00 per jar!

It was a great year for my bees, one hive produced 80 jars of honey, WOW an amazing £12.86M in bee hours.

BEES TRULY ARE PRICELESS!!!

  

 Ok I've been a bit lazy on the bee blog front, just as well my ladies haven't been as lazy.

Has been an eventful month, first I get back from a few days away to find this ball of bees waiting for me in the garden, I had suspected the previous week that Queenie was going to do a runner, but thought I had more time. Not too much harm done, collected swarm and dumped them into an empty hive I had. The first ever swarm I had collected, felt quite proud.

 Then a couple of weeks later on a Saturday morning I dropped a promised cucumber plant around to my neighbour, to be greeted with "What's that a peace offering?"

"Why what's wrong?", I say

"Your bees are in my garden again!"

Swarm number two, now I was in a hurry, so this wasn't a text book collection, it was raining too, I just swept them into a plastic box and snapped the lid on hoping I had the queen! The next problem was that I didn't have the right sort of starter hive to put them in, so just used an old travel box.

They are now in a neat little polystyrene starter hive that Thorne's, http://www.thorne.co.uk/  rushed out to me.

Just checked all three colonies today, all seemed to be doing ok, despite my best endeavours with the poly box when I managed to drop a load of bees on the ground! Don't think I dropped the queen! Time will tell.

All three Queens were laying, can my garden really support 150,000 bees? I think not, a new home/location required.

There is an old bee keepers saying, "A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon and a swarm in July isn't worth a fly", so I have two bales of hay, but fingers crossed will be a good year for honey :)

Promise I won't be as lazy with next post!

Could this be first sighting of an Asian Hornet in the UK, a friend in Warlingham Surrey just caught it in his garage. I really hope not, bees have enough stacked up against them at the moment! 

Just put a call out to the bee inspector

All things considered

Well they didn't do too badly in the end, despite the colony being queenless early on, then swarming managed a reasonable haul, could have been a lot more honey if I had put the right frames in the hive, hence the honeycomb this year! It's supposed to be nice with vanilla ice cream, will let you know :)

There's an outside chance I might get a bit more as one super is still on hive, but it's getting a bit late in the season and if I leave them what they have foraged it should tide them over until spring.

Well I'll Bee

ok ok, I know I haven't written much lately, to be honest had become a bit disenchanted with keeping bees, it just seemed to be open problem after another and with the demise of my queen a month or so back and the colony dipping into decline quickly I really thought I might give up this year.

Then surprise surprise I noticed the ladies were getting active, I checked hive a few weekends ago and they seemed on the up, still couldn't find the queen, think I have gone queen blind! Yesterday checked them again, wow had to be 50,000 plus bees in there and honey stores too, so have had to add another super box, who knows I could get some honey this year after two years of honey drought, an August harvest just in time for Steph and Russ's wedding, that's the wedding prezzie sorted :)

On the downside these are very aggressive bees, I now have to water my bonsai which are behind the hive in late evening, they've already strung me twice and chased me back into house on numerous occasions! She must be a violent queen, but I read somewhere that aggressive bees are productive bees, she can stay for this year, but next year there will be some regicide if she doesn't mend her ways!

2nd super added and beware attack bees!

It's bee weather and boy are they confused yet again!

The sun is out for the second day running and bees are busy, there are some flowers out there so will be food to find, but better to get them a quick feed of sugar syrup.

It's been to say the least another strange winter, very mild but wet, two things that can really mess up a bee colony, having lost my colonies the last two winters I was a bit nervous as to what I would find, allow though on the plus side we have had no cold snaps with snow, famous last words, plenty of time yet!

It's been ages since I have written a blog so thought should record the event by taking a time lapse video with my new app on I Phone.

What I want to know is it only me that is having strange experiences with their bees? Having left a super on of stores for them over the winter with no queen excluder in I was worried that the queen might have started laying in the super, but fears allayed super was almost empty of stores and no sign of queen activity, although they had started to create new honey stores up there. I bit of a risk but decided I will put queen excluder in when closing up hive, risk is that colony move up and leave the queen behind to get caught in a cold spell.

Once into the brood box was time to make sure I found the queen so I don't unknowingly leave the queen up in the super! Signs were looking good worker brood present, so she is laying, stores a bit on the light side so a feed definitely necessary, (mental note must pop to Waitrose for more castor sugar, only the best for my bees, or is it because I am lazy and Waitrose almost next door? Roll on Liddle being built nearby, ok mind is wandering!).

And then I found her, phew always a relief, and then SHOCK HORROR! I found another queen, why me? A quick double check and yes I have two queens, on frames next to each other, so are they both laying? Why hasn't one killed the other? This means they have lived all winter together side by side in harmony, queens just don't do that.

So now the conundrum what do I do? It's early March and we are far from clear of the cold weather, will one of them swarm and wreck another season on honey production? Should I split them and create a new colony, are they both laying? Why is life so complicated!

Hey ho at least it's interesting!

New queen in new home

New queen now in the hive, colony doesn't look strong, fingers crossed they accept her and she starts laying quickly, she's a mated queen so no delay while she goes out to visit the guys, all being well in five weeks time new worker bees will be foraging.