Bills Bees

03/06/2022

Looking good !

03/06/2022

It has been a long time since I have posted on Bills Bees - lif has just been a bit hectic! Bill is away at college, now, leaving me to do all things bee related - but happy to report that all is well in the hives. Looking forward to doing my first solo honey extraction at the end of the summer.

13/07/2020

Why do bees swarm? It’s a question we have been asked a lot. Watching honey bees pour out of a hive in their thousands and then forming a great swirling tornado is a spectacular sight - but can be intimidating and scary if you don’t know why it is happening. Swarming bees are relatively harmless, and it is a perfectly natural process. A normal honey beehive will survive the winter with somewhere around 12,000 bees. The queen starts laying in January with the purpose of building up the workforce to about 50,000 bees to ensure maximum productivity in the summer months. When a hive (either in the wild or belonging to a beekeeper) is running out of room to store honey the bees know it is time to leave and find a new nesting site. As beekeepers, Bill and I have to keep an eye out for this, and provide an extra honey box to increase their storage space. Preparations for swarming start about a week prior to the event. The queen will have laid fertilised eggs in queen cells (the picture I shared in my earlier post), and the workers feed them. These cells are then capped and sealed off and the queen is ready to leave the hive with about half of the workers to set up a colony elsewhere. In the run up to the swarming, scout bees will have been inspecting other potential nesting sites. Once the swarm leaves the hive, it will attach itself to a nearby bush or tree (or car or chimney or......). The scout bees will inspect the sites they have found and return to the swarm. They dance on the swarm giving them information about potential sites - how far away, which direction, how high up, how big - it really is an amazing bit of choreography! The swarm will come to a consensus, indicating one distance and one direction - and off they go. So, if you see a swarm clustering somewhere, they are likely awaiting a decision as to where to relocate to. As beekeepers, we are very happy to help relocate them to one of our hives - but unless they are causing you a problem, they are likely to move on very soon - unless your eaves look like their new residence! Swarming happens between the end of April and the end of June - and if you ever get a chance to watch one, they are amazing! Local friends, if you would like a socially distanced meeting with our colony, please contact me directly and we can oblige - always happy for friends to meet them - but please keep the location a secret, because sadly, theft is a real problem.

12/07/2020

I have been asked to write some more factual stuff about bees - if this doesn’t interest you, please scroll on by - I know it’s not for everyone! Bill and I are still learning - so keep asking questions, as it helps us!
Did you know, the honey bee is one of the oldest forms of animal life still in existence from the Neolithic age. In a museum in NYC there is a fossil of a tiny piece of bee, preserved in amber which is over 80 million years old!
I mentioned our queen in my earlier post, and the fact that we have a newly hatched majesty in our hive! When she emerged from her queen cell, after a few days she flew away - this Is normal behaviour. She needs to fly quite a distance to locate the drones. She would have first circled the hive to make sure she could locate it on her return. She would leave the hive alone, and would have been gone for about 15 minutes. During this time she would mate with 15 to 20 drone bees. Her pheromones will only attract the drones if she flies above 6 metres. Each drone waits its turn, then flies up behind her and mates with her. As each drone completes mating with her it’s body will rip apart from the effort and it dies on the spot. Grim, isn’t it?! The next drone takes over and so on. Her time outside the hive is dangerous because of predators and the risk of bad weather, so the queen makes one flight only. The queen is such a vital part of the colony. It is her genetic make up, along with that of the drones she has mated with, that determine the size, quality and temperament of the colony. I hope our new queen is placid and calm - that makes working with the colony so much more pleasant 🐝 🐝 🍯. If you have reached this far, thank you for reading!

12/07/2020

With just one hive this year, we only have a few jars of honey, and the going rate is £8.50 a jar in Bucks, so that is what we are selling it for. You have all been so supportive of Bill and his beekeeping adventures, and we would love to give everyone a jar. Your purchases will help fund another hive and colony for next year, so hopefully more honey in 2021!

12/07/2020

What a roller coaster of emotions you feel as a beekeeper! William and I check our colony regularly - we check for signs of disease or illness, we check for behavioural changes and we check there are no queen cells. Spotting a queen cell mean they are raising another queen, and they are likely to swarm. However, as we discovered, sometimes a queen cell can be a positive. About 4 weeks ago, we noticed there was no brood ( baby bees or eggs). Disaster! (Or so we thought). We couldn’t spot the queen, and deduced that she had left (or died). Still novices after 4 years, I sought help on a beekeeping) forum, and called our mentor, who was very helpful and advised ‘re-queening’ (buying a new queen and introducing her to the colony) or embrace ‘natural bee keeping’ and see if nature would take its course. Favouring the second option, as buying a new queen is expensive....we waited. A honey bee lives for around 6 weeks, so we knew that the colony would shrink quickly and finally die out if there were no young bees soon. We had spotted a queen cell a few days earlier, and rather than destroy it, we left it - eventually, it was an open cell, which meant a new queen had hatched. A queen hatches on day 16, is mature on day 20, and flies off on day 27 on her mating flight. So we waited. We continued waiting, and every time we did a hive inspection, we were disheartened to see no brood comb. Finally, this week, we found she has returned and is laying - we have brood comb aplenty, and the bees are once again calm and happy (can a bee be happy? I think they can!) So - the ups and downs of our lives as apiarists! For anyone who is interested, the pic is the queen cell 😀

23/06/2020

22/06/2020

Excited........!!

31/05/2020

Bill and I had some visitors to the hives this week - Nikki and Holly joined us on an inspection to learn a little more about bees and their habits. There was a piece of brace comb attached in a tricky spot, so we removed it and had a taste of the honey - it was delicious. Bill gave some to Holly to take home - and the following day she called round with some honey soap she had made with it. It is amazing, smells fabulous and is completely natural. What's not to like? Thank you so much Holly x

09/05/2020

This lovely weather is super for Bill’s Bees! Despite lockdown, we are managing to tend to them regularly (probably more than usual, if we are honest!) The colony has grown, and is now a really healthy size, and the workers are bringing in lots of pollen. Some pics of the flowers around the hive area.....and some pigs that are there, too! 😀

04/04/2020

The sunshine has made me - and our bees very happy! Look at the pollen they have collected!

22/03/2020

Fortunately, social isolation doesn’t mean we can’t visit our bees, as they are so far removed from any people, we can keep a 2 mile radius from others, never mind a 2 metre one! With the world going slightly mad at the moment, it is a peaceful haven to visit. Bill and I are delighted to announce that our colony have survived the winter, the woodpeckers, the badgers and the wind. We have a thriving colony, with a laying queen and brood is already visible in the frames. A simple thing, but to us it is huge. last year, we lost all three colonies, and Bill couldn’t afford to replace them. When we chose not to harvest any honey from this hive, it meant funds weren't forthcoming - but it has worked out for the best, because we have helped them overwinter. It was warm today. The red kites were circling high in the sky, the primroses were peeping through the undergrowth, and there is blossom on the trees. Even the blackthorn, so loved by Bills Bees, is showing signs of life ( as are the sloes picked from the bushes in the autumn and flavouring mums gin - but we won’t mention that!) 😀 onward and upward. We may be able to buy another colony this year, but we will continue to nurture these beauties, and see what honey they can provide. This time last year, Bill was in the selection group for the BBKA trip to Slovakia. Sadly, this years event has been cancelled because of ‘that virus’. We hope that this summer, we can help our little colony thrive, and be able to harvest honey in the autumn!

01/01/2020

One beekeeping year has ended, and another one has begun. We started off 2019 with a perished hive, which was majorly disappointing. We still have one colony, which has been tucked up for the winter since early November. We have protected from the woodpeckers this year - we learnt from last year’s problems! We went to give them their Christmas dinner (we put food on the hive for them over the winter) - and there is evidence of a badger having been interested in the hive - this is worrying, as a badger could easily knock over the hive (despite the large rock on the top to keep it stable), so Bill and I need to keep a close eye on our buzzies! We harvested no more honey this autumn - they are a small colony, so to deplete their food stores would have been the wrong thing to do. Keep your fingers crossed that they manage to survive the weather, the woodpeckers, the badgers - and whatever else is thrown at them!

15/06/2019

An early harvest.......3 jars for sale. Collect from 17 Poles Hill. Unlabelled - but harvested this week. Half pound jars £4 - the slightly larger one is £5.

13/06/2019

Only a few weeks to go until Bill goes to Slovakia. Shame they don’t need any additional adult help on the trip!

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) team for the International Meeting of Young Beekeepers in July has been chosen.

13/06/2019

This is one of Bills two team mates going to Slovakia with him next month

Natalie Phillips got involved with beekeeping in Liverpool to help the environment.

13/06/2019

In case any one is in London in July! However, if you are local to Bills, feel free to contact me and come and have a look at what we do with our bees! 🙂

One of the worlds most famous shopping destinations in London, Carnaby Street will be renamed Carnabee Street for Bees Needs Week this year 8-14 July

11/06/2019

I read something yesterday that I thought I would share with you. Years ago, bee keeping was something many rural families in Britain did. There were many traditions and much folk lore surrounding them. One such tradition was that of ‘telling the bees’. Whenever there was a death in the family, someone had to go to the hives and tell the bees of the loss that had befallen the family. Failing to do so would result in further loss such as the bees leaving the hive, not producing enough honey, or even dying. Traditionally, the bees were kept abreast of all family matters including births, marriages and long absences due to journeys. If all the bees were not told, all sorts of calamities were thought to happen. This custom was called “telling the bees”. I am off to have a chat with mine later!