2013 - Our first Honey

September 2013

                                                      

Dear Reader, if you remember, we ended the last blog with our four bee hives merged into two, in the hope that the combined colonies would survive the winter.

We made shelters of roofing felt to protect the hives against the ravages of winter and held them together with strapping to stop any animals from knocking the hives over.

Tasteful orange strapping keeps the deer and badgers away.

In preparation for next year (2013) we placed an order with Apimiel in October 2012 for two new swarms and two mated queen bees to be delivered in the Spring. The two new queens were for when we split the hives back in to four.  The plan is that we will have six hives, two hives at each of the three locations.

The Bee Club still met occasionally during the winter months - the photo below was taken in Steve's barn and is of us making our own "supers" from planks of oak bought from a local wood yard for €20.

Winter was very,very cold here with blizzards and lots of snow. Happily the snow started to fall the day after Sharon and I left for a holiday in Australia and the Far East. It was very, very hot there.

Winter comes to Village au Franc

The Great Barrier Reef

Once Winter had departed and Spring was well and truly with us we dis-assembled the hives. Obviously, two of the hives did not have queens, so we had no option but to take frames of brood from the good hives and put them in the other two, just to keep the colonies alive.

The swarms arrived at the end of April, but not the queens as the weather had been so bad everything in nature was one month behind. We installed the hives at Janey's without incident.

We continued nursing the queenless hives with brood frames from the good hives and, when we were lucky, frames containing queen cells.

SHOCK HORROR -  Steve's good hive has a laying worker - the frames are full of drone cells!

The following quote was taken from Beekeeping For Dummies (Kindle Locations 3720-3724). John Wiley and Sons.

"If your colony loses its queen and is unable to raise a new one, a strange situation can arise. Without the queen substance wafting its way through the hive, no pheromone inhibits the development of the worker bees’ reproductive organs. In time, young workers’ ovaries begin to produce eggs. But these eggs aren’t fertile (the workers are incapable of mating). So the eggs can only hatch into drones (male bees). You may notice eggs, larvae and brood and never suspect a problem. But you have a huge problem! In time, the colony will die off without a steady production of new worker bees to gather food and tend to the young. A colony of drones is doomed."

To get rid of a laying worker is not an easy thing. You have to take the hive boxes at least 100 yards away, take out the frames and one by one brush off all the bees on to the ground. You then take the empty boxes and frames back to the spot you took them from. The theory being that only bees able to fly (not the laying worker) can return to the hive.

Well, we did this but, sadly, there were no photos 'cos we were all smothered in bees, thousands of them. How we escaped without a single sting is beyond me. We put frames of brood and queen cells in the empty hive along with new frames of foundation wax, crossed out fingers and waited.

YIPEE, it worked. We have a queen and the beginnings of a new colony. Whew.

JUNE - The Queens finally arrived - one introduction was successful, one not. The unsuccessful hive was left to fend for itself and in due course made it's own queen!

JULY - The two new hives at Janey's are working really well. One looked as if it has a case of dysentery (poo on outside of hive) but it recovered without intervention.

AUGUST - Janeys second hive started to make excess honey in the super, lots of it. So much so that we invested in a new stainless steel honey extractor and put bee escapes in the hive so that we could steal the honey frames without the bees getting too angry.

On Saturday in mid August we met at Janey's, took the honey frames from the hive and ran to the kitchen where everything was set up. Luckily, it was a bee free zone.

.

We harvested 18 pound jars of honey. Five jars each each plus three for making mead.

Later that month during our normal bee club afternoons we saw that three brood boxes were choc-a-block full of either honey or brood. We had a second honey "event" and 

harvested another 6 pounds from two of the large frames. The Bees were not happy about that, so we have decided to curtail our honey exploits and let the bees alone for a while.

September 5th - made the mead from HFW recipe. Have to wait until xmas to drink it.

So, gentle reader, at this point in the year, we have six healthy hives which we will leave alone now until mid-October, when we will :-

•      remove the super frames and start sugar syrup feed.
•      dust the bees with icing sugar to remove any verroa mites.
•      cover the hives with roofing felt to protect against the winter. 

Lets hope that without all the intervention we had to make this year, i.e. continually taking frames of brood to keep other hives alive, we should have six healthy hives, a zillion bees and a heavy honey harvest in 2014.

Here's to 2014.

  

Where did that 6 years go ?

Yep, six years since my last post.

The new pond

Lots has happened here in sunny France; the renovation work is complete (well nearly), bought two more plots of land, dug a huge pond (now full of fish and ducks), planted an orchard (one apple this year (Bramley) which I made in to apple sauce). Started beekeeping.

But, dear reader, the actual reason for resurrecting this blog is for you to follow my exploits as a novice beekeeper.

It started when Sharon bought me a Mason Bee kit for Christmas. It consisted of two hexagonal boxes of tubes about 1cm round which you put out on a south facing wall. To my amazement the Mason bees found the tubes, laid their eggs and sealed the end of the tubes with mud. The tubes are now in my shed and later this month I will unwrap the tubes, take out the larvae and store them in a Tupperware box until next spring when I will put them out in the orchard. The larvae should hatch in the spring sunshine and  pollinate the apple trees. This is all being done in an attempt to get a harvest of more than one apple.

After reading up about bees and honey bees in particular, Sharon and I visited some near neighbours who had a honey bee hive. They (Steve and Christiane Barton) kindly opened up their hive to show us their bees and gave us some pointers as to what we needed to do if we decided to get a hive of our own.

Left to right: Janey, Sharon, Sarah and Steve

Together with our friends Janey Heneghan and the Lamberts (Steve and Sarah) we decided to take the plunge and buy our own hive. Steve had been given a hive for his 40th birthday and we went 50-50 with Janey on our first hive. Day trip to the bee supply shop in Haye de Puis, bought all sorts of stuff ready for the big adventure.






So, hive bought, we now needed somewhere to put it. Decided on our newly planted orchard. Bought some railway sleepers, cut them to size and made a base. Constructed a hazel fence to keep out the east wind.

What we need now are some bees. Approached out local supplier - no bees - it has been a very bad year for bees, sorry. Same story from everyone we approached.  Sharon trawled the internet and eventually found a supplier in the Alsace region of France. Placed an order for two swarms with mated queens. All we can do now is wait.  And wait and wait and wait.

Hooray ! The bees are coming. They arrived by courier, very well packaged and ready to go.

Smoked and sprayed the bees with sugar syrup and re-homed them in the new hives. 

Bee Club is born

The summer came and went, but not without incident. Steve Barton's hive had decided to swarm. He stopped the swarming by moving the frames with new queen cells to separate hives, one of which he gave to our Steve Lambert. This was only partly successful as the new queen disappeared after a month or so. Speaking of disappearing queens - our orchard hive was doing great. Thousands of new bees, plenty of brood and then capow, she also disappeared. Catastrophe.

As luck had it, Steve Barton was moving house and wanted to sell his hive and equipment. We took the hive one evening and placed it in the orchard. To all outward appearances the hive was silent and empty but when we opened it up it had lots of bees and signs of a queen. Yippee.

Merging the hives

So, we had four hives but only two queens. The answer was to merge the hives. This is easier said than done.   The process is to put a sheet of newspaper over the top of the brood chamber and put the other hive on top. The bees take a couple of days to eat through the paper by which time they have got used to each others scent and pheromones and should not fight.

Ho ho ho. No so. The bees ate through the paper in two hours instead of two days and then declared war. It was like the Somme. Bees ganging up on other bees and pulling their wings off and assorted other atrocities. Hmm. Everything quietened down in the end and they are, as I write, co-habiting nicely.

We learnt our lesson and merged the other two hive using two sheets of newspaper. These hives had far less bees so we are hoping for a better outcome.






And so, dear reader, we are now up to date..........current status is that we have two double decker hives and (hopefully) two queens without which the colonies will not survive the winter. Only time will tell.

Look in again soon for the next thrilling installment of the Bee Club Diaries.......

May 2006

Tenerife

We had a very relaxing holiday at the beginning of May (it seems like an age ago now) in Tenerife with Brian and Margaret. It started off the opposite of relaxing! Sharon, as is her wont, checks the AngloInfo web site each day for news, gossip and pets for sale. There was an article that said that the staff on the Fastcat from Cherbourg (run by Brittany Ferries) were on strike. As we were travelling that day we phoned them but they could not say if the boat would be sailing as the strike vote was to take place late in the evening. We switched from the Fastcat to the slow ferry from Caen. Lucky we did as the Fastcat did not run and had we not known we would not have been in England to catch the flight to Tenerife. Perhaps P&O are not all bad, at least they would have contacted us and not left it for passengers to find out when it was too late to make other arrangements.

Anyway, the ferry was on time and we had a nice meal in the posh restaurant. We arrived at Brian & Margs just after midnight. Shower and bed ready for the trip in the morning to Bishops Stortford where Mike (another cousin) would be taking us to the airport. Morning comes, car is packed up with suitcases and golf clubs. On the news it says that the M11 is closed due to a lorry overturning. Traffic is being rerouted and all the rat runs are chockablock with cars. No time to get to Mikes so we phoned only to find out that he had gone to work! We eventually left the car in the long stay car park at Stansted. Phew.

The holiday was good fun, we played golf a couple of times, ate too much, drank too much and spent a lot of time recovering by laying in the sun by the swimming pool. We saw Neil Diamond and Elvis Presley (twice) but that is another story.

Sharons birthday

Back from Tenerife just in time for the Cup Final. West Ham v Liverpool. May 13th was Cup Final day and also Sharon’s 50th birthday. My lot were all down in Cardiff for the football so they missed a superb birthday dinner in the Sheen Mill complete with piano player et al. I will not speak of the travesty of the cup final result or mention about Brian’s grandchildren turning up during the match to provide alternate viewing pleasure.

Jazz in Coutances

In the five years we have had the house in France we have never been there for the Jazz festival in Coutances. This year we went three times! Twice was with Yves and Véronique the other was a drunken affair with Martin, Helen, David and Sandra. We went to dinner early that night and arranged a taxi for 23:30. It was a really good night out so we decide to stay out late and eventually got the taxi at 2am. I took two days to recover from the excess of alcohol but Martin went out for a boozy lunch the next day! Must be the Navy training.

Turk

We have a horse. Well nearly. A local farmer has need of a field to graze his horse and he knocked on the door one night to ask if he could borrow ours! After ten minutes of broken French he realized our lack of linguistic skills and switched to perfect English. Saves me cutting the grass and Sharon gets a pet horse without the responsibility. Works for me!


Building work

Officially start June 5th but John the electrician and Napoleon the plumber have laid their pipes and cables ready for the concrete pour. Yipee.


Golf practice

I love watching the Golf channel on TV and am a sucker for the adverts for gismos that will improve my game out of all proportion so that I can beat Mike Laws off scratch. Well, I have bought a David Leadbetter “swing setter” and a Jack Nicholas “inside approach” golf aids.

I need a proper golf mat to use the inside approach but after practicing with the swing setter I ventured out onto the golf course (Centre Manche) and started to spray the balls everywhere. I have decide to go back to my old swing and use the swing setter just as a practice aid. Played the links course at Agon-Coutainville using this method and hit a couple of mammoth drives. At least I am not losing any balls now!


Garden shed

Regular readers will be sad to know that the shed still has not turned up. The base is ready and waiting but Leroy Merlin are tardy. Expected delivery is June 7th. Oh, the latest ruse is that the delivery company are worried that their transporter will get stuck on the country roads. I will let you know if they do (ha ha) in the next thrilling installment of the Blom diaries…..


XXX.

Wednesday 17th May 2006

Normally, dear reader, you would have to wait until the end of the month for the next installment of the Blom diaries, but this has been a special day and deserves a web log just for itself. Don’t fret, there will be another one later with tales of our holiday in Tenerife et al.

Anyway, let me tell you about today because it has been a very BAD DAY.

People who know me know that, in general, I am a lucky person. I have good friends, life long friends, I am healthy, I am proud of my children and my grandchildren are a constant joy. I have a beautiful and loving wife and long ago realized that I have a guardian angel looking out for me. Not today. Let me tell you about my day………

1. The bath leaks. Not here, but back at the Hop Poles, our house back in England. Cousin Mike went to have a look and said that the bath has a hairline crack and needs replacing. Only trouble with that is the airing cupboard was built around the bath and would need to be dismantled. Luckily (sic) we have 24x7 plumbing insurance so I sent them round to see what was what. The plumber (another Terry) said that the bath was OK and that one of the two leaks was from the taps. He could not get to the underside of the taps due to the bath being part of the airing cupboard. There was another small puddle, but no reason could be seen for it. He said that it was a duff installation (or words to that effect and it would not be covered by insurance – oh joy. Arranged with Tessa for her daughter to take a bath tonight (with the bath panel off) to make certain that the bath leaks or not. If it leaks we will get a new one fitted (can you imagine the logistical nightmare of finding a plumber and getting a new bath fitted from over here in France!). If the bath is not cracked then I need a plumber brave enough to find the underside of the taps!

2. The lawn mower won’t fire. It works on full choke but not otherwise. I took it to bits, cleaned the carburetor, blew back the petrol feed (this made me feel sick) – still won’t work. Blocked jet perhaps? Who knows. I feel like taking it to the tip and buying a new one. Perhaps tomorrow I will fell better.

3. The shed delivery has been postponed. We have to have the new garden shed delivered and erected so that I can empty the barn ready for the builder to start on June 5th. Delay is not an option! Try telling that to the French. Have they never seen Apollo 13! Oh joy.

4. Strimmer. I lent my garden strimmer to a neighbour, John who runs the local kennels. He returned it today (along with my laser level and wheelbarrow). Unfortunately, the automatic string loading mechanism failed long ago and you need to intervene to change the string. Not possible any more as it has fused solid. We tried to get the thing apart using a vice and plumbing levers, but to no avail. Awaiting inspiration or I will have to take drastic action of the impact variety.

5. Spent an arm and a leg on special damp proofing paint for the shed base ( I forgot to put any water proof in the concrete mix). Spent this afternoon putting the said damp proof paint on the base (weather forecast said it would be a fine evening) .Five litres was just the right amount – maybe the bad day has ended. Just then I saw a thunder storm to the south (it was sunny where we were, more proof that the bad day had ended? Then the wind changed and the storm turned towards us. Hailstones the size of golf balls rained down on my newly painted shed base.

The gods are really picking on me today. I can’t even have a good drink and go to bed early as I have to speak to Mike and Tessa this evening about the leaky bath…Sorry to go on about it but !!!!!!!…..I will let you know what happened in the next thrilling installment of the Blom diaries……xxx

April 2006

Garden

The garden is looking, even if I say so myself, very nice indeed. The combination of sun and rain is making the grass grow at a rate of knots and it needs mowing more than once a week. However, as I am boss here, it only gets mowed on Fridays.


Shed base

Major building work of the month was completing the base for the new abris de jardin (garden shed to those non French speakers out there). Sharon and I worked very hard and it looks great. Need something to seal the concrete before the shed arrives. Any advice in this regard would be greatly appreciated. It looks likely that we will use bitumen.



Renovation of The Barn

Went to see a conservatory built by Andrew the conservatory man. Just the job – exactly what we were looking for. We had to ask for a revised devis (estimate) as the architect plans are ambiguous (regular readers will not be surprised by this) and after careful measuring, it needs to be 5.5 metres long not 6.3 metres.

Agreed a start date with the builder – June 5th. Lets hope the Bank stumps up the money in time.

Proof, if proof were needed, That VaF is back to being a building site.

New friends / Golf partners

We have recently made some new friends here in France. They are Martin & Helen from Montpinchon and David & Sandra from St Denis le Vetu. Nice people and they play golf! We have had two round so far, one at Brehal and on at Periers. Played crap at first but my swing is slowly coming back to normal. There are not many practice facilities here so I have ordered a “David Letterman Swing Setter” from Ebay. The swing setter is a type of club with balls spaced out on the shaft. If you swing correctly the balls click together, good swing-click click, bad swing - no click. I will let you know how I get on.


Top field / horse

Unlikely as it seems I have just had a bit of good luck. I have started cutting the top field with the ultimate aim of having it as part of the garden. Martin (mentioned previously) kindly lent me his bush-cutter as my strimmer is a bit under powered for the job and would have taken me a month of Fridays to finish the job. If you thought that the simile should be ‘month of Sunday’s you would be correct, only there is an unwritten law here that you don’t use noisy machinery on a Sunday, so I mow on Fridays.
Anyway, Sunday afternoon we had a visit from a local farmer who asked if he could graze his horse on the field. What a turn up. I don’t have to cut the grass as the horse will eat it all and Sharon gets a new pet to play with.

Holiday / cup final / Sharon’s birthday/ Mick Laws

Off to Tenerife with Marg & Brian on Thursday. Looking forward to relaxing for a week in the sun. After the holiday we will be staying a couple of days in England to see the family (not). West Ham are in the cup final in Cardiff – guess where all my lot are? Yep, Cardiff. I will especially miss seeing young Jake. We will also miss his 2nd birthday party (bouncy castle) as we will be in Tenerife. Oh well.
Mike Laws even phoned from Australia to see if I had any tickets – he was quite prepared to fly over for the cup final. Tickets are scarce, but more importantly, it’s Sharon’s 50th birthday on May 13th (cup final day) . She doesn’t want a party of fuss made so we are going for a meal in a restaurant just outside Cambridge with Marg & Brian, Pete & Sue Bradley (now home from Florida) and Mick & Carol. Looking forward to it.


xxx

March 2006

I don’t know, when I first started writing these web logs it was every day, now it’s once per month! This is what happens when the sun comes out and you don’t spend much time on the computer.

What a month! Full of incident. The last thing I left you with was that we were to go fishing with Yves and Veronique. This was not fishing in the rod and reel sense, it was fishing for shell fish at low tide. The spring tide was huge this year so when it went out it revealed places that would normally still be under water. Anyway, off we went to Annoville with our buckets and special tools to dig up the clams. The day was bitterly cold and windy. We only found a few dozen shell fish between us (plus a zillion mussels). Veronique cooked them for supper.

Next day I was stricken with tummy ache. This lasted until I bought some Imodium plus at the airport on our way to Florida. Yes, Florida to stay with our friends Pete & Sue Bradley. Yipee.

Florida! What a journey. As we paid for the flight with Airmiles we had to fly out of Heathrow, so we packed off the dogs to John the kennel man and took the ferry to England. We had pre-booked a hotel in Heathrow so that we could leave the car there. When we arrived the man on the desk said that another Terry Blom had booked in earlier. Hmmm, identity theft come to mind. Anyway, we booked out at 6am the next morning and the man on the desk said that we had just missed the other Terry Blom (apparently a pilot for a Swedish airline). The flight to Miami was no problem other than it was very cold in London and very hot in Miami, so we had to dress accordingly. Also, as we were staying in England for a few days after the holiday we needed even more warm clothes. The car was packed with all sorts of different suitcases for different weathers.

Arrived in Miami, picked up the hire car and drove across Alligator Alley to Fort Myers. We had a fantastic holiday – thank you Pete & Sue.

Back in London ten days later we stayed with Sean & Nicole at their house in Braughing. Family meal at the local Indian restaurant (very good it was too). Surprise – Paul and Katie turned up as surprise guests. Next day we went to The Hop Poles to speak with the tenant about a new rental contract. He would like another six months and then a monthly contract after that. No problem. Guess we will be in France for a bit longer then. He also wanted some extra cupboard space so we cleared out the bedroom cupboard and filled the Merc estate up to the brim. Off we went to Matt & Abby’s to see our grandson Jake. Paul and Katie turned up there as well. It was good to spend some time with the family just chilling out. Sunday afternoon back to France on the noisiest ferry I have ever been on (full of school kids).

Back I France the weather was still cold, although we were told that it had been really cold while we were away (ho ho). Major happenings since – arranged a bank loan for the gite, met a man to build the conservatory (it will be the dining room for the gite), Sharon went on a days cooking course. Speaking of Sharon, I bought her a laptop as an early 50th birthday present She will not be 50 until May 13th but is happy as a sand boy playing with her new toy.

Spring is approaching, time to get the garden in order, complete the concrete base for the new garden shed and clear the top field. I will let you know how we got on in the next thrilling installment of the Blom diaries.

Week 20th – 26th February

Snow!

Well later on in the week that is. On Monday we finally got around to installing the loft ladders. The real problem with the ladders I was using before was that they were too big and clumsy and as they lived in the barn it was a pain to bring them into the house without knocking into things. Hooray, no more (I hope). Terence Senior and his wife Karen came around on Monday afternoon with the estimate for renovating the barn. Looks ok, next stop ---the bank.

Tuesday morning the wardrobe arrived. I have to say that the delivery company was first class and the wardrobe was packed extremely well. I would even recommend them. They dropped the wardrobe off on their way to Pisa in Italy. Shame they have to come back with the shelves and door keys! When we put the wardrobe together we found that one set of doors was locked and there were no keys. I had to take the back off the wardrobe to release the locks and that’s when we found that the shelves were missing. They will be back from Italy next Tuesday. We spent Tuesday afternoon with Daniel the plumber going to two plumbers merchants to get estimates for the pipes and radiators. The second one we went to was in St Lo and you drove into the warehouse through huge automatic double doors. I could not get the automatic doors to open, much to Sharon’s amusement.

The weather closed in for the rest of the week and it was cold with lots of snow. Stayed at home in front of the log fire.

On Sunday we went with Peter Gibson to the carnival at Granville. It was freezing cold but the French really turned out in large numbers for a, what I have to admit, was the kind of street party that you would never find in England, a real mardi-gras atmosphere.. There were lots of carnival floats – even one of Charles and Camilla. The carnival lasts for four days and ends next Tuesday when they bring out Madame Guillotine to execute the “king of the carnival” – nice touch. We will not be there as we are going fishing. Yep, fishing. Tell you all about it in the next thrilling installment of the Blom diaries…….

xxx