Yep, six years since my last post.
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.
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.
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.
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.......
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| 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.
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Merging the hives |
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.......
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