Friday 6 July 2012

Such a lot of catching up to do.....

Its been silly busy around here lately..not just busy family of four busy but silly silly busy...'im indoors as got a gig (or two) boys are busy with all sorts of sports stuff head teachers seem to maniacally enjoy loading the last weeks of the school year with and I've been doing job stuff and quilting marathon (more about that another day) and bee stuff.

All told I've been giving a lot of thanks for the helping hands of grandparents!  Particularly the wood working hands of Daddad.  Look at this for superb craftsmanship...

 

Two super stands for bee hives - complete with landing board! - whoopee! Soon I'm gonna look all professional at the bottom of the garden...just as soon as I brighten them up a little itty bit...


Thankfully there was a break in the rain last Sunday and I managed to sneak the stands out.  In between showers did some heavy lifting and switching and shimmying and swooshing and shoving and umphing - Just how much can a nearly full hive weigh? and fairly soon...

 

They were in place and looking mighty smart...


Last week was also eventful for two other bee keeping reasons.  Firstly I finally got around to registering my bees on bee base.  This is an official register of Bee keepers in the UK run by the department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to work with bee keepers to keep stocks of bees healthy.  One of the main things they do is employ bee inspectors to monitor disease in apiarys, conducting both planned and random surveys of them to help bee keepers monitor bees health and deal with any outbreaks of the nastier pests and diseases.
No sooner had I signed up to bee base than the bee inspector came to call!
In fairness it was an opportunity I chose not to miss!
He had been talking to Peter over the road about his bees and as he had a call to make not so very far away from us offered to call in and and check over all of our bees at the same time.
It feels slightly silly to be proud that a man in a bee suit with FERA embroidered on the pocket took 20 minutes to proclaim my bees healthy and disease free.  But he did and I am.

Since then it feels like its done nothing but rain.  I was hoping to be able to post some pictures of great flowers in the garden under the heading of flaming June...but more flower buds have rotted on the stems than have flowered and there's very little fiery colours going on...


But its nice to know we offer homes to creatures other than bees...


I guess that brings us right up to today.  I'd got a day off the proper job thing 'cos 'im indoors is off playing that gig so someone needs to collect the smallest member of the family from school.  So a near perfect day of quilting, bee keeping and watching Wimbledon tennis was on the cards.  The quilting went great - only two more blocks to go then I've finished stage one of the marathon.  The tennis also went well and was fun to listen to over the tut tut tut of the quilting, but the bee keeping ... that struggled to get done because of the rain.

Normally its best to open the hive between 12 noon and 3pm when the day is at its warmest and most bees are out flying... but today I had to wait till nearly 4pm and a sudden gap in the clouds. but when that gap in the storm came - boy was it a gap to make you stop right in your tracks...


grabbing the kit I was off to the bottom of the garden as fast as I could to see how my girls were. 



 What a difference a few weeks makes...
Here's hive A (note to self - really need to decide on a great girl's name beginning with A) back in the middle of May when they'd been here about a fortnight...


Barely enough bees to cover 4 frames, and here they are today  - positively thriving...a good healthy hive has about 10,000 bees...anyone want to count?


And that little swarm that barely covered 2 frames...


Well they are coming along nicely too, Queen Becky has been busy laying and they've nearly half filled the brood box...


I can't imagine it will take too much longer for them to catch up with the other hive!












1 comment:

  1. Queen Amelia - meaning industrious !!! And I could only count 9,999 - you need to check your flowers - I think one is still out playing. Hives are looking good!! And well done for being disease free!!! Always good to be disease free. When do you start getting honey???

    ReplyDelete

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