Sunday Amblings.

It is Sunday. Now normally on a Sunday I like to avoid retail outlets of any kind but we needed sugar urgently. I've used everything in the store cupboard and the bees need their tea. Also yesterday we went to the local farmers market and among our marvelous if pricey haul we bought a couple of kilos of Damsons. If you are not familiar with damsons they are like rather small tart but sweet plums and have very dark purple skins.

My father's step mother wasn't good at step parenting but she was an excellent cook and one of the few positive memories I have of her was her rather fabulous Damson Cheese. I believe this refers to the fact that the spoon stands up in the jar as opposed to a jam or conserve where the spoon falls over. So I went to the supermarket to buy sugar (Only because our local shop had sold out I might add "Totally Locally" is important to us) The supermarket had an offer on 2k bags of sugar. a woman weighing about 3 stone looked on in obvious complete horror as I put 12 kilos of sugar in my trolley. Her chin was in danger of tripping her stiletto heels. I was about to tell her I was trying to put on 14 stone when a nice chap said "ooh, you making jam too?" and put around the same number of bags in his own trolley.

I can't help thinking that A. people should mind their own business-she'd have been far less likely to upset her blood pressure if she'd stuck to her lettuce and Jack Daniels basket. and B.Folk thought twice before they decided it was OK to judge someone else.

Lots of love

Katherine

Quick Saturday Special.

We've been blessed with the kind of glorious autumn mornings when the chilled air is rapidly warmed by sunshine and the low angle of the sun catches anything flying easily in it's rays. The apparently chaotic flight paths of the bees are endlessly fascinating to us and from our rooftop room we gain a wonderful overview of how the hive is coming to know the local landmarks.

It is now clear that we need to move the hive a little closer to the wall. It's almost 2 feet away so the bees do not have a clear exit pathway they amble around and head where they fancy so we plan to carefully edge their doorway closer to the brick wall. This has the additional benefit of keeping frost out. It also means that when they venture out on warmer winter days their so called "Cleansing Flights" basically hive wide lavatory trips, will  begin above head height and will not be directed over our neighbour's washing line.

Below is a picture of the kind of feeder we have in our hive. The plastic cone in the midle allows bees access to a moat of sugar syrup which a few bees at a time can sup from. The bees fly, walk and crawl up through the hole in the centre and, usually, patiently wait their turn to drink their fill of the sugar syrup.

This evening when we went out to feed the bees they were more frenzied than usual. This may have been because we were later than usual. Sadly as we carefully poured the sugar syrup into the feeder some of the bees at the edge of the water became submerged in the sugar syrup and couldn't get out because the press of bees above them couldn't move out of the way. I do not fool myself they died happy so I shall be careful both to make sure we feed them earlier in the evening and that I pour in the syrup more carefully.

The other unusually macabre sight we saw was a strange tug of war between a number of bees removing the damaged corpse of another bee from the hive. It was strangely white as though it had pupated from it's own skin. One group of bees dragged it out then another bee tried to climb up the front of the hive and then suddenly dragged it back in again. 

We know bees carefully clear out their dead so they don't bring disease into the hive or taint the food supply. I need to check what this strange occurrence means.

Yours a slightly disturbed beekeeper

xxx

"Well Hello Honey"

Our bees are honey bees. Apis mellifera. Most British honey bees are descendants of the so called Buckfast Bees. As bees are quite prolific in their interbreeding (more of this no doubt in later posts) I wouldn't like to hesitate any guess as to the actual genealogy of our bees but the story of the Buckfast Bee is rather lovely.

The monks at Buckfast Monastery are famous for a couple of things. An astonishingly powerful and noxious tonic wine famous for keeping teens and winos from the southwest of England pretty much permanently stupefied and saving British bees from certain extinction in the 1920's. British bees were decimated by what was then called Acarine disease but what is now believed to have been a mite that lived in the trachea or windpipe of the bees. This feat of common sense and research was accomplished by Brother Adam, and i'm certain Brother Adam would wish to co author God in his achievement.

Brother Adam traveled the world meeting other beekeepers, researching bee populations and finding bees with traits desirable in a colony kept for honey production. (I'm grateful to Bee Source website for this information though it's available in lots of books) they are only moderately defensive and the colony builds up at a reasonable pace in the spring so the hive doesn't become over full too quickly.

A friend recently told me that there are more bees and bee keepers in China than in the rest of the world put together. Apparently bee keeping expertise there is millenia old and passed down through families. In the most recent Lush Cosmetics catalogue in the UK there is some amazing information about bee keeping in Zambia from where they source their fair trade honey. Here bee keepers share the honey with the bees and in feats of extreme bee keeping they climb trees that are tens of meters tall to collect the honey and husband their bees.

In England a chap called Phil Chandler wrote a best selling book called the Barefoot Beekeeper. He strives toward a more natural mode of bee keeping which gives more back to the bees than we take from them. His astonishing site Biobees.com has oodles of information for anyone who wishes to keep bees in a more generous and natural way. 

And of course Rudolph Steiner has inspired thousands if not millions to consider living life in a more generous way. To consider the way we live as sharing a journey with our fellow beings rather than plundering the planet and its resources merely for our own benefit. 

Consider This.

In the summer worker bees work themselves to death in around 6 weeks. They operate complex cultures and communicate with one another. They work together for the good of the hive and we benefit from their astonishing ability to turn nectar and pollen into something wonderfully medicinal and sustaining.

It is my feeling we owe it to the bees to put something back.

Thank you for reading

Catch you soon

xxx

First inspection and Jargon Busting.

Today the weather is beautiful the sun is out and pretty white clouds are scudding about looking autumnal. This is my favourite time of year, when it's still pretty warm and the leaves are changing on the trees and berries are setting on the trees so the birds have something for winter. September 22nd was the autumnal equinox. The days are shortening and it will not be long before things become a little colder. So today Alex came to show me how to inspect the hive. 

He arrived on his bike with his bee keeping paraphernalia in panniers and a stack of short wooden boards attached to his rack. "Karina has send you a new super-I can show you how to put it together."

Now it is astonishing how quickly you find yourself slipping into the lingo. There is, I find, a slight danger of wanting not to look stupid and nodding and smiling pretending you know what's going on when in fact you have NO IDEA what the hell they're talking about. So a bit of jargon busting first.

We have a National Hive. 

It's a nice simple pine box with  frames hung inside from the top. This first part where the bees live and breed and build stores of honey and pollen in neat hexagonal beeswax combs is called the Brood Box. On top of this is a board with some small holes in so the bees can move up into another half size box. In honey season this half size box contains more frames for bees to build honey stores. This box, being on top of the brood box is called a Super! If the colony is prolific and the season abundant you can have a number of supers on top of the brood box. In the autumn as the colony is winding down the combs of honey in the supers are removed and a feeder is placed on top of the main hole so that the bees can take advantage of the extra feed you supply. On top of this goes the roof. The roof helps keep the rain and predators out and warmth and bees in!

Enough jargon busting and on with the bees.

We used smoke this time to quieten the hive. Despite my misgivings I have not had enough experience to deviate from the excellent advice I'm getting from this lovely beekeeper. I'm very glad we did. Taking the roof off everything was quiet. There were a few bees in the cone of the feeder and a few more flying round than when we feed in the evening but things were fairly good natured. So we took the super off. As this is basically just a square of wood that just left the crown board between us and the bees. 

Even though it was only a week since the last inspection the crown board was really well stuck down with propolis. We used Alex's hive tool to lever the crown board off the top of the brood box. This requires a side to side twisting motion rather than a jemmying motion. This is so you don't do any damage to the hive while separating the elements.

This achieved the sheer volume of buzzing really took me aback but even when we had the  hive exposed the bees were pretty much unbothered but without anything between us and the insects the sheer numbers made an intense sound. It was only when we started to lift the frames out that the bees seemed to show any concern. Alex lifted the first which was apparently full of honey. He shook some of the bees back into the hive so that we could look more clearly and you could see concentric circles of honey with occasional cups of pollen. Some of the pollen cups were yellow and some bright orange. You could see the same on the pollen baskets on the bees legs. Apparently they sort the pollen grains so that each type has it's own store. I wonder if they do the same with nectar so that each cup has a particular type of honey. 

We looked through each frame some of which were more full than others. Only the frames in the centre of the hive had brood left in them. There were nurse bees looking after them and some of them fell outside the hive. I was worried that since they're flightless they might not get back but it seems that as long as they are in walking distance they are fine. There were no drones (male bees) left in the hive. Since queens have no breeding needs at this time of year they don't lay any drones. The sheer economy of the bee life cycle is a thing of wonder.

Finally I realised that I had to pick up a frame myself. I wasn't frightened but I was nervous of hurting or trapping a bee in my ham fisted attempt to inspect a frame. So I took the hive tool, loosened the frame and tentatively lifted the frame out of the brood box. The first thing that struck me was the weight of the frame. Apparently even on one of the part full brood box frames there are as much as 3 or four jars full of honey. Even with an area of brood in the middle of the comb!

While I was holding the frame I realised a deeply unhappy bee was reversing up my thumb with her stinger out. I couldnt put the frame down quickly because I would have trapped lots of bees so I had to watch while she thrust her sting through my Marigold (british brand of rubber gloves). It only grazed my thumb and the venom sac was left int he glove. So sadly the poor girl died for nothing. When a bee stings you she cannot withdraw her stinger so in pulling away she rips it from her body and as a result will die. It is not a sacrifice that the bee makes lightly. I was able to remove the stinger from the glove without more than a little discomfort but the poor bee wasn't. 

One of the frames looked slightly damaged so we marked it for replacement in spring and returned it. Alex cleaned off excess wax and propolis and left the hive looking cleaner and fresher than when we opened it.

On this occasion we didn't see the queen. Apparently queens are adept at hiding from the paparazzi. Perhaps princesses and starlets could take a leaf out of their book!

You are never going to get a center spread in HELLO! magazine from a queen bee!

TTFN

XX

Bizzzzzy Buzzzy and Active

This evening we went to put some more of the syrup in for the bees. Normally there are one or two bees in the cone of the feeder. Tonight it was jammed with them. The entrance to the hive was very busy too. Today has been much warmer and after a couple of warmer days it looks as though our busy bees needed to blow off some steam. When we opened the lid of the hive the buzzing was much more pronounced than i've heard it in the evenings. Cue worried mother behaviour!

I rang Alex our bee keeping guru because I was a bit worried about the level of activity. Now for those of you who like visual stimuli Alex is best imagined as a younger better looking Carlos Ray Norris-Known as Chuck to his enemies. Of course Alex is very nice and not a red neck at all but just so you have a picture in your minds 

But without the grey at the temples, smaller ears and none of the surgical work round the eyes.....Actually he doesn't look like this at all...and he wears a bee suit.

Anyway. Alex was very helpful and thought that the bees were just hungry and looking forward to tonight's gift of thyme flavoured sugar water and a bit warm. So we've arranged that he'll come and supervise me doing a hive inspection on Thursday or Friday. This means I have a couple of days to read up on Chalk brood, Wax moth, Varroa and a host of other potential dangers to my hive which I almost certainly won't find but will worry about till then.

Having a new hive for the first time is a bit like having a new baby for the first time. You dont know which way is up, you really can't tell what's normal. If it's quiet you worry that it's died. If it's making lots of noise you think you have done something wrong and you constantly worry that it may have some unmentionable disease and someone will take it away from you despite all apparent evidence to the contrary.

Varroa mite is a bit like head lice in that you always assume that if you keep your child clean and nit bust regularly they wont get them. However inevitably the day comes when your beloved infant butts heads with another child who kindly shares their own visitors and then its off to the chemist for something to get rid of them.

Varroa mite is a parasite that lives on the bees, most of the time it doesn't do too much damage but if a hive becomes over run it can severely impact the health of the colony. If mites are sealed in with new brood they feed on the larva and can kill it. If a bee has too many it can become weakened and distressed by the loss of blood and the irritation. It's worth remembering that bees are about 2.5cm long Varroa mite are about 1-1.8mm long which means that if you imagine a bee the size of a person the person would have mites about the size of a medium seaside crab sucking their blood. This is particularly unpleasant and so we are keen to minimise the effect on the hive. 

Karina treated the hive before it was taken to Tollerton for it's 3 mile holiday and Alex put a sachet of organic Varroa treatment in last Thursday when we did a quick inspection. This week we will check for general health of the girls and see whether we need to consider a stronger treatment. 

I very much want my bees to survive the winter. They are already an important part of our lives, so I'm really hoping we find them all well and that i'm worrying for nothing. I suppose, given that older boy has decamped to university this could, of course, be transference (for all you psychoanalysts out there) but having said that the boy has short hair and it's a good 8 years since i've seen him scratching his head!

Night All

xx

Bee Medicine: Propolis

Today I've had part of a tooth removed. Long running saga details of which i'll spare you. Suffice to say it's sore and i'm grumpy. I just remembered a bottle of Propolis Tincture I have in my dispensary. 

Propolis, sometimes known as bee glue is a brown sticky substance that bees collect from the buds of trees. Below freezing it becomes hard and brittle. Bees use it to fill in small spaces (they fill in larger gaps with wax) and to strengthen parts of the hive. It was thought that bees used it to fill up drafty gaps but new research found it was primarily for strength and health as it has anti viral, anti bacterial and anti parasitic qualities.

Herbalists use propolis dissolved in alcohol as a tincture to put on wounds, as a mouth wash to heal bleeding gums, as a mouthwash to prevent infection after dental operations and also on wounds on other parts of the body. I have given it to patients having lumps or cysts removed to apply around the outside of the wound to promote healing.Given that everything bees make is infused with the natural components of plants as well as the many processes they themselves use to transform the building blocks it is hardly surprising that such things turn out to be medicinal. 

Clinical research as found it effective in the healing of partial thickness burns, healing long standing ulcers and other infections. There is even some interesting evidence coming to light suggesting there may be a role for propolis in cancer treatment.

I should warn you though, propolis tincture tastes at best...interesting. My guess is that a spoon full of honey will help the medicine go down.

Now where's my tea.

A Data Correction for my Dear Husband.

My dearly beloved made the important point that the video in question was not made by WE but by HE. I offered to post the correction last night but he generously allowed me to wait till this morning to fire up the steam powered computing machine.

So to be clear my husband made the video of the bees!

My son says I should probably put it in a letter to the Times.

...

Meet the Bees

This is a little video we took of the bees yesterday. It gives a lovely idea of the activity in that quiet corner of the garden. Today Bob is using power tools and giving them a run for their money in the buzzing stakes.

Bed Time.

After a rather fabulous dinner out with friends we returned to check the feeder in the hive. Amazingly it was empty again. We went down the garden and this time I didn't bother with a bee suit. Bob took the torch and I in a short linen dress and my younger son in flannel pajama bottoms and a tee shirt watched as the bees arrived to sup at the slowly dripped thyme syrup. There is something tremendously satisfying about feeding an entire colony when you know they have been so busy during the day.

21st September-Yellow Trousers and Winter Coats.

The day started grey and a little misty. When I went out to see the hive first thing it was pretty cold, only about 12 degrees Celsius and there was hardly any activity. The same really could be said for my own hive. Both sons were fast asleep after a late night of celebrations and farewells.

Bob kindly cooked our farewell breakfast and eventually everyone joined us, bleary eyed at the table. The departing boy's bedroom was about hip deep in packed boxes, suitcases and late remembered necessities. Of course he hadn't had a shower and was only just grinding beans (Ethiopian Yirgacheffe-a complex single estate coffee with floral aromas apparently, should you wish to try) for his coffee. The manual grinder was slow and in the end he only managed to grind enough for one cup which he shared with his girlfriend.

Eventually everything was packed.  The day was warming up slightly and I looked out on the bees before we departed. The hive was buzzing noticeably and there was a little more activity, mostly around the entrance.

Evidently bees are sensitive to change. During the 1st world war many bee keepers would keep their hives appraised of world affairs and it is normal for births, deaths and marriages to be communicated. I rather suspect this has something of Shirley Valentine talking to the wall about it but conscious of tradition I let them know older son was leaving.

As we prepared to leave I had asked him if there was anything he could think of that he might have left behind. I won't bore you with details but we joined the annual duvet convoy up the motorway, joined a queue to park, joined another queue for his keys and documents, joined yet another queue for the lift and finally installed the boy in his rather palatial university accommodation. Eventually we'd done as much as we could to help him settle in and waved goodbye. For the first time he'll be gone more than a couple of weeks.

As I prepared to leave him behind he said...."er...you know my coat?" "yes love?" "erm...its on the banister at the bottom of the stairs...at home. Could you post it?"

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Back at the ranch I found my husband bleeding from a chicken wire incident and our neighbour up a ladder drilling the second 4 inch hole in his wall. Apparently he'd got the first one a foot too far to the left. This is what happens when husbands are left to their own devices.

The day was significantly warmer at around 21 degrees in the shade, bees were heading back to the hive. When I looked closely lots of them appeared to have bright yellow trousers. I looked this up and it is the pollen they've collected in their pollen baskets, little receptacles on their legs specifically for the purpose. They seem to have had a very busy day. My husband said at one point he could hear the buzzing from the back door-this is only about 25 feet away but it's still pretty loud for such little creatures. Clearly there's power in numbers.

I need to go and make up another batch of sugar syrup to keep the hive happy. We're off out this evening and I need to be sure it will be cool before we go.

Au Revoir

xxx

Friday 20th September-Day 3

The 20th of September is my older son's birthday. Today he was 19 and, as he goes away to university tomorrow we spent the day together at home. After the grand opening of the presents we looked out of our loft bedroom window to see the early autumn sun spilling over the wall and at the low angle it lit the cloud of bees circling the hive beautifully. You could clearly imagine why the Egyptians thought honey bees were made of drops from the sun. 

I had heard that the way bees orientate themselves to a new location is to fly in ever increasing circles round the hive. From our second floor room you could really see it in action. The ladies flew in a lazy ever increasing spiral around the hive before eventually foraging further afield. A gentle humming bee vortex. 

The day was warm and soft, a perfect illustration of Gray's Season of Mellow Fruitfulness. Having secretly worried I might be unnerved by a hive full of bees I find myself entranced by them. As you approach the hive  it feels as though they come to meet you. They are a particularly gentle hive according to an experienced bee keeping friend. Bob was working on the chicken run in the garden and during the day he had frequent inquisitive visitors but never once felt any concern about their presence2.

We have also discovered that from our loft bedroom window we can track where the bees go using field glasses. I'm starting to worry that we'll be accused of being peeping toms! A neighbour two gardens over has a huge bank of marigolds and hundreds of our bees were drawn to it. You could see a little cloud of them dotting about together in the sunlight.

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About 10pm we still had a house full of guests but having seen how empty the sugar syrup feeder was last night I thought I'd better check how it was doing. Our guests were highly amused by the sight of me in my slightly too tight bee suit but when we got to the quiet night time hive with a torch and lifted the lid I was very glad I hadn't allowed vanity to change my mind. The feeder was completely empty and bees were congregating around the vent. 

Very slowly I poured in nearly a litre of sugar syrup with thyme. It smelt delicious-I'm wondering about trying  to make a thyme sorbet. The flavour would be delicious. Evidently they could smell it because as soon as it was available bees poured out to gorge themselves on it.

As an aside we found a HUGE bumblebee in distress on the floor by the back door earlier in the day. We put it on the deck handrail outside and put a few drops of the thyme and sugar syrup near it thinking it was probably a goner. After a while quietly sitting in the sun it sniffed out one of the drops and sucked a drop about the size of it's head down in seconds. Then it gorged itself on the other two and we put more down. Later on my husband pointed out that it was happily buzzing round the garden so we can regard our resuscitation protocol a success.

Sadly during the course of the day we found quite a number of dead honey bees in the area. Tomorrow I'll go and clear up the fallen. Hygiene is an essential part of bee keeping and keeping your hive healthy.

Now having cooked for 12 people and several thousand bees I'm ready for bed.

Sleep tight.

XX

The Second Evening With The Bees.

This evening lovely Alex came round to show us how to feed the bees. I could hardly wait as this was to be the first opportunity to see inside the hive. I climbed into my bee keepers suit with the secret hope that i'd look like Agnetha in Abba arrival.

I

In practice of course, since the lady who gave me the suit is slim and petite and I am better described as buxom the effect was rather more 

However. Back to the bees.

Alex showed us how to light the smoker. He has worked out that the gentle method of coaxing smoke from wood shavings with a match is, in practice, pretty tedious. So he's perfected the blow torch option. A nice piece of dry, slightly rotted wood in the can is easily lit with a roaring blow torch. The same blow torch is also useful for sterilizing the hive and getting rid of mites if necessary. However I digress.

We zipped up the fencing style visors of our bee keeping suits and Alex wafted a little smoke into the hive. I always thought the smoke made them sleepy but actually the smoke makes the bees fear that there is a forest fire so they busy themselves gorging on honey so they have the energy to fly away. However once the smoke blows away they are full of honey and it is this that makes them docile. I've looked into this and have a feeling it's a rather stressfull way of pacifying the bees so when i've a better idea what i'm doing I hope to try a method where you spray a little diluted honey mixed with water using an atomiser. Apparently the bees then groom one another which turns their attention away from you taking the lid of their house.

We removed the lid and poured the sugar syrup into the feeder. We did it slowly so the bees in the feeder cone would not get unexpectedly and fatally submerged. Then we lifted the super containing the feeder off to have a look inside the brood box at the colony.

Healthy busy but freindly and relaxed bees came to look at the top of the hive which gave us the perfect opportunity to treat them for Varoa, the parasitic mite which is killing off hives where hygiene is a little off.

Alex tore the corner off the sachet of BeeVital an organic Varoa treatment that many local bee keepers prefer. Some use oxalic acid. It's effective but very agressive on the bees. I prefer to stick with the organic option.

We decided not to inspect the hive too closely on this occasion as the colony has had a lot of upheaval in the last 24 hours. Moved 3 miles, relocated in a new place, a rain storm that battered the hive, varoa treatment and new people to meet. So we put the hive back together, made sure none of the bees were trapped in the lid and said goodnight.

The Hive In Situ. 

Day One of Novice Bee Keeping.

Day one of novice bee keeping. I went out to find 8 or so bees on their backs on top of the hive struggling. So I used leaves to help them get upright and spoke to my mentor. Apparently at this time of year the summer bees are very weak and dying off. So at least it wasn't anything I'd done. This afternoon the sun is shining and a cloud of the ladies are buzzing about the hive and getting used to their new surroundings. 

I stood outside in the sunshine with my sons and we enjoyed the bees flying around us. I had worried that it might be an unnerving experience but it was actually very relaxing. The bees flew around us getting to know us and their new home. Some of them had clearly been foraging and brought home pollen for the hive. Some of them are still getting their bearings and crashed unceremoniously into the roof of the hive with a gust of wind but so far we've had no fatalities.

The next thing is to make some sugar syrup. At this time of the year there are many fewer flowering plants so, although the hive has stores they still need to be able to find something nourishing to build stocks when nectar is in short supply.

the recipe is

 1 kilo/2lbs of refined white sugar 

 1pt/600ml water

 1 good handful Thyme

 1good handful Lemonbalm

mix in a pan and bring to the boil then leave to go cold.

Many bee keepers just use water and sugar but, being a Herbalist and having done my research I felt that the medicinal benefits to the bees and the added nutrition of these two herbs would make the syrup a more tempting proposition.

I'm waiting for my freind to come round and show me how to put it into the feeder in the hive.

The first day of the rest of my life. The ladies have landed.

Last night a very kind chap from the Skills Exchange brought our new hive. 

For the last 5 years at least I have been whittling on about bees. The down turn in bee populations worries me and it feels like a symptom of a wider dysfunction in the world at large. Bees are, in so many cultures, a symbol of what is good and right. Earlier this year I said to my husband "I really want a bee hive" and he said "Great idea" much to my surprise. So we planned to go to a local course, look into it and perhaps next spring acquire a basic hive, a small swarm of bees. 

A couple of weeks later we were talking to a friend and mentioned our interest and she told us about a lovely lady who kept bees for many many years but became suddenly and severely allergic to bee stings. Sadly she has had to re home her bees and although a friend was looking after the hive for her it needed to be moved before the weather got too cold. We met her got on extremely well and decided a corner of our small urban garden with a brick wall and lots of ivy would be ideal. They went on a short holiday three miles away (you can move bees less than three feet or more than three miles but anything between means they can't navigate.-more of this later no doubt).

Two weeks later they have arrived. We still haven't had any training! It's too late in the season for courses. We've read loads of books but it looks as though, with the help of local bee keepers and the skills exchange we will be learning on the job.

My name is Katherine. I live in a semi detached house on a main road with my husband, two sons and two tom cats. The bees have now redressed the gender balance somewhat. 

Welcome to our journey.