Colony Size and Elderberries. 

I've been unsure about the size of a bee colony. This is partly because I know so little about bee keeping and partly because every book and website you investigate gives different numbers.

I've extrapolated that in autumn a bee hive will have between 30 thousand and 40 thousand bees and this will dwindle over winter to between 10 and 15 thousand. Its difficult to be more accurate than this when it's impossible to count your bees. When Alex and I took the frames out to inspect the hive last week I was amazed by the sheer numbers of them crowding round the comb but equally wondered how, with so many frames and such thick comb, so many could still fit in what is essentially quite a small box.

When we went out to feed the girls this evening we were surprised by how warm it was. There were a lot of bees outside fanning the hive. I'm starting to worry increasingly about damp. I really don't want them to feel soggy in their little corner of the garden.

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Elderberries have nothing particular to do with bees. Of course the flowers are perfect for bees and will contribute to wonderfully healthy honey which in turn contributes to healthy bees. Elderberries just happen to be preoccupying me in my other guise as a herbalist. It has been an astonishing autumn for soft fruit and berries. As we walked down the road the other day we could see the heavy glossy panicles of small purple black berries and the purple smudges under the bushes where either the berries had fallen under their own weight or the birds had gorged themselves and the purple blue flesh had made its way through the bird in the way such things do and ended up coating the ground beneath their perch.

Nature has a way of supplying what we need in abundance. At a time when flu becomes an ever present concern here is natures protector against the virus. Research has proven the effect of elderberry syrup, tincture and standardised extract both in vitro (in the test tube) and in vivo (in the human subject) against numerous viruses including influenza and a number of strains of herpes the nasty little viruses that give us cold sores but also are part of the same family which causes glandular fever, shingles and in some cases viral meningitis. As I was standing stirring the bee syrup I was also stirring honey into the elderberry syrup to protect us against this winter's diseases. I always add cinnamon, ginger, cloves and star anise but this time I took a bunch of the thyme I've been putting in the bees' syrup and added that. It's a spectacularly effective anti infective so I feel it will add to the healing and health promoting benefits of the elderberry syrup for us.

Sleep tight

Katherine xx