DIY Bee Keeping.
When we got our hive it arrived complete, put together and full of bees. They'd had a holiday in Tollerton and were happy to move lock stock and two smoking barrels into our 'hood. So, having done it the easy way it has come as something of a shock to the system to realise that pretty much all bee paraphernalia comes flat pack. There are numerous bee keeping Ikea stores out there selling bits you have to put together in order to enhance the "des' res'" you maintain for your ladies.
When Alex came over a few weeks ago he said he'd order some super frames for us-apparently its cheaper to buy in bulk. Two days later the above carrier bag arrived containing the bits to make our honey frames. Over the last week or so I put the bits together. I didn't realise the pins supplied came in two different lengths till after I'd put the frames in the hive so it is possible that at some point hence the frames may become over burdened with honey and fall apart. All part of the learning curve I guess.
What you see here is a wooden frame which sandwiches and supports a sheet of bees wax "foundation" This is sterile beeswax which has been pressed into an appropriate shape to help bees make comb in a convenient shape for people to work with. What you can't tell from the picture is how delicious the combination of new pine wood and fresh beeswax smells. Having suffered the smell of three cat litter tray during the wettest winter in living memory the pure fresh smell is such a balm to the senses.Ultimately I had pile of ten frames and felt pretty pleased with myself. The next job was to put the frames in the super so the bees can begin to make use of them.
You will recall from previous posts that a combination of inexperience and hubris had lead me to several unfortunate incidents where I thought it would be ok to "just do this little job" without putting on a bee keeping suit or lighting the smoker. This time we both suited up, put on our gloves, zipped up sensibly and lit the smoker in proper preparation for our work. Our colony is pretty gentle but when you take the lid off, move the frames around and make strange noises even the most gentle strains of bees will locate their warrior genes.
Lighting the smoker is always more of a palaver than it ought to be. For goodness sake dry wood shavings in a metal can should light perfectly easily with the aid of a blow torch. Sounds easy. However the reality is impeded by basic physics. Because the shavings are, effectively, in the bottom of a brass can, when you put the flame of the blow torch near the tinder the FLAME GOES OUT. Insufficient oxygen in the enclosed space for the butane flame. Blessed ridiculous. Ultimately we put some dry holly leaves in and they set light but only after the bees had started to get a little jittery because we'd taken a frame out.
The ladies from the bottom of the garden have been pretty busy. What comb they have is completely full. The queen has been laying and it is clear that if they are going to maintain colony strength they are going to need more stores. Recently night time temperatures have been as low as 4 degrees Celsius again. It is only April and in the UK that certainly doesn't signal the end of frost on the ground. Bob went out and bought fleece to put over plants at the allotment because they still need protection. However it is a record year for blossom-and tree pollen as a result. No fun for hay fever sufferers however it means that our bees have a good supply of nectar to start spring production. Pollen is coming in by the basket load and is notably paler than the honey they collected in the later months of last year.
Back to the matter in hand. We smoked them down so they went about their business and took the crown board off the hive. Everything looked and smelled right. We took one of the frames out but, given that we were about to give their home a spring makeover we decided not to do a full inspection.
Instead of replacing the crown board we put a small rectangle of pine on top of the brood body. this is the exact dimensions of the hive but only 2 inches high. This gives a bit of extra space before you put on a screen made of what look like wooden skewers. This is known as a queen excluder. Basically it prevents the queen from getting through and laying eggs in what you hope will be the frames that provide you with pure honey.
In this image you can see the new frames and the queen excluder between the brood body and the super. It doesn't really look like the gaps are wide enough for a bee to squeeze through but we realised, from observation, that clearly the bee is capable of sneaking through extremely small spaces.
Anyway. It's late and there's much more to tell you so I'll get this out there and follow up tomorrow.
Happy thoughts.
Katherine
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