Doing the splits...

Over the winter I lost a colony of bees. Talking to other beekeepers, reading other blogs, browsing articles, has led me to the conclusion that the colony died of starvation, not helped by being affected by nosema last autumn and being a small cluster, probably unable to keep themselves warm enough to move to available stores during the last really cold snap. Since then I have been thinking about splitting the one remaining hive and how best to do it.


Yesterday seemed an ideal opportunity. A week previously I had knocked down a queen cell and knew something had to be done, so with a decent bit if weather (sunny, a bit cloudy, cool breeze) I decided to take the chance. Equipment was readied, every grain of sugar in the house was used to make syrup, hive parts were checked for cleanliness and spiders.

I did the normal inspection of the first hive. Removed the, now empty, feeder and checked stores. There still isn't a massive amount in there, but they have enough and this cool weather surely has to end soon. In the brood boxes, as the hive is on double brood, all was well except for a couple of queen cells. Two frames of brood were removed into the new box, along with a couple of extra frames of bees, then began the hunt for the queen. Three times through the bottom box and I gave up. Surely she can't be in the upper? But three frames in, there she was. Into the 'queen cage' (an old hair roller) and transferred to the new brood box. She scuttled off between the frames and I moved the hive onto its stand. Added some syrup to the feeder, put the crownboard and roof on, strapped it up.  

Now I have to be patient. Will the queen be happy in her new home? Will there be enough bees to cluster successfully? Will she swarm? Or go back to the original hive? Will the bees in the original hive rear a successful queen? Are there enough drones? It will be a long week I think, and I am already itching to go and have a look, but I know that disturbing them now will probably do more harm than good.

Moving house, part one...

I thought I might have had the plot to myself last week when I popped up to turn the ground ready for the potatoes, but the place was packed. There'd also been a good deal of activity since my last visit, as I found out when I went through the gate. What was once good thick turf has been reduced to a slippery slope.

It got worse further in, with the path to the plot more of the same, up to the spring where we get our water. There, some bright spark had had the idea of moving the basin where the water collects, with the result we now have a pool where the old pool was, and a swamp because the new plastic sump doesn't drain the water away properly.

When I got to the bee plot, I was horrified to find this mess:

Walking across from the path was hard work and I can only begin to imagine how much harder it would be with a full super. You can't even wheel a barrow it's that uneven. When I queried who and why, and pointed out that was my half plot for the bees I was given some vague bullshit that just proved once again that the people who have plots on that site have no clue how gardening works, and if brains were manure, there'd be enough to fertilise only a very small gro-bag.

So my hand was forced, so to speak. I don't want the bees on this site any longer and decided to move them straight away. So with a friend, Andrew's, help the remaining hive (the one on the left in the photo) was lifted from its home of over three years, carried stumblingly across the ground, placed gently in the car and driven to a new location.

The distance from site to site was well over the regulation three miles and they should do well there, secluded and in the midst of masses of balsam. I returned to the plot site on the Monday and removed the rest of the windbreak netting and the remaining hive and will re-queen as soon as possible to get back to two colonies.

All this was done in the rain so thankfully there were no flying bees, and I have yet to inspect them after their move, but it all went smoothly, albeit a couple of skids on the path of the skimmed allotments and a near-miss blunder at the top of the potentially lethal steps, below.

The photo is blurred because I was still shaking after slipping on the second step, with Andrew skidding at the top. Thankfully those orange straps keep everything nicely tight and together. So one colony successfully moved, no stings, no mishaps. Thank goodness!

Rest in bees...

Apologies for the awful pun, but it seemed appropriate. On Saturday, with the mild weather continuing, I decided to go and check all was well with the bees. The first colony, the more tetchy of the two, was filling the super and buzzing quite a bit. Their mood wasn't help by my clumsy removal of the super. I just couldn't get it off and ended up tipping one side and prising off the frames underneath. I knew it would be stuck but didn't think it would be so bad. It wasn't helped by the extra comb the bees had built down into the, now empty, frame feeder. At least they have taken all the Fumidil B and so should be nosema-free now. One thing I do need to do is widen the slats in the floor for the varroa tray. Part of the reason I don't effectively manage the varroa is because it's a struggle to get the sliders in and out. Must remedy that this season, it's a part of my beekeeping I know is lacking...

So, after a bit of lumping about (and only one minor sting!) I moved onto the second hive. Oh dear. No sign of anything when I took off the lid. A small cluster of maybe 20-30 bees were stuck at the top of one frame and there were odd ones and twos of bees across some of the other frames. There were stores, at least four frames-worth, but from the position of some bees (head down, right down into the cell, just the business end sticking out) I must suspect starvation. I can't understand it, they were a good-sized cluster not two weeks back, with plenty of stores and a frame feeder full of syrup. Needless to say they hadn't taken much from the feeder. So for the first time since I started keeping bees, I have lost a colony. Gutted. I brushed off the frames and closed up the hive and came home to think about my next move. I hope to move both hives in the next few weeks and then, once settled, will attempt to re-queen from the first hive. I like having two colonies, it gives a way of comparing how each is doing so I will make sure I expand again as soon as possible.

On a slightly different note, I got my monthly newsletter from my association, Manchester beekeepers. The results of the honey show were in. Seven of the classes were won by the local bee inspector. Is it just sour grapes, thinking a professional beekeeper has an unfair advantage?

Snowdrops and rain...

It's been some time since I posted anything. Kalina keeps us both busy and, at the moment, there's very little to do on the plot except visit every couple of weeks and replace the covers that the wind blew off. The bees were treated with oxalic acid, for varroa, and Fumidil B, for nosema, in December and are snug in their hives. At some stage I will need to move them on to our plot as the powers that be want the area they are on for another allotment. The original idea, that the area was used as a 'bee garden', has obviously been superseded by financial need although the way the plot site is run means spaces are given to people who turn up once, pay, and then disappear. Cronyism is suspected, rather than getting people who are interested and willing to break their backs. Our plan for this year is to leave half the plot covered, put potatoes on the other half and pray whatever gods we can think of that we're offered something by the council close to home.

The bees present another problem, however, and I am still trying to find somewhere for them. Hopefully I will get somewhere before the end of February when the weather should start to warm up, although we have been promised another cold snap.

On a brighter note, the snowdrops we have on the windowsill have started to flower. Pretty little white heads, tinged with green, nodding gently in the breeze and looking in at us through the window. A sure sign winter is ending.

How not to hive a swarm...

For the second time since I started keeping bees, I had a swarm. I got the phone call at 5.30 one night and later we went over to see what they were up to. Not a lot as it happens; they were sat on a post, as quiet as could be.

So I scraped them into a carboard box, propped open one corner with a stick and left them to it.

The next afternoon I went to house them in a proper hive, collected the box:

But they had other ideas, as you can see. After buzzing around the plots in a cloud for what seemed like ages, they finally settled on the same post they were on originally.

So I waited until the evening, then went back. This time they were clustered more on the fence than the post. I got what I could off the post / fence, scraping and brushing them into the box before transferring them into the new hive.  

Another day later, back again. This time there was no sign of them on the post, and unfortunately no bees in the box. I obviously didn't get the queen. Thankfully, the hive they came from has a queen cell, so all is not yet lost. Another lesson learned, some more experience to add to that already gained.

Spring has sprung...

... the grass is ris,
I wonder where,
the birdies is.

There are plenty of birds around, they have been flexing their song muscles for several weeks. I stood at the back door last night and, mixed in among the screams of children, the revving of over-tuned cars and the distant sirens, listened to a blackbird filling the air with his liquid song. It is a sound I always get pleasure from, particularly in the urban mess that is Farnworth.

It's not just the birds gearing up for spring. Yesterday, when I got to the farm there were three new additions. Mum Zina was looking very pleased with herself, despite needing a hand to get the first kid, a breech presentation, out. These were born on Friday and are already jumping about, itching to get in and play with the other goats.

More are due this weekend, so I am hoping it happens near enough to Sunday for me to be present.

With the weather so bright and sunny, I also decided to have a quick look in the hives. Both colonies are doing well, although one has used up almost all of its winter stores. I took two of their empty frames out and swapped them for two full ones from the other hive but will need to pop back this week and give them some sugar syrup to keep them going. If the weather is good, they might not need it, but better to be safe than sorry. I have been quite good so far at keeping them going through the winter and I would hate a basic mistake like not feeding them interrupt my success.

Although the sun was out, it must have been warmer on my head than in the air, as you can see.

Pre-Christmas allotment...

As I write this the snow is piled high outside and all over the north west people are grumbling: about blocked and slippy paths; about roads with no grit and councils with no idea; about having to take flexi instead of being paid to stay at home. So it is with a touch of embarrassment that I post these photos from the allotment during what was described as 'possibly the worst snow fall of the winter' back in December. How little they knew.

Here are our winter onions, just poking through the dusting:

The leeks that continue to provide tasty leek and potato soup:

And one of the hives, where inside the bees should be snug and warm. It's too cold to check so I have to hope they're ok.

Odd uses of a flowerpot...

I am almost at the end of my second season as a bee keeper and was tying up the rampant honeysuckle to the trellis when another plot-holder shouted me, pointed at the new hive and then promptly locked himself in his shed. There was a mass of bees flying above the hive, many more than the normal daily activity so I wandered over to have a look. Bees were pouring out of the entrance and, when they’d more or less all exited, moved as a cloud across the allotments and settled in the highest tree they could find.
There was nothing I could do then, so I finished off the plot jobs, called at the house (in whose garden the tree was) to apologise and let them know I was coming back, then went home for a bite to eat and to assemble a brood box and equipment to house the swarm. We returned around 5.30, just as the rain started. After some difficulty getting the ladder up to the tree, a manoeuvre which included dropping it on my head, I finally got it positioned and started to climb.

In the textbooks, collecting a swarm is a piece of piss. In reality, 20’ off the ground, trying to hold onto a wobbly ladder, a spray, a sheet and a cardboard box and shake the tree to dislodge the colony, it’s anything but. I soon got rid of the spray, dropping it into the thick grass. Next I cut a couple of little branches to get the box in position, then I whacked the trunk. Nothing. A slight buzzing but no movement. So I shook the tree harder. While some of the bees dropped into the box, plenty more decided it was time to fly. I got back down to the ground and put the box onto the sheet, propping open an entrance. When I looked up, most of the bees were still where they were: on the tree. By now I was sweating like a pig, a mixture of nervous energy and adrenalin-fuelled fear. Grabbing a large flower pot, I went up again, managed to get the pot under another large hanging cluster and, again, shook hard. This time they dropped with a plop and I got stung in the process. I don’t think I ever got down from a ladder so quickly. I threw the rest of the bees into the box and then left them for the night, not hoping for much.

The next day the bees were gone from the tree and were clustered in the box so I decided I probably got the queen. Now I just had to get them out of the box and into the hive.

And the easiest way to do this? Shake them out. So I did. Mostly all over the floor but some of them went into the hive. I arranged the sheet (bought in India ten years ago and, until now, unused) so they could use it as a little ramp to get into their new home.

Then, slowly but surely, the remaining bees walked into the hive. I've heard about this before but this is the first time I have witnessed it and it is, indeed, fascinating; watching them all plod up the cloth and in through the hive entrance.

After about an hour they were all, more or less, inside. The feeder was filled with sugar syrup so they don't starve, and the roof put on.

I can only hope, now, that the queen is inside and in one piece. I have to check the hive they swarmed from, to see what is going on in there, but as there were a lot of wasps buzzing round I decided to leave it for another day. I don't like wasps at all and, even though they were sneakily robbing the honey, I still found it unsettling.

This my first swarm experience and I learned a lot from it. The hand that was stung swelled up dramatically over the next day but, two days later, is going down slowly. I am glad it was only the one sting! Now all I have to think are the robbing wasps and the three colonies I now have. I don't have any more equipment and some of the boxes on one hive don't fit properly, leaking when it rains. I will have to reduce my stock down to two for the winter.

Thanks to Agnieszka for moral support and photos, I'll try to keep the bees out of your hair.

Queenie-i, queenie-i...

This year’s beekeeping has been fraught with potential disasters and has led to me wondering if I will ever get the hang of it. For some time I have been finding queen cells on the frames of my supers and all the books (and everyone I spoke to) say that on the day, or the day after, a queen cell is capped, the bees swarm. Certain members of Manchester Bee Keepers have been very smug in their prediction that ‘they’ll have gone’. However, I’ve been extremely lucky in that, once or twice, I have arrived to inspect the bees and there have been capped queen cells but the queen is still there and all has been ok. After knocking them down for a couple of weeks I finally decided to split the hive and try to increase my stocks.

Three weeks after splitting the original colony it was time to inspect the new and, while there were quite a lot of bees, there seemed to be no sign of either a queen or eggs. In fact, the brood box was completely empty, all cells clean and waiting, but nothing laying in them and most of the bees clustered in the super of stores. I assumed the new queen was still out on her mating flight and another week was needed but my hand was pushed when I checked the original hive.
Going through the super were odd bits if brood, some larvae and what looked like eggs. This couldn’t be right. I had moved a frame from the brood box to the super to encourage the bees up into the hive but that was long enough ago that they should have hatched and gone by now. Going through the super frames more carefully I spotted the reason for the brood – a second queen. This was clearly not right and it was with some trepidation that I checked the brood box to find the original queen busy about her business, seemingly unconcerned. I now had to think about what to do and I decided to remove the new queen and put her in the, queenless, other hive. Of course, going through the frames again I couldn’t find her so closed up the hive and thought I would come back the next day.

A gap in work meant I could get back to the hive around dinner time. On the first look through I spotted the queen and managed to grab her but she wriggled free and, as I tried to grab her again, flew up and over my hand, between the frames and into the box. Three further trawls through the frames didn’t uncover her again and, with a lot of now narky bees, I closed the hive and went back to work. The third time I went, after work on the same day, things started off as badly, as a couple of searches revealed nothing. On the third run through, however, I spotted the queen on a frame and, quick as a flash, I jabbed the Butler cage over her and then managed to get a bit of newspaper over the end. The sigh of relief was heard throughout the allotments. I closed up the original hive and, hanging the queen cage between two of the super frames of brood, placed her carefully in the new hive and closed everything up.

A week later when I checked there was no sign of the queen in the new hive but I did see eggs. So it seems, at this point, the split was eventually successful. It remains to be seen if she carries on laying and the brood hatches healthily and the wait between each hive visit is hard to bear. If it all works out then I am very pleased but, if not, then towards the end of summer the two colonies will be united and I will try again next year. It hasn’t gone as smoothly as the books lead you to believe, but having to decide what to do on my own has boosted my confidence that I do know what to do without having to take advice from others. My hope now is that the bees settle down and get on with making us some honey.

I recently borrowed a bee suit in order to show a nine-year-old how a hive works and, as I still had it, asked Agnieszka if she wanted to use it to get closer with her camera. She jumped at the chance and, while a little bit nervous, got some great shots. At last I can put some close-up shots on the blog that aren’t blurred. Thank you to Pippa for the loan of the bee suit and to Agnieszka for the photos.

Doing the splits in a morning...

So far this year the hive hasn’t presented any problems but over the last few weeks the bees have been building queen cells and, after finding a couple of them capped, I started to get very nervous that I would lose them if they swarmed. At my weekly inspection last Monday I found a very nice queen cell and decided to split the hive to stop them swarming and to increase my potential honey harvest.

So on Tuesday morning I went to the site before work and did the best I could to perform an artificial swarm. This involves removing the queen and then replacing the brood box with a completely new one. The old box is moved a few feet away and any flying bees return to the new box on the old site, with the old queen. The box is bare so they think they’ve swarmed. The second hive contains the queen cell and the non-flying bees and will be left for three weeks in the hope the new queen will mate and start laying.

Everything seemed to go smoothly but, after reporting back to a more experienced bee-keeper I realised the queen excluder was above the new brood box and not underneath (to stop the queen trying to make a run for it). I had to go back and change it all round later that day. Now all I have to do is wait but the weather is poor and it may mean the queen doesn’t mate properly. Whatever happens, it’s a new learning curve and a chance to try to get better at techniques to increase the size of my apiary.

The sticky has landed

After much messing, we finally got the honey into jars.

Agnieszka decided to clean the pan herself, which saved me a job.

Stickier than Sticky the stick insect's sticky situation

There has been quite extensive coverage over the summer of the threat faced by the bee population from disease, varroa mites and Colony Collapse Disorder with a prediction that English honey will run out by Christmas and that, without significant increases in the research budget into bee health, bees may disappear entirely within ten years.

I know a number of beekeepers who emerged from last winter with severely reduced colonies, or none at all, and the whole bee year has been much slower than usual. As a late starter, getting my colony at the beginning of July, I was quite prepared just to build up the strength of the hive and get it ready to go into winter in a good position. I was fully resigned to the fact I might not get any honey this year but a late burst of warm and sunny weather has meant that my colony has improved beyond all expectations and furnished me with my very first honey crop.

On Sunday me and Agnieszka went to the Dower House to extract the honey from the 25 frames our bees had produced. This is in addition to the super I have left for them as winter stores. They have in excess of 30lb of capped honey which should be plenty to see them through until the sun starts to poke its thin, watery fingers through winter’s gloom. That point seems a long way off but for now we have honey to see us through.

Extraction is made easy at Manchester beekeepers because we have the use of good equipment in a purpose-built room which is, as any of the people who run the club will tell you, the envy of every other beekeeping association in the land. Despite the range of equipment, you still get sticky. Very sticky. Here’s why.

First you put on a protective coat, so that the stickiness goes on that.
Then you use the uncapping fork to take the wax caps off the frames of honey.
Place them into the extractor, where they are spun until the honey is ‘flicked’ out, taking care to load it evenly, otherwise broken frames and bouncing machine is the result.
Pour out the honey into buckets.
Clean everything.

I thought I did quite well, only washing my hands about 50 times and getting it on my trousers, shirt and up my sleeve. It’s now all over the door handles and steering wheel of the car and just about everywhere else. By the time we have everything cleaned, it’ll be near enough time to do it again. Thanks to Agnieszka for doing most of that while I was faffing about.

So how much did we get? Well, we filled almost to the top, three 15lb buckets, plus three jars from the cappings (another 4lbs). considering some people haven’t had anything this autumn, I think I did quite well but am wary of something I read in a gardening book: beginners do well in their first season because they are careful, they don’t know much and they take pains to get it right. In the second season, they know more, experiment more, make more mistakes and thus don’t produce as much, be it veg or honey. So I must be careful to carry on practising good hive hygiene, careful management and be open to new techniques and ideas. That way my bees will be happy and I will carry on having a fascinating and productive hobby for years to come.

Looking for a queen on a hot summer's day...

For this week's hive inspection I took along my mentor, Pippa, from Manchester Beekeepers. She has kindly agreed to look after me in the first few months of my beekeeping and is a very nice, very laid back person and great around the hive. Not like some of them on a Monday night at Heaton Park, banging things around and squashing bees through ham-fisted carelessness. I mean, I know eventually I will get stung but the longer it goes when it doesn't happen, the better and I certainly don't want to get the fallout from someone else's clumsy handling.

Anyway, this week was very hot and even with shorts and a t-shirt under the bee suit it was very warm. Sweat trickling down your face doesn't help and because of the veil in the way, you're not able to wipe it away so must suffer. We were met at the gate by one of the allotment holders, who asked if the bees had made any honey. She went on to ask me twice more, and Pippa once, if they'd made any honey and proudly said there were more bees (wasps, it turned out) in one of the compost bins.

The hive looks quite at home now, in the midst of the allotments and the windbreak fence is helping to lift the bees up to a safe height so they don't bother other allotment holders. The posts are sagging slightly so I will have to keep an eye on that as time goes on. The choice of colour was a good one, and unless you know it's there, you can hardly spot it.

There was plenty of activity, lots of brood, stores, eggs and larvae and a lot of bees coming in and going out of the hive. In another week it will be time for a super and hopefully we will have a bit of honey at the end of September. More importantly, the colony should be big enough to over-winter safely and start next spring in good condition. The queen, marked in this picture, is doing well and laying a nice brood pattern and there are plenty of young bees.

They do seem to be using a fair amount of syrup though, and it's starting to become expensive, purchasing sugar to feed them, but it has to be done. Without it they couldn't produce wax to make comb and therefore nowhere for the queen to lay. Aside from worrying about them when I am not there, and resisting the urge to open the hive every five minutes, they are getting on with business without me interfering. It is very pleasant to sit and watch them gliding in and taking off, bringing bags full of pollen and crops full of nectar and generally just enjoying watching them flying about. The next job now will be to name them all...

After we left and I had dropped Pippa off at her house, she gave me some redcurrants which I used even more sugar to turn into redcurrant jelly. Such sweet pastimes!

Pierwszy dzien pszczelarza

It wasn't without some nerves that I went up to Harwood on Saturday night to collect my very first colony of bees. They'd been left outside on a table and, when I removed the lid, they were all sat quietly, helped by the dull and cool evening air. When I picked them up, they started to buzz but a gentle kind of murmur rather than an angry whine. Settling them into the boot we set off for the allotments and their new home, me driving carefully so as not to upset them, Agnieszka quiet, saying occasionally that she could hear a buzzing, both of us checking in case any escaped.

Luckily none of them did and we arrived safely and, after donning my full gear (and feeling a bit of a tit as the bees were so quiet and uninterested), I installed them in their new position. As soon as I took out the foam block and replaced it with the entrance block bees came out, flying backwards to check the position of the hive before going round and round it to imprint its position on their memories. A slightly nervous night followed, where I worried about their safety: were they ok? Taking the sugar syrup? Finding their own nectar? I needn't have worried, as my next visit on the Monday night showed they'd definitely found, and emptied, the feeder, and were happily bussing in and out of the hive. Now all I have to do is keep them from swarming and hopefully they'll produce a frame or two of honey for us later in the year.
The box in the back of the car after jolting its way from Bolton. A few dead ones in the bottom but generally they seemed ok.

The hive on its stand on the allotment site, ready to have the travelling screen and foam travelling block removed and the feeder added.
Getting ready to go in. As it turned out, I didn't need all the gear on, but as a beginner it is better to be safe than sorry I think.
Giving them some smoke before taking off the screen and re-assembling the hive.

Since then I have visited only once, to top up the sugar syrup and look forward to doing my first proper inspection this weekend. If only the weather would improve, then they can get on with what they do best - making honey.

Stoneleigh and the bee show

Saturday 19 April saw the UK’s premier bee keeping event at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire. As I am new to beekeeping and mildly curious we (yes, I made Agnieszka go too) got up at 5am to make sure we were in Sale on time to get the coach. Only a dozen people went from Manchester – six didn’t turn up – which seemed a poor show, but left plenty of room for us.

The show is at the National Agricultural Centre, south of Coventry, and we arrived just after 9am. Even at that hour there were plenty of people scurrying about, armed with hive parts and tools, bee suits and wax. On entry, we handed over our tickets and got wrist bands to wear, which Agnieszka managed to stick to my arm hairs, giving me something to moan about for the rest of the morning. Inside was a warren of different rooms all chock full of bee keeping equipment: hive parts, tools, smokers, suits and associated paraphernalia. After being shoved and buffeted by tweeed-clad middle classes - who are always the rudest, despite their ‘breeding’ - we found a stall selling mead. A short while and three taster glasses later, we felt mellow enough to continue…

About the only thing I bought was a Fresnal lens to help spot the bees.
The mania that was the Thorne's offers. Talk about territorial and aggressive...

Bee suits now come in any colour you like, at £98 a pop.

And equipment to extract and process honey - this one is four grand, and it's on sale!

Outside were tents to exchange wax, melted down at home, for foundation to use in the hive for the forthcoming season.

Any mould will do, these look like they were melted into buckets.

Once the wax is melted and rolled into sheets it can then be used in the hive for the bees to re-fill with honey.
Someone making skeps in the traditional way. A relatively quiet corner, away from the hubbub of commerce and frenzied buying.

Photos, as ever, by Agnieszka - dziękuję serdecznie.

A sting in the tail

The pedigree of honey

Does not concern the bee;

A clover, anytime to him

is aristocracy.

Emily Dickinson

One half of Manchester Beekeeper's apiary

This last weekend saw the second part of the beekeeping course with the practical side, following on from the theory I did at the end of January. A chance to put theory into practice and, looking back, an opportunity to make sense of all the things I’ve been reading over winter.

Quite a few people turned up and we were split into groups. First off for our group was extracting. Into the extracting room we went, uncapped the frames from two supers and loaded up the extractor, which would spin the honey out. This is probably the stickiest job I have ever done and it gets everywhere. We had to wear white coats, hair nets and overshoes for health and safety reasons, but the amount of finger-licking that was going on may have made those precautions pointless. Once extracted, we were able to bottle a jar of our own - harder than it sounds - and keep it as a souvenir. Mine is in the cupboard at home now, stuck to the shelf.

Using honey to glue things together

After a brew it was time to look at making brood boxes, supers and frames. This was particularly interesting for me as I bought plans for building a hive from scratch and up to now they haven't made much sense, although spilling coffee all over them didn’t help. It was useful to see how things go together and to get a few tips, but I did feel that some of the things were a little over the top.

After hammering away and glueing for an hour or so it was time for dinner and then it was 'put your bee suits on' and get outside. It may have been the beginning of March but it was as cold as a witch’s tit outside, with strong winds and little sun. I felt sorry for the bees as they were disturbed half a dozen times on each day and I’m sure being exposed to the cold wasn’t doing them any good. Plenty seemed to be dead on the floor and within minutes of us opening the hive more were rolling around in death throes.

First job was to light a smoker. Despite putting paper, leaves and little sticks in and my penchant for pyromania, I still couldn’t get it lit after three attempts. We resorted to the blowlamp to get it going in the end and that’s the way I’ll go from here on. Braving the wind we were then allowed to inspect a hive and, starting with a super, go through each frame and have a look.

Looking at an empty frame of foundation like I know what I'm doing

Because of the cold we were only able to look at two hives, both of which had queens that were either not laying, or were laying only drones. I think it was the cold that kept them quiet because there was hardly any movement on the frame and I had a small pang of nervousness as I lifted my first frame full of bees.

Looking for the queen

Actually getting to grips with the hive, taking it apart, checking for the queen (which I managed to find twice, despite her being unmarked), prising apart propolised frames and learning how all the bits fit together. What I need to do now is get my own hive and bees and start the whole process on my own. The more I get into it the more fascinating I find it and think it will be something I can get years of enjoyment from.

The view between two frames

Thanks to Vinny for the photos.