Controversial Honey

My bees have had a great summer with all this hot weather. I think some of the larger hives may have swarmed but I've not noticed a great reduction in bee numbers, or productivity. There have been so many wonderful forage flowers nearby for them; field beans, brambles, bird's-foot trefoil and clover to name a few. There are large swathes of Himalayan Balsam along the river that the bees visit intensively and come back wearing a brand of pollen. As an invasive alien weed, it's not viewed favourably by conservation/river management groups as it shades out native plants, dies back in winter leaving riverbanks vulnerable to erosion and spreads its seeds voraciously. However, it is a forage plant nonetheless and the bees work it to their advantage. I'm sure they (and all of us!) would be just as happy with varied indigenous flora should that abound our watercourse margins but with nitrogen runoff and other contenders making local streams rather poor in biodiversity, HB it is...

I take a box of honey off the top of my hives when it's full, which works out at about every 5-6 weeks during the season so I may take up to three 'crops'. This means that the bees always have enough and I can judge whether the honey is spare by the numbers of bees and amount of space they have, as well as cross-referencing these factors with weather and amount of forage around. It sounds complicated but it really isn't...basically the bees' needs must always be met first, as they store honey for their own use throughout the year, but especially over winter. For this reason, I don't take any honey after the end of July as this gives the bees a clear 2-3 months to refil the frames with decent honey. I also leave room above the top board (the crownboard) as they can then build 'wild' comb if they need the space. Late flowering garden plants and ivy are important for the latter part of the year.

Harvesting little and often also means the honey varies over the season. These two batches were only a month apart:

Himalayan Balsam honey on the left, regular
floral honey on the right

It is a bit of a palaver harvesting such small amounts over the course of the summer, which is why many beekeepers harvest at the end of August. The problem with this is that it is difficult to know what sort of autumn or spring we're going to have, which means they usually have to feed sugar syrup to replenish the bees' supplies. Indeed, many honey producers remove all the honey the bees have produced and feed sugar syrup anyway. The bees do convert these simple sugars in to a thicker product to store in the frames, but it is a long, long way from the floral honey they've collected and has none of the medicinal properties of the nectar from which honey is made. All this at a time when the bees are under the most stress having to deal with low temperatures, damp and dwindling numbers of bees during the colder months.

Some beekeepers advocate a policy of not removing any honey and in some hives it is not possible anyway without severe disruption to the colony. My bees are housed in National hives which are designed to have honey removed from them, and I feel if it is genuinely surplus and the bees are fit and strong, it does no harm to the colony and a jar of raw honey can have huge benefits as a tool for persuading people against the bland, homogenous 'honey' available generally.

It's delicious straight from the spoon or on toast, can be medicinal - it's great to have honey and lemon to soothe a sore throat, or to help reduce your sensitivity to pollen for hayfever sufferers. It's a seasonal treat to be enjoyed and savoured and the price should reflect this. There will be a far smaller harvest from hives that keep their honey, but the bees will be healthier and happier.

Growing

The chicks have settled in well to their new broody coop, and have enjoyed a few trips around the garden with a ferociously maternal Blossom. She thoroughly resents any interference from me either in the coop or when they're roaming, to the point where I get roundly pecked when I am putting in their food bowls or retrieving a lost and cheeping chick from the wrong side of the herb bed.

She has got 5 chicks (the chipped egg didn't hatch unfortunately) but Blossom is obsessed with dust-bathing despite it being on the wet side of damp. There will be a bit of a change around soon as my cockerel Henry is going to live with a friend of mine who would like to breed from her hens, and I will hopefully have nextdoor's Barnevelder cockerel, Bruno. As Henry is the father of 3 of my flock, I thought it best to take the opportunity to mix up the gene pool a bit. I will get Bruno some hens of the same breed if I see them at any of the shows over the summer, not least because they lay the most beautiful brown eggs.

Still no sign of the ducklings...

Yesterday was typical Mayday Bank Holiday weather, but we braved the Spring Garden Show at Ardingly nonetheless. We bought a number of things, including a baby ginkgo tree. I love ginkgoes for their prehistoric heritage, and after a massive section on palaeobotany  for one of my degree courses, I find their presence (virtually unchanged) in the fossil record from the time of the dinosaurs rather incredible.

I have finished my owl sweater (designed by Kate Davies) and purchased the 34 buttons necessary for the eyes this morning, so I will sew those on once it dries. If it dries! I realise my knitting arm is also my vacuuming arm so I thought I'd better rest it: I've cast on some socks but I won't be hoovering the stairs...

My bees are flying whenever they get the chance and the little swarm seems to be doing ok. I don't know where all the bees have gone from the original hive; they must have continued to send out swarms until virtually all the workers had left. I now need to wait for the new queen in both the original colony and the new swarm to start laying eggs. During this time, the worker bees will gradually die off and if there aren't any newly-hatched bees to replace them, the numbers dwindle and it can be that there are not enough bees to look after the eggs and larva, meaning the colony won't survive. I really hope they make it. There is plenty of honey in there and looking at the varroa board underneath the floor, there are flakes of wax and plenty of frass so the swarm colony are building comb. I always feel like a 17th Century medic scrutinising the "humours" of some poor patient when I peer over the varroa board, but it's a good indicator of activity in the colony, not just to count them pesky mites. I try and observe what they are up to at the hive entrance as much as possible as that is also a good barometer of things in the hive. I don't want to take the lid off and have a look as it is cold and damp, and small colonies need all the warmth they can get. I am disappointed that I've lost the swarm though - it's not exactly what I planned!

Swifts are screeching overhead and I will take out my tea and sit with the livestock for a bit as it seems to have stopped raining.

It's Been a While....

...partly because I have run out of room in my online photo album so can't post pics without deleting previous ones or purchasing album space, and my laptop has been donated to my son and my old pc won't speak to my camera. Consequently, uploading pictures and getting them on to my blog is a bit of a palava. I'll try and sort something out though. Things have been busy here: I find spring such an energising time of year but I'm actually trying to slow down a bit. I used to make my cup of tea in bleary-eyed fashion, crawl back to bed and resurface once the life-giving caffeine had gently woken me up. Now, I have got in to the unhealthy habit of putting the kettle on, feeling obliged to go and feed the hens and then take the tea outside and start wondering what I can get on with in the garden. Yes! I know! Madness!!

The children are going to their dad's tomorrow morning until Tuesday afternoon so I am looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet. Camilla has been round which is nice for the girls, and Amber has had her friend Emily to stay too. Tristan had his regulation time with Joel last week so the inevitable bickering has been at a manageable level. I have banned the words "I'm bored" with threats of double work when we get back to homeschooling if they chunter about not having anything to do during the break. Tristan is starting French GCSE and hopefully history if I can understand what set books I need to get. I took a special trip up to Foyles in London to have a decent peruse but got completely lost so gave up. I did get a really good insect field guide, a biodynamic calendar, a bee book called "Queen of the Sun" which is a lovely anthology of  articles, pictures and poems from a bee-friendly perspective. Oh, and a great Eleanor of Aquitaine bio by Douglas Boyd which I am really enjoying. So. er, yes, not a great result on the textbook front but I'm well stocked up. Things with their dad are ok; I'm letting the CSA do the running around for me! Well, I say running...I think the Alps are moving more quickly but hey, I wouldn't want to do their job.

The garden is looking full of promise though, and this morning we are finally getting some rain. Drizzle actually, but it's better than nothing. It's not been too bad with the hosepipe ban as I have the duck's bathtub water to decant over the border (which yes, I lug 5 watering-can-loads of water to) and I've been prioritising my new plants so it's all looking pretty green as I've got mainly perennials.

The chickens are all doing well and enjoying the dry weather. They still haven't touched the dust-bath station I installed, but are finding plenty of other places; in my row of potatoes, a pothole they've excavated in a patch of bare earth in the lawn, under the bikes which kicks dust up all over the chains, that sort of thing. Blossom the chick has gone broody, and at the risk of sounding like I advocate teenage motherhood, she's been so out of sorts and hormonal I felt it better to let her sit and see if she stays rather than force her out of it. She's in the spare rabbit hutch in my potting shed so it's nice and quiet, and she has got a selection of nextdoor's eggs under her. My neighbours lost Dorothy, a favourite hen and have a few of her eggs left. There are some others too, mainly Pekin bantams and Polish and some other fancy fowl - they're a bit more adventurous than me.

The call ducks are also fit and healthy, and are right at this moment enjoying the dampness. John the drake is extremely full of the joys and keeps grabbing the chicks and trying to mate them. I did think he was just chasing them but no, having observed him from the upstairs window as I shouted directions to Amber in the garden, he definitely has more libidinous things in mind. They have got a bit wise to him now and give him a good pecking which is a bit dangerous as they could do him some real damage. Not that he seems frightfully aware of that. It certainly doesn't seem to be putting him off. Jean, the duck, did go broody too and [extraordinarily] tempted though I was, I decided not to let her incubate :-( she is very young and ducks are less easy to find homes for than hens. I'll see if it happens next year and let her have a go then.

I'm knitting/crocheting a tea cosy at the moment - it's a variant of the Spring Explosion Tea Cozy from Crochet With Raymond, which looks like this:

I'm doing a fruit 'n' veg one though, and so far it's looking great. I've also discovered the Martha Stewart website which has lots of ideas, so have been churning out strawberry pincushions (from the Sewing Projects) section, and yesterday Kate came over with her machine and we gave it a clean up whilst drinking tea and chatting. Very pleasant :-)

Happy Easter to you all.

Bee Check

I have been wanting to check my bees for a while but with a nod to my new-found bee knowledge, I wanted to wait til the weather was very mild and not breezy, so that I could open the hive up to dust them with icing sugar. The thinking is that they groom themselves and each other to remove the sugar, and in doing so, ping off any Varroa mites that have been latched on. I'd darned the holes in my veil and the elasticated cuffs of my bee suit yesterday evening and when the sun was shining brightly on the hives, I took the lid off and had a look. The smaller hive has a very small nest but that's to be expected at this stage in the season, but I did see the queen, eggs and capped brood, as well as plenty of pollen, so they look like they have done alright so far this winter. I put a desertspoon of icing sugar in to my sieve and gently dispensed it over all the frames of the brood box, and then tapped the last teaspoon over the bees in the super. They protested a bit but I put the crownboard and roof back on quickly anyway to try and retain the heat, and within seconds the rather disgruntled buzzing had calmed to the usual contented hum.

The hive at the front of the house is my original one, and contains the descendants of my first queen who was prolific and docile, and has passed the traits on to her offspring. They are still some of the friendliest bees I know, and due to my rather inexpert amalgamation of an artificial swarm, has over-wintered with two brood boxes. A quick look in the top box showed egg and lots of honey; I think they are going to grow in to a large and productive colony again this year. I'm hoping for some swarms so I can 'experiment' a bit with my apicentric theories by using frames rather than foundation and not using a queen excluder so she has the run of the hive.

I gave the bees in this hive a dose of icing sugar in the same way, and they didn't complain at all, even though they do look a bit ghostly:

I put the hive back together and left them to their grooming. I'll check the base board in a while to see if any varroa have fallen off...

I got in the way of their flight path as I was putting the roof on:

If we get another mild day in the next few weeks, I'll dust them again.