Bee-Tastrophy

Luckily most of the hives, though upside-down on the ground, were in one piece so it was a case of very carefully lifting and turning them back over. This was particularly difficult because the hives are made of lots of separate parts which are not fixed together and are also quite heavy, so reconstructing the stands and putting the hives back in place without getting stung was challenging. Two hives had fallen apart when they were knocked over, so I needed to reconstruct them, hoping the queens were still inside.


Unfortunately the sheep had also hit the WBC hive containing the new nucleus of bees we had split from one of the other hives on the previous inspection. (pic) Miraculously, although the lid was off the nuc box was still upright and undamaged. Thank goodness it was inside the WBC when the sheep descended or it would have been smashed to pieces!


Fortunately for us our large white national hive with the thriving colony was close enough to the fence to avoid the stampede.


Soon after I had reconstructed the hives Chris arrived so that we could inspect them and make sure the queens had not been lost. The good news is that all the colonies seem to be ok, even the split colony in the nuc box was doing well, and the bees had sealed the queen cup we had placed there for them. Not only this, they’d started a second queen cup complete with larvae and royal jelly, so we are hoping one of these queens will survive and the colony will fully develop over the coming weeks.

I think it's fair to say that we've learnt our lesson regarding sheep at Honeydale - in the future we'll make sure they are not herded anywhere near the apiary!

Survivor Bees

When we inspected our only remaining hive this week, the National, it was great to see that the colony appears to be thriving. We found the queen almost instantly and could see lots of eggs indicating that she is healthy and well, and the brood was plentiful.


The colony has already filled it's first super with no sign of swarming and we also found good amounts of pollen and nectar stores which is another good sign .


These bees are still twitchy and quite aggressive but this could be the reason they survived the winter and late spring so well. We've added an empty super so they can start filling that too.


The next job was to help Chris inspect his hives.
He has lost two colonies over the winter but the others look good and strong. Two of the hives had unclipped queens so we quickly clipped those and let them carry on the good work. Under one of the hives we did find a lot of dead bees, but the hive above seemed healthy, so we think at some point there has been a swarm and it had hung to the underside of this hive without a queen before sadly perishing.


During the inspection we saw lots of bright yellow honeycomb which is a classic sign that the bees are foraging on the Sainfoin which has been in flower for some weeks now, and will be for several weeks to come.



In one of Chris' hives we found a queen cup with an egg so we took the opportunity to split this colony and put this, together with a few extra frames, into one of our empty WBC hives in the hope that this colony will develop into a full colony.

These frames are staying inside a nuc box for a few weeks to keep them in a nice compact space while the colony develops.




We hope to be able to repeat this exercise over the coming weeks with another of Chris' hives so that we can populate our other WBC.


Chris also needs to repopulate his empty national hives soon, replacing the colonies that have been lost over the winter, but there is a shortage of nucs available this spring due to the tricky winter and late spring, so it'll be a case of watching this space to see if we can find some more colonies.We also took the opportunity to do some gardening during the inspection, as the grass around the apiary had grown quite long and was starting to creep towards the hives, so we chopped this back and tidied it up.

Busy Bank Holiday at Honeydale

Earlier this month we hosted a farm walk for a group of post grad students from the RAU, who came to hear about diverse and sustainable farming. They were the last visitors to use the old entrance, since the new relocated entrance, complete with dry stone wall and farm track, is now finished and waiting to welcome visitors.


Busy Bank Holiday Weekend
We had a busy bank holiday weekend at Honeydale. As part of our rotation, we’ve sown an enhanced wild bird seed mix, with an increased variety of species to make it more productive as a fertility builder - so we’re feeding the soil as well as the farmland birds!


In the strip next to it, we sowed herbal ley with buckwheat to act as a nurse crop in the hot weather, and to increase the phosphate levels. We’re experimenting to find the optimum sowing rate and sowed the buckwheat at a rate of 8kg/acre (20kg/ha) which is lower than last year.