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Bee Forage : April
The big bee-forage news this month must be the oilseed rape (Brassica napus). Fruit trees continue to blossom in the orchard, notably the pear, cherry and quince – but the overriding draw surely comes...
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Queen Bee-atrix Abdicates
On the very same day that her namesake in the Netherlands was relinquishing the throne, our Queen Bee-atrix has decided to abandon her principal residence in favour of one of her offspring, and has...
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Breakfast in Bed
After the recent Queen Drama, it is paramount that the bees feel at home in their new ruchette and stay put. So the following day, I was up with the larks to serve them breakfast – a syrup solution,...
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What’s the collective noun for ‘swarms’?
It’s happened again! Now we have a third swarm. Just seven days after Jean-Philippe called to ask us to help with a swarm near his hive, he was ringing us again (on the Emergency Beeline). Another...
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Abeille Road
Yesterday, Jean-Philippe rang to see if I could come and Help! It was a case of Good Day Sunshine, and the time had come time to move the bees, from the temporary ruchette (nucleus) into a proper sized...
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Not everything in the garden is rosy
Hurrah, at last, a bit of seasonal warmth. It has been so wet and so fresh for weeks now that I was beginning to wonder if the bees could hang on much longer. Today, finally, it’s sunny and warm and...
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Sunflowers bursting forth
The sunflowers in the fields around and about are all poised to transform from green buds into bright yellow flowers (with their velvety brown faces). Exciting times, on one hand simply because I find...
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Latest Sunflower / Bee News
WARNING : this post contains yet more pictures of bees on sunflowers. However, in an effort to mix it up a bit, I have tried playing around with some of the sunflower pictures, trying out various...
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Honey Harvest Part One : extracting the frames from the bees
Its Honey Harvest Day! The weather is okay – not as hot as last year, but warm enough, and critically no rain or wind. We are a team of four (five if you count Flat Stanley), myself, Jean-Phi, his...
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Flat Stanley and the Honey Harvest
Howdy – its Flat Stanley again, reporting in after an exciting day’s honey extraction! We collected the honey from the hives of Dallas and Jean-Philippe – three hives in all. I was asked to help out in...
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