Sustainable beekeeping, chickens, and cake
If you have recently acquired some bees for your new hive, you might be wondering how and when to check them. The books will tell you various things, but the balance is about familiarising yourself with handling bees, and allowing the colony to settle and get on with the essential task of building wax and … Continue reading Checking your new bees
It was a beautiful, sunny, breezy day yesterday, perfect for the delivery of the Thermosolar hives from Devon to the solar farm at Berwick by Nick Oldridge, from The Naturesave Trust. Tom Worsley of Thermosolar came along to set them up and give me a quick run through on their operation and management. Sarah and … Continue reading Thermosolar Hive Installation
Following on from my previous post... Yesterday I was contacted by a site worker from East Sussex Highways about removing the panel from the street lamp so that I could access the bees inside. We met underneath the lamp (although that's where the similarity with Narnia ends), and after a few deft stabs with a … Continue reading The Street Lamp Bees
On Sunday, I was called out to a swarm of bees who had decided to make their home in a lamppost. They were flying in and out of the access panel, and as they were in a residential area, and their flight path at small-child's-face level, I was concerned to get them out before pest … Continue reading Bees will be bees…
In our ongoing drive to promote biodiversity at the Marsh, Paul put in an application with the Woodland Trust to receive some subsidised hedgerow tree packs for the Apiary site. We have to be careful about access for diggers to clean out the drainage channels (sewers) but inside the Apiary and the newly-fenced reptile sanctuary … Continue reading Hedgerows at the School Apiary
Continuing with the feral bee theme, Paul had put up bait hives in Market Wood in the hope of enticing a swarm from one of the nearby oak tree colonies. Sure enough, there was lots of activity and bringing in of pollen when he checked after a week or so. https://videopress.com/v/2gTKVSni We decided that these … Continue reading National Trust Swarm
The oak tree bees were very busy when we last visited Knockhatch Adventure Park, and according to the staff, the bees had swarmed on Wednesday 15th, but nobody had seen where they went. We checked our bait boxes: the one nearest the colony had bees! We weren't sure whether they were the swarm from the … Continue reading Knockhatch Swarm
A beautiful day at the Marsh to check the bees. We had asked Oscar at The Shed to make us a new Warré box for our hive, and he had commissioned Jim and Dino to do so, which they did - out of a former church pew: We wanted to get the next box on … Continue reading School Apiary Update
For me, keeping bees is about education: they are the most amazing ambassadors for insects, pollinators, the local environment, and relate to the current global situation regarding extinctions, climate change and other sobering issues. Sustainable beekeeping is about not only about how we keep bees, but also using them to regenerate and encourage other wildlife … Continue reading A Weekend of Workshops
Last year, Paul was tipped off about some bees in an aged oak at Knockhatch Adventure Park and yesterday we went to see them, and hear about their history from Colin, the Managing Director of the family-owned Park. The colony currently resides in the trunk of the tree, but originally they were in a branch … Continue reading Tree Bees at Knockhatch