Category: Learning

Meet Cleo,

May 25, 2022 / Emma / 0 Comments

the Queen of Bluebell.

Every hive needs a queen, ours has Cleo. She is the heart of our colony and the biggest bee in the hive. She is also the longest living bee in the colony, and if all goes well she will be with us for 3-5 years.

Her main role is laying eggs, lots and lots of eggs, up to 1500 a day to keep her colony strong. As the queen you might think she has all the power, but actually she doesn’t have that much power. Her hive is a democratic system influenced by the worker bees. They will decide when Cleo needs replacing, and they will do it. She does, however, set the tone and temperament of her hive through her pheromones. These also let her colony know how healthy she is. When the pheromone levels fall it can be the signal that a new queen is needed.

One of the first things you learn on the beekeeping course is that a queen-less hive is a grumpy hive!

Cleo, circled here in blue, was born in 2021. She is unclipped and marked with a white dot to help me find her. Trying to locate one bee in the colony of 60,000 is blooming hard so a quick dot can make all the difference.

She came from a fellow bee-keepers colony when he split and overwintered them. He marked her for me and has done a brilliant job, it is easy to spot her! Well it is at the moment with a small starter colony.

Why a white dot?

Good question, it is all to do with when a queen bee is born and helps you to age her. There is a colour system consisting of White, Yellow, Red, Green, Blue. Queens born in a year ending 1 and 6 are dabbed with a White dot; ending 2 and 7 are Yellow; ending 3 and 8 are Red; 4 and 9 dabbed Green; and finally 5 and 0 are Blue. Therefore, Cleo born in 2021 gets a white dot

If you want to remember the sequence: Will You Raise Good Bees (white, yellow, red, green, blue).

Fire, not smoke!

May 25, 2022 / Emma / 0 Comments

Another practical thing we did on the beekeeping course was learning how to light, and importantly keep lit, your smoker – a beekeeper’s best friend. I decided before my bees arrive I’d practise and it was probably a good job that I did. I collected my bits of cardboard, paper and dried bits of twig and set about lighting it. What I probably should have practised was getting the lid on and off the smoker before setting alight as mine has a tendency to get stuck.

Having lit the smoker the flames were growing as I desperately tried to get the lid on without setting fire to my hand. That was proving impossible so for some unknown reason I decided to tip the contents of the fiery smoker out onto the stone so now rather than having fire contained in a smoker I have fire on the floor. Luckily my dad was a fireman so whenever I’m dealing with fire I make sure there’s water nearby and on this occasion emptied the contents of my watering can onto my flaming path. I think we can definitely say my first attempt to light the smoker was not successful.

But I wasn’t put off on my second attempt was much better after a few minutes my smoker was indeed producing smoke. The challenge will be keeping it producing smoke but that’s a challenge for another day.

Glue, hammer and nails ready

May 18, 2022 / Emma / 2 Comments

A lovely clear sunny day, perfect for a bit of hive building. First on my list was the landing board or hive stand to sit underneath my hive and give my girls a nice ramp to take off and come home too. Most of the flat pack equipment that arrived in my birthday box had little or no instructions, but there are so many videos on YouTube that will guide you through the process of putting things together. The ones I used were by Simon the Beekeeper and Thorne.

Next came the Super box, a square box that your slightly smaller frames sit on, ready for your bees to fill with yummy honey. Again, YouTube guided me through putting this one together even if it did take several watches. At the end of it I was pretty impressed stood back and admired my super box and landing ramp.

Next came the frames. Now despite being shown how to put these pesky frames together during the day in the apiary on the bee course, I find them particularly tricky. The tiny nails they give you to secure your foundation in the wooden frame have to go in at such a bizarre angle to make sure they hold the foundation in place but don’t come out of the wood on the other side. And the nails themselves are bigger than the piece of wood they are going into, surely slightly smaller nails must exist? I made 10 frames and I’d say probably only two would have met the standard of the beekeeping group. I figured my bees might be a little bit more forgiving. We will see.

In a cottage garden, not so long ago…..

April 10, 2022 / Emma / 0 Comments

The adventures in beekeeping began. It all started with the gift of a beehive, a very good friend had considered keeping bees several years ago and was bought a hive as a present. His bees never arrived and when he was moving house, the empty unused beehive needed a new home. It came to Bluebell Cottage.

The hive sat in the corner of my office for several months whilst I wondered what to do with it.

“Did I really want bees? Did I have time? Did I want to get stung?”

Eventually, I signed up for an online beekeeping course to find out if beekeeping was really for me. After six sessions we had covered what bees were, how bees worked and importantly, how to keep those precious bees alive.

Now theory is all well and good, and you can learn a lot from pictures on a screen – when asked what I could identify on the screen during one of the lesson tests I had answered bees, then when pressed for more detail, lots of bees?, but I still didn’t know if when confronted by thousands of bees buzzing around my head I was going to remain calm or run a mile. I was about to find out as part of the course meant going into the apiary and spending time with the bees. It also included my very own beesuit, an item of clothing that can never be described as flattering.

Off I went to the apiary, excited and terrified at the same time. It was at this point I wondered if I was allergic to bee stings. Oh well we may find out later. I felt slightly sorry for these very experienced bees going about their daily business unaware that 10 complete novices were about to invade their space. Our beekeeper mentor approached the hive and said “right somebody take the top off”. The first volunteer eagerly stepped up remove the top and stepped back again. So far no bees apart from the few a buzzing around wondering what on earth were doing. Next came the removal of the crown board, essentially releasing the bees. Another volunteer was requested and you can imagine my surprise as I realised everyone else had taken several steps back leaving me nearest the hive, so in I went. It was at this exact moment I started my new habit of talking to bees.

After we’d all had an opportunity to remove a frame, describe what we could see and carefully replace it, we closed up the hive, job done. And best of all nobody got stung.

As we were leaving the apiary we were told to go away and decide if this was for us and if so we could arrange to get some bees from the group in the next few weeks. As I sat in the car ready to drive home I had decided…