Sharing Beekeeping Tales

Our British friend, Ian, who we met while living in Italy, visited a friend last year who, according to Ian, "Is encouraging me to keep bees which is something I have often thought of doing. He gave a hands on demonstration of what is involved and it was truly very interesting and I have decided to go on a course and get geared up to receive a swarm from him next year."

What is extra special about all this is the fact that we visited his farm and know exactly where his hives are.

Flashforward to now. Ian reports, "My bees are doing well although there have been a couple of difficulties which I have overcome with help from my friend and another local beekeeper. I think I told you I got two hives in April. This is the time when bees can swarm and indeed this is what happened with one of my hives. I don't know where the queen went with her swarm but it meant I had one hive where I had to make sure the colony produced a new queen and replaced the bees lost in the swarm. It takes at least a month to get the colony back to a productive state and I think this has now happened. In order to be sure my second hive didn't swarm my friend showed me how to do an artificial swarm where essentially you split the existing colony in two. Again this has been successful but already I have three hives not two. This was a steep learning curve but actually helpful in getting me used to being with the bees."
"Three hives do not take much checking at this time of the year when there are lots of flowers and they are busy making honey. The grandchildren are taking an interest (some are still a bit frightened)."
"This coming Sunday is a big one on the bee front as Colin is bringing his honey extraction kit over and we will be producing our first batch of honey- we hope. Grandchildren are assisting and it should be a fun but sticky day. Extraction involves centrifuging the honey from the beeswax cells, filtration steps, settling steps, and tasting. Bottling and labelling and using molds to make beeswax items, I may keep for another day. Grandchildren are also active designing a suitable label for my honey jars." Doesn't that sound like a fun grandpa thing to do? I wish I was there!
“I like pulling on a baggy bee suit,
forgetting myself and getting as close to the bees' lives as they will let me,
remembering in the process that there is more to life
than the merely human.”
― Sue Hubbell

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