Keeping bees
I wrote earlier this year about the simplicity of keeping chickens (see here). I would encourage anyone who is tempted to keep chickens to give it a try because it’s so straightforward. At the end of that post I suggested that beekeeping isn’t the same and I’ve been meaning ever since to return and explain that remark. In one way keeping bees should be simpler than chickens because bees don’t need to be fenced in, they can’t escape in the way chickens can, you don’t need to remember to feed bees or let them out in the morning, and you don’t need to arrange for a neighbour to look after them when you go on holiday. On the other hand bees do need looking after at certain times of the year and if they swarm when you’re not around you risk losing a valuable asset.
I’ve been fascinated by the idea of keeping bees since childhood, and when the opportunity arose of a plot of land in which to keep some bees I grabbed it. I would say that bees are not compatible with an average domestic garden. I know some people do keep bees in a small garden but make sure you get agreement from your family first, and ideally your neighbours too. Sooner or later someone will get stung, and regardless of whether one of your bees was responsible you will be blamed. It’s important that the beekeeper should not offend his or her neighbours. Bees can be very beneficial for gardeners and farmers but no-one wants beehives too close to home.
Having located a suitable site I made a couple of hive-stands out of second-hand timber (see photo above) to keep the hives level on sloping ground. These lift the hives so that fast-growing summer vegetation doesn’t mask the entrance to the hive, and more importantly it saves the beekeeper’s back from constant bending when working on the hives. Even if starting with just one hive, as I did, it is wise to make provision for the apiary to grow. When word gets around that you keep bees you’ll get a knock on the door whenever someone has a swarm in their garden.
Some novice beekeepers are fortunate enough to be given a swarm, and hopefully some valuable advice, from a more experienced beekeeper. In my own case I attended a series of evening classes held by Somerset Beekeepers and then bought a nucleus colony from a national supplier. I drove down and collected them myself from Exeter although the nucleus box can apparently be sent by carrier. Buying a nucleus colony in this way is more expensive but it does mean you start with a balanced, disease-free colony and a queen that has been marked for easy identification. The photo here shows me moving the five frames from the nucleus box into the awaiting hive.
As well as the hive, smoker, and hive tool, one of the most expensive items of equipment is appropriate clothing. It is possible to get by with just a hat, a bee veil tucked inside a fleece zipped up to the neck, beekeeping gloves, jeans and wellies. Most bee-stings seem to occur on the face or hands so these are the most important areas to protect but you need to ensure that a bee cannot crawl into any opening in your clothing and sting you when it feels trapped. I opted to buy a proper bee-suit from B.J. Sherriff as shown here. It aids confidence when handling the bees. Although it is only a thin polyester/cotton material I have never been stung while wearing it which means I can concentrate on my work with the bees. One of my beekeeping neighbours takes a more relaxed approach to bee protection when working on his hives and had to be taken to hospital by helicopter when he was stung about fifty times by his bees! It is a sad truth that the bees don’t realise that the beekeeper is trying his hardest to keep them happy and healthy and housed in a perfect environment.
Once settled into the hive in spring you can leave the bees to fend for themselves, just checking every couple of weeks through the summer to see how they’re getting on. Hopefully they’ll make comb on the frames of wax foundation you provide, and fill the comb with pollen, honey, and baby bees. A healthy colony in full swing during summer is a sight to behold with bees at every stage of their development, and (hopefully) growing stores of honey. One important thing is to make sure the bees don’t run out of space in the hive. If they look cramped you can add another super full of frames to increase the height of the hive and give the bees more room to store honey. If the bees detect a lack of space, or that the queen is flagging, they may swarm, whereby a queen and large group of followers leave the hive with the intention of starting a new life elsewhere.
One of the key challenges for beekeepers is to prevent a swarm. You want your bees to stay at home making honey for you, not fly off leaving you with just a depleted colony that won’t produce much honey. Needless to say I’ve had several swarms. The first two were at the weekend when I was at home and able to catch them but there have I think been others when I’ve been at work. If there are other beekeepers in the area it’s sometimes hard to know where the swarm has come from but the standard rule is ‘finders keepers’. If you catch a swarm it’s yours to keep, to put into a new hive where it can hopefully grow into a productive colony. This photo shows a swarm hanging on a hawthorn hedge about a metre from the ground. In my experience bees in swarms are very well-behaved; shake the majority of bees into a straw skep, put a board on top, invert the whole lot and place the board on the ground with one edge of the skep raised a centimetre with a stick. as long as the queen is inside the skep all the remaining bees obediently walk inside. After an hour or two you can wrap the whole thing in an old white bed sheet and carry it to the empty hive where they will happily set up home.
One of the pleasures of beekeeping for me on a warm summer afternoon is to sit near the hive, making sure I’m not in their flight path. If I sit quite still I can happily watch the bees coming and going, and listen to birdsong. What better way to while away half an hour?
Finally to honey. Strange as it may seem I’ve never been particularly fond of honey. It’s the bees that interest me rather than the honey. Nevertheless at the end of a productive summer each super will contain 20 or 30 pounds of honey. A clearing board is placed underneath these honey supers in the hive; it allows the bees to leave the super but not to re-enter. After a few days the supers should be clear of bees and you can carry them (they are surprisingly heavy!) back to the kitchen to uncap the wax comb with a warm knife and extract the honey in a centrifugal extractor. It’s a messy job. That evening, when the honey is in jars and the messy equipment has been cleaned, sit down and enjoy a slice or two of honey on buttered toast from your own hive. There is no taste like it!
