It's a glorious autumn afternoon in mid-November. It's 3pm and the sun is about to set. Even after 5 years of life here in England, these early sunsets are still strange to me. Nevertheless, after 5 miserable days of rain and wind, the sun was shining today. I went out to see my bees and they are busy!
I have done everything very late for winter but perhaps the prolonged mild autumn will favour my beginner's luck. I was still feeding them from an empty super two weeks ago. Just a week ago I took off the super and feeder and sealed them up for the winter. Yet here they are, still bringing in pollen, and looking healthy, happy and wise. That's bees for you.
I've bought a polycarb quilt/crownboard, but rather than disturb them or lower the temperature in the hive, I'll just keep that aside till the spring. It irritates me that my current crownboard has a piece falling off it already; after only 6 months. Never mind - it's serving its purpose and I'll mend it in the spring. I've also bought a stand to be assembled - for this I'll want to add a pavement slab underneath as well. Something to scrounge around for in the next few months.
My next project will definitely be the assembly of a second hive - still to be bought. But for now, I'm proper broke - with my nephew coming to the UK and our planned trip to New Zealand in March, funds are tight for a while. Assembly of a flatpacked hive is definitely the cheapest way to go, though. See? Learned something already, Margs!
I've been reading the seminal book on beekeeping, "Guide to Bees and Honey" by Ted Hooper and it's fascinating stuff. What a fund of knowledge he is! He must've sat for years; and years and years, just watching the behaviour of his bees. How can he know what their interactions mean, and when the bees need watery food, and when they need more solids? How many minutes, and hours, and days, and weeks and years of scrutiny has it taken to become so very knowledgeable!? I despair of my own inability to commit so much time ...
But I've joined an online forum now. And everywhere I go, to look and study and learn and find out more, all I ever come up with is more questions:-
- How does one recognise a training flight (ie how d'you distinguish it from any other kind of flight)?
- When to start feeding bakers fondant?
- Is Tesco's roll-out icing the same as bakers fondant? (it appears not, from first inspection)
All these things and more spell out the ongoing magic of the journey towards understanding, while the bees keep flying in the molten gold sunshine of fall.
