The Fashion Issue

Check out the fashionable new Anti-Woodpecker-Cage!

I love the fact that it's recycled; it was made out of the remains of a table that we salvaged from a pavement in Finchley - which saw lots of good use as a hobbycraft table in our garden in Rosemary Avenue before it came with us to Slough, where it was used till it literally fell apart, and now it will live on for so much longer, put to good use in protecting our bees.

The bees themselves seemed a bit disconcerted initially - they have been flying long into the autumn afternoons, and they've been bringing back huge wads of pollen, some of it bright neon yellow slapdashed in messy piles against their legs and some of it, whiter and packed neatly. I do wonder if She is still laying - a bit of a nerve-wracking thought at this late stage of the year. I do also worry that some of the pollen is ivy and will be packed into honey stores that become as thick, solid and inedible as concrete. A pity to waste space on such useless stuff!

As I sat and watched one afternoon, the bees drifted in and out past the chickenwire, taking a few moments each way to align themselves between gaps and sometimes alighting on the wire to wait or preen or just - I suspect - to look back at me. They have accepted the wire and carry on regardless.

It's only just in the last day or so that they have "shut up shop" and gone deep into the hive.

I am hoping for one last sunny warm afternoon as an opportunity to pop a new block of baker's fondant inside to see them through to Christmas. Then, just before I leave for Africa, they will get their Christmas gift, and I will not see them again till spring.

As always, half my heart is down there at the bottom of the garden with them, seeing them through the winter cold. Hope they survive!

All tucked up

I took the day off work on Friday to visit the National Honey Show. I'm glad I did because these three days seem to have calmed my soul a bit; I've been able to do things at leisure, spend time at home and with friends without that sense of frantic rush that follows me everywhere at work.

The Show was grand. I had submitted an entry into the Photo Category but didn't win anything. I don't mind; it was a first attempt and I learned, from visiting, what I'm up against for next year. Viewing the honey classes was awe-inspiring, because the competition was fierce and there was just so much stunning looking honey. There were over 50 entries in the Light colour honey alone. In the Middlesex classes, Enfield did well - I am so glad! And it was fascinating to finally see and understand the Ling Heather Honey - considered the absolute epitome of best honey by all beekeepers in Britain. It looks thick, and loaded with particulate - which is actually air bubbles trapped in the honey as it takes on its unique jelly-like consistency. Lovely stuff!

I spent hours simply scrutinising jars of honey; some so light and clear and colourless they took on an almost pale green glow; others dark and black and juicy looking; ling heather like toffee. Oh, honey is an absorbing topic!

Then I meandered on to the Trade Hall, where I was immediately sucked into buying some useful-looking tiny jars, browsing through books, fascinated by the new plastic hive innovations, and meeting fellow beekeepers, some of them fellow South Africans too.

Of course, I went home afterwards and immediately rushed into my bee suit and down to the hive. My bees look so happy. I have kept them down to three frames, between two wooden dummy boards to keep the size small for winter. Then the rest of the standard brood box I've filled with slabs of insulating wood on either side. The entrance will be confined to a mouse guard soon, the varroa board floor will go in intermittently as I keep checking through winter for varroa mite levels, and the crownboard is sealed with a porter escape and the second hole is now covered over with a pack of thick candy - the start of the feeding regime I will keep up throughout the winter to see them through.

Of course there are worries. There always are, aren't there?! Should I keep the porter escape in? Or leave it off for ventilation? I don't know; I guess I'll do what I always do, follow my instinct, muddle through and hope for the best.

Because it was warm enough, I opened the box up for 5 minutes, sans smoker, and checked the comb. Yes, the Queen is still there. That dab of white paint is exceptionally useful!

Then, having made sure they have a new crownboard, I placed the new, deeper roof on top. Because I have a feeder on top of the crownboard, the old roof didn't reach far down enough to cover the crownboard from the effects of the outside weather, so the edges were damp. The dreaded damp! Wetness, not the cold, kills bees in winter. Even the right sort of insulation is an issue here, because bees keep it warm within, thus creating condensation - and wetness. I've found that heavy outer insulation, such as thinsulate or similar, is worthy but probably not wise, because I suspect it increases the level of condensation within. So extra wood lining inside the walls is the new tack, for my little nuc-within-a-hive-box.

I have developed the beekeeper's dread of being fleeced while buying things for the hive, and a deepsided rooftop to buy is quite expensive, so Guy helped me convert one of my standard ones into a deepsided one. This new roof has now gone on, and it covers the crownboard safely, so it won't get wet anymore. I am pleased - thank you, Guy!

I stopped off this morning, with my little cat Phoebe (who is recovering from a severely bitten foot - That Bloody Stray!), and we watched the bees for a while.

They are happy.

And so am I.

The Bond Between Us

When you start out in beekeeping, you think in terms of weeks and months. You think you'll get bees within weeks, honey within months, and lots of other immediate results. As you go along all your time horizons change as you begin to realise (sometimes with a bit of a sinking heart, other times with a joyful sense of lifelong commitment) "oh my god, this is going to take years!"

In general it takes 18 months to 2 years' working with your first colony before you can expect to harvest honey. It takes at least 3 years before you have experienced a single full cycle in the life of a bee farm. It takes a decade before you can truly say you have some knowledge and experience as a beekeeper (well, that's my perspective - from where I stand, after nearly 3 years of this stuff). And there are people I've met who have been beekeepers for thirty years and say they still have things to learn about bees.

So as a novice, part of your learning is the acquisition of patience. When I lost my bees earlier this summer, I truly expected I would not have bees again until next year. But I reckoned a year of waiting would be only a blip in the life of this beekeeper. I was resigned to waiting; content to work on cleaning up the gear, restoring a bit of order to my equipment, realigning the space I work in - my "bee space".

But once again I have been confounded by the magic.

Off I went, four weeks ago, to do my bit as a volunteer in the Bee Hut. This is where we gather once a month in the summer - ostensibly to stock up on supplies - but actually to get together and have a good old anorak-y sort of catch-up, like a bunch of gleeful trainspotters in green overcoats with grubby notepads firmly clutched in soiled paws. When beekeepers get together we just can't stop talking.

Because beekeeping can be a solitary old sort of activity, when you get two or more beeks together in a room, you'd be hard put to get a word in edgewise. My LSOH (long-suffering-other-half) says we remind him of a bunch of "high country farmers who've been snowed in on their mountain farms for the winter, and just got together down in town for a catch-up". Good one, that!

So there we all were, all the old friends from Enfield, seeing each other again after quite an absence (on my part, anyway, being so far out in Slough now). The volume of chatter completely overwhelmed the lovely low warm buzz of bees just outside. It was marvellous! I do miss them ...

What I love the most about beeks are the stories they bring to the gatherings. Each one has a wondrous new tale about the amazing things their bees have done (or not done). I follow the narrative of each beek's travails - successes and failures, losses and gains - with real pleasure. You kind of lose something of your own ego in your wishes and hopes for other people's successes. Definitely a bit of Hive Culture rubbing off from the bees :)

So it's been great to learn that - where last year I had bees and P had none, this year he has three (three!) hives while I have none. Last year I had honey to bring to the Country Show, this year it's his turn. I'm heading off tomorrow to go and see how he has fared; whether he wins the Cup this year. I do hope so!

And when M heard I had no bees, he told me he had a spare nuc; a tiny little start-up hive that he had split off from one of his larger ones, where he'd found a beautiful extra Queen Cell and didn't want to waste it. So he'd taken the QC, and some bees, and set them up away from their original colony in a new little box, to try and make a go of starting up a new colony.

A nuc is a miniature colony - the nucleus of a new one. This one has been created very late in the summer season, and is very small - only established on two frames. So it will have to fight very bravely to be able to survive all the way through winter and begin to thrive again in the summer. It will be a real gamble. "But take it" said M, "take the box and the frames, and only make sure you return my box to me, because I made it myself and it's sturdy and useful."

The generosity of the gift has taken my breath away. If you non-beeks only knew the size of the gift, and the value!

He took me to his secret hideaway, his apiary, and we looked through the nuc. And it is more than I could ever have hoped for. He has marked his Queen - a rare prize for a new beek. This means she has a dab of white paint on her which makes her much easier to spot, and therefore less difficult to kill. Useful for old Regicide-Me! She is marked, clipped (so she can't fly away, either), mated and a proven layer-of-eggs. A gift worth more than gold.

How does one repay something like this? Hard to say, other than to understand one's own role or purpose in the colony - which is to be there the next time someone else needs help, so that I can offer my own resources back to "the colony". I truly hope I'm able to do that, one day.

So the nuc came home with me - there are bees back in my garden, a whole year before I expected it to happen again.

My time horizons have changed once more, and only the Wheel of Fortune can tell whether the bees, well-looked after, will survive the winter; whether P wins the prize; whose colonies will thrive or die in the spring.

Fortunes change as the wheel turns. The only constants are the bees and the beeks, and the bond between us.

Gone

Every evening, I've been walking the narrow pathway down to the bottom of my garden in companiable silence with my cat, Bumble. We walk together because he and little Phoebe are under threat from a large stray tom whose territory includes this garden. He bullies them, he hits on Phoebe, he's torn a hole in the throat of our big cat and nearly killed him. Until Guy intervened he was coming into the house every day through the catflap, stealing food and causing mayhem.

I tried trapping him; leaving out food and sweet-talking him into a cage. He wanted to come; you could see that he loved the sound of my voice - he used to be someone's cat and now he's surviving alone. So in a way I felt sorry for him - until I saw the gigantic bloody hole in Bumble's throat and paid the vet bills. Guy bought an expensive, and very clever cat-flap, one that is programmed to read the microchips inside the cats and allow in only our cats. The stray can't get in anymore so the cats have a safe house - but outside, it's still a war zone.

So I walk down with the cats to the end of the garden every night and watch over them while they mosey around for a while. I sit in my chair, and I look at my bee hive.

Sadly, it has become a mausoleum.

I left it alone for a few weeks after the last quick inspection, then I went in for a look a while ago. It was the hardest thing to see - that the small numbers of brood had tried to emerge from their cells and died halfway out. I don't know why. Perhaps the number of housekeeping bees just wasn't enough to support and feed them. The numbers have dwindled to almost nothing.

And there's no trace of the Queen at all.

I don't know if the one that was there for a short while absconded; took some of the bees with her, or just died.

All I know is that the brood hasn't survived and the few bees that are left are valiantly doing what they always do - foraging and working as a colony until they die, and then there will be nothing.

I sit in my chair in the shortening evenings of summer - a summer I'd hoped would be filled with bees and honey - and now I only see wasps gaining free entry into the hive.

I could vest all of this with emotion and tragedy; I could be completely objective about it and consider it a hard lesson learned - look after your Queen in the early spring. I'm sort of somewhere in between. I'm really, really sad and I feel guilty for being complicit in their destruction.

However I've gone and put my name down on the Swarm List of the local beekeeping association. I hope that maybe next summer I get lucky again.

For now, it seems, I'm taking a sabbatical from being a beekeeper. But I hope I get to be one again soon.

Where is She?

A friend came to dinner on Thursday evening. We sat out on deckchairs in the evening warmth and contemplated sipping champagne. I had to ask though, if she would mind me doing some beekeeping before we started drinking ...

Because it was hot, and relatively still, and the weather forecast has been predicting a cooler spell, I knew it had to be Thursday night.

She was happy to watch, and help where she could. So I togged up and went to have a look.

I didn't hold out much hope. I go down to the hive every evening with the cats, but I just feel sad when I look at it. It's mid-summer and it should be humming with activity, bursting with bees carrying pollen, wafting smells of honey, bulging at the seams. But it's not. I've felt like it's dying and it's all my fault.

But it was such a perfect beekeeping evening, you see, that I just had to go for a look.

Each time I go in there now, I can feel that I am becoming more and more gentle and careful in my handling; I feel so responsible for these creatures and so aware that the direness of their situation is because of my ignorance and poor handling.

The numbers were very, very low in there, and I could see straight away the bees were clustering around frames 4 and 5, very tight and close together. Nevertheless I started from Frame 1 and worked through each frame, quickly and with as little disruption as possible.

And it was on Frame 4 that I spotted what I never thought I'd see again - brood. Sealed brood. I just felt so disbelieving I had to use my tool to scrape the top off one to prove it to myself. Yes, baby bees in there.

There were three things that worried me:

1. So little of it - spread only over quarter of two adjoining frames. Why? Is it possible that She's only laying limited quantities because there are so few house bees left to look after the babies when they're born? She has to lay limited quantities to start off the hive again, building slowly over a season?

2. The brood I saw was sealed, with only a few fat white larvae at 7 days old. There were no 3-day brand new rice grain eggs. No recent sign of the Queen.

3. There were so few bees, I should've been able to see the Queen. But I didn't, though I looked and looked.

Where is She?

I replaced everything carefully, stripped off my suit, and retired to the deckchair in the sun to share a glass of champagne with Foxxxy. We toasted the advent of the baby bees, and I was happy.

But I am too uncertain to show Joy Unconfined. I do not know where She is, and also, more than anything I wonder - can She do enough to have them ready and strong to survive the Winter?

A flicker of hope

On Sunday 22 May I opened the Hive, hoping against hope that by now a Queen had been born and mated. But that's not what I found. I found only a blob of wax remaining from the Queen cells and no trace of Queen or eggs.

How to describe the feeling that washes over you as you declare "That's it, it's all over, we're finished"? There's such a multitude of mixed emotions you have to process - despair - I'm a failure; I'll just give up; absolute powerlessness; utter dejection.

How odd then, that it has been the cats who have (indirectly) encouraged me to find hope.

They have been having trouble with an interloper - a stray tom who is bullying both of them. So they love it when I spend time with them in the garden - it helps them feel safe while they take time to establish their scent on all the plants. And also, the amble down the garden path with both of them has been a wonderful addition to my evenings.

So on Saturday, I spent some time just sitting and watching the bees - something I haven't done in a while. Bumble and Phoebe sat quietly with me. They're amazing - they'll chase (and catch) every other insect under the sun, but not the bees. Some primordial instinct warns them off; they will sit and watch the bees coming in and out of the hive entrance, engrossed. But they won't touch 'em. Clever kitties!

And as I watched, I could see more and more bees coming in with pollen on their legs. I was surprised; convinced the hive was dying, surely they wouldn't be bringing in protein to feed babies?

You know that feeling when you're in a dark, dark place and that first flicker of candle light sparks? It felt just like that ...

I checked them out yesterday afternoon again. Again, no eggs, no sign of new life at all.

Except - I saw a Queen!

I don't know, I don't know - she wasn't laying, she had a little dent on her thorax, she was running around like an ordinary bee. But She was a Queen, without a doubt.

A Queen!

I declare, I had to sit down and take a breath. It was wonderful. I almost don't know what to think anymore.

A Queen!

After thinking for a bit, it occurred to me that all their frames are filled, filled, filled with honey and pollen. They haven't made way for empty cells at all, and they still keep bringing in pollen. So this is what I did:

I gave them space. I placed the old National brood box, filled with empty drawn honeycombed frames on top of the new brood box. And then I tenderly closed everything up and went and sent up a little prayer to all the gods in heaven.

Send up your prayers, folks. All may well not be lost just yet.

I'm still keeping the faith

xxx

3-week hiatus

I am excited - Saturday is D-Day.

I've been watching things at the entrance, and the Big Hive seems to be gradually improving. Although I don't see much pollen going in, and numbers aren't necessarily increasing, there's constant activity. Little Hive looks much, much more vulnerable.

After a 3-week "leave-'em-alone" period, which has been a wonderful period of grace for me while we've been settling in with the new cats, I can't wait to dive right in and see what's happening.

PS: Both cats chase insects like crazy, but seem very cautious around the hive entrances. However, Bumble the Big has jumped up on top of the Big Hive to leap over our neighbour's fence!

I wonder how long he'll keep that up once he's been stung ...

Weirdest Use Ever for a Dressmaking Pin

The situation in the Apiary is dire. After my disastrous accidental assassination of the Queen on the 27th March, while transferring bees from the old hive box into the larger new one, I have waited and hoped the bees would correct things by growing their own Queen. Week after week I have checked and seen no signs of a Queen. Some Queen Cells, yes, but only one of them looked successfully opened - and no sign of the resulting Queen.

So I went to my local beekeeper community for help, and they have come through magnificently. On Sunday afternoon, a fellow beekeeper inspecting his colonies found numerous sealed Queen cells in his hives - signs of possible swarms - unwanted swarms. So he carefully carved them out of the surrounding honeycomb and tenderly handed them to me, still sealed.

As if transferring a live beating human heart for a transplant, I tenderly placed them in a box and rushed them to my car, still dressed in my beekeeper suit. With a mentor following in her car close behind I drove - extra-carefully - the 2 miles back home. I phoned ahead to let the folks at home know that "I'll be coming in hot, people, hot! Stand by, everyone!"

I suspect my mentor was completely bemused by my home situation. One gentleman standing by to open the door for us, another barefoot in the kitchen cooking a grand meal for all of us. She must think I keep a harem back home. I won't disabuse her of any such notion :-D

She and I rushed up to my office and pulled out my Sewing Box. I scrabbled around for the dressmakers pins, and together we rushed the boxed Queen Cells down to the Apiary at the bottom of the garden.

Scarcely daring to breathe, I opened up the Big Hive and found a suitable frame. Gently, gently, ever so gently I picked up a Queen Cell, filled to bursting with an about-to-be-born New Virgin Queen, and I pinned it directly to the honeycomb, without bruising, piercing or marking the actual Cell in any way.

We did this with two Cells, to hedge our bets; the third one being deemed to have been slightly damaged and therefore no good anymore (how sad).

Then we closed up the Big Hive, and I promised faithfully not even to peek under the lid for at least three more weeks. Oh, the waiting!

Then I checked the Little Hive next door, and - well, blow me over with a feather - there in the honeycomb were half a dozen larvae! There's a laying Queen in there somewhere, and as soon as the thought popped out, I saw her scrambling over the frame. Not very big, perhaps an Emergency Queen, but a Queen nevertheless.

I am completely and utterly mystified - on two different levels.

1. Where did this Lass come from?

2. Why is She laying so little?

Well, after thanking and saying goodbye to the lady mentor, I sat down with the lads back home for a jovial meal and a lovely evening and then went to bed, turned out the light and let my mind wander over the past few weeks.

An odd thought came to me then, in the dark. Perhaps this Queen came out of that one original successful-looking Queen Cell in the Big Hive. Perhaps She was born, and flew out to mate. And perhaps she came back - into the wrong hive.

After all, Queens don't fly that often; perhaps Her geo-location was a bit off.

And as for the limited laying, I suspect it's because She has so few retainers in that hive. So few worker bees survived the Split in March; perhaps She knows a thing or two and is laying strategically just enough to allow those few retainers to be able to keep up with mothering and housekeeping until the numbers of bees grow bigger.

I can only keep checking and - where possible - helping a little with feed. I can only keep watching as the bees weave their magic; and hope for the best. This wonderful early summer can't be doing them any harm either.

Fingers crossed, everyone.

Daily Dramas at the Hive Entrance

Look at the lass on the right coming in for a simply spiffing spot-on landing!

















Whoops! Not quite such a spiffing landing.
Perhaps it's those full pollen baskets that pulled her up short ...











Peeking out from the entrance; ready to come in - or go out?
















Talk about being treated like a doormat!

A Race Against Time

(and a postscript on Other Halves)

On Sunday, another quick check on the 14x12 hive to see if the single remaining Queen Cell was progressing. Blow me down - the girls have built another two Queen Cells to replace the two I destroyed! And all three of them are capped, sealed over and growing.

Three Queens - in eight days' time.

I stood there for a moment to collect myself, a bit banjanxed by the bees' actions (as always, Dear Reader, as always). Then it occurred to me - two Queen Cells on one frame, a third on a separate frame. What I should really do now is take that frame out and make another colony. This would "hedge my bets" - in effect creating an alternative hive, if that QC hatches successfully.

So I turned and ran down the long, long length of the garden back to the Honey room and frantically began to assemble a second, smaller hive. Brood box, frames of drawn honeycomb, floor, roof, crownboard, feeder. Wheelbarrow! As I raced around, my hat and veil flopped and bounced around on my head; my ponytail fell apart and hair fell in my eyes, my reading glasses fell off my face down into my beesuit somewhere near my wellingtons, and I started perspiring. I was rather grateful there was no-one around to see me because I must've looked A Right Old Sight.

I loaded up the wheelbarrow and wobbled back down the path to the open bee hive. I set up the second hive and tenderly, gently, carefully transferred Frame 8 with the single sealed QC. I moved a couple of extra frames of bees across, then made sure both hives had frames, bees and feeders properly configured around the Queen Cells before closing everything up.

I took a step back to catch my breath, and to make sure I'd done everything right. Now the only things I had to worry about are:

• Will the small second hive survive? The entrance is in a new place; will the bees recognise and find it? There's so few of them, so little honey left; do they have enough to make it?
• And on the first hive - did I do the right thing to leave both QC? Should there only be one? Do they have enough bees, honey, frames and feed?
• Are they both warm enough; well-insulated, to survive with their numbers and resources spread so thinly?
• And above all else, will this generation of worker bees live long enough to see all the Queens mated and laying and a new generation of baby bees successfully nursed through to hatching?

It's a Race Against Time, I tell you, a Race Against Time! I'm going to have to fret all through the rest of April and halfway through May before I know whether we've succeeded or failed. Well, as my partner always says; "Margo, if you didn't have the bees to worry about, you'd find something ... you always do!"

* * *

And, having had a great get-together with the local beeks last night, that brings me to mention just a few words on the wonderful phenomenon of "Other Halves".

There's nowt so scary as a Beekeeper's Other Half. For male beekeepers, the partner is generally known as SWMBO. She, Who Must Be Obeyed (Oh, I like it!)

For the gals among us - he is simply known as OH. Other Half.

And there is no-one more long-suffering; more hard-done-by than this poor creature.

SWMBO and OH have to put up with room-loads of boxes, frames, tools, suits, smokers, jars, bottles, labels, extractors and other indescribably odd-looking equipment. They are continually being roped in to help lift, carry, move, hammer, shop or admire an endless variety of beekeeping events and things. They are always obliged to suffer the stings and arrows of misfortune, as innumerable suicidal bees enter the house looking for honey, home or revenge.

And finally, to add insult to injury, they live in houses that are permanently sticky. Honey on the floor, on door handles, in cupboards. Stickiness abides everywhere. Stickiness Rules.

Many's the tale of angry Other Halves; of grumbles, complaints, warnings, dire threats of divorce and disaster brought down upon the heads of unsuspecting, innocent beeks. At last night's meeting, all it took was a raised eyebrow or a small grimace, and we would instantly understand the problem, exchange knowing glances and smiles. We've all been there ...

Honestly, it's wild and woolly path we walk, taking care of those bees, it really is!

















With love and thanks to Tigger
(my long-suffering, oft-stung OH)
xx

One Chance

Well, that's the first time I've shed tears for a bee!

Absolutely frustration; desperate sadness; worry; anger at self - just a whole lot of useless emotion.

I lost the Queen in last week's transition to the 14x12 hive.

On checking this week, there is no early brood whatsoever (no little 3-day eggies), and there are 3 new Queen cells. Each of them had a larva lying in Royal Jelly. In fear and nerves, I destroyed 2 of the 3 which, upon reflection, I should not have done.

So now the colony has one chance to survive.

Well, more than that because I could buy in a Queen, or ask my beekeeping friends if someone could spare a frame of very early brood. But ... by now, you'll know me - I wanted to do it all right, and I haven't and I'm beating myself up pointlessly.

I did feel a dreadful pang, thinking of Her Majesty, lost somewhere in the last week, maybe one of the poor bees batting at the wrong entrance, starving to death. She left me a last gift of hundreds and hundreds of magnificent looking sealed brood. That did make me feel bad.

But it's getting to a point where I'm starting to think: Oh for heaven's sake, Margo, snap out of it! They are livestock; it happens. You're learning; it happens.

So I will stop feeling sorry for myself and the bees, and keep trudging on.

It will be a few weeks now, before I know whether they're Queen-right, and the new Lass is properly mated and laying.

Patience, old girl, patience!

Pink and Yellow Squares

I've been fuss-potting around for MONTHS planning my Next Significant Move with the bees. Yesterday my plan finally went into action.

I decided last summer that my bees are so successful, they need to go into a larger Brood Box. No longer a Standard British National, but rather a 14x12, which has deeper frames in the brood box to allow the Queen more space to lay and thereby reducing the likelihood of the colony swarming. Also, making the change from a standard-sized box to a larger box early in the season would focus the bees harder on the job of creating honeycomb in the new frames and thereby also decreasing their likelihood of swarming. (However, it is a notable saying of beeks that "bees don't read the same books that we do", so it's all a guess anyway.)

But also, because the bees now rule my heart and my head's gone out the window, a bigger box means less trauma every time I inspect the bees - instead of using a brood-and-a-half and breaking the 2 boxes and all the honeycomb every time I visit, the larger box and larger frames mean only 12 frames to inspect instead of 22.

All winter I bought new supplies - the larger brood box, the paint, the frames, the honeycomb. In the late winter, I spent several very satisfying evenings in front of the telly hammering nails into new frame constructions. Yesterday morning I put the final touches in place by adding the fresh wax foundation sheets.

And I also thought I'd try out a thing I'd seen on other hives - I spray-painted two squares on the front - one pink and one yellow. They say the bees' visual recognition of the shapes and colours aid them in geo-locating their hive entrance. Hmmmm, let's see, shall we?

We had a friend over for lunch yesterday and so it turned out I had an audience to further intimidate me on this all-important manipulation. I was filled with trepidation, in addition to aching all over from a two-hour bike ride the previous day.

No doubt about it, I was nervous all round.

It took a lot of persuading to get My Guy suited up in a beesuit too; he sounded like a very reluctant Tigger and had all sorts of reasons why he couldn't possibly help me move the hive. But eventually - valiantly - he donned the suit and stepped forward to help. I needed to move the double brood box, roof and floor 2 feet to the left and move the entrance 90 degrees off from the original, to confuse the bees.

"Put your hands under here," I said "and commit yourself. Just pick it up and step back smoothly" and that said, I proceeded to tangle myself in a loose piece of barbed wire and stagger all over the place, nearly toppling the hive and scotching all our plans. The audience (standing a goodly 6 feet away) fell about laughing. Not a good start ...

Finally the two of us were set; we lifted the hive (setting off an alarmed BUZZZ from within) and set it down nearby.

That's when I suddenly realised It Was All Finally Happening.

I spent so much time visualising practice runs in my head, all winter. Funnily enough, all of my thoughts had sort of meandered off into mingled dreams of success and holidays in New Zealand, so I hadn't really visualised the entire process through from beginning to end.

A lot also counted on me finding the Queen. Which, of course, I didn't.

She was nowhere to be seen so I just plodded on regardless. I placed the new Pink & Yellow Hive in the original location, onto the lovely heavy hive stand gifted to me by my mentors. I made sure lots of deep frames were standing by, then took a deep breath and opened the Itchy Knee/San-Shi double brood hive.

They were lovely; I'll grant them that - the girls were incredibly forgiving and never stung me once (that I know of. I was suitably layered in about 6 shirts and 3 pants, and sweating like a pig before 5 minutes had lapsed.) I began by identifying, in Itchy Knee, which frames had brood and transferring those. I bumped all the bees gently off their frames into the new hive.

I set that box aside, covered it gently, and began to look through the previously-unchecked San-Shi hive. There were 4 frames of brood, including capped Drone cells. She is well on her way for the Summer, that's for sure!

My silly bleeding heart couldn't cope with the thought of killing too many babies, so I transferred 7 frames full in all. I know that's going to cause trouble later on, I just know it:

• Those original shallower frames will encourage the bees to build wild comb underneath, which they'll join up to the floor - bad when I inspect and have to pull them out :(
• At some stage, I'm going to have to replace them anyway with new, deeper frames. I've just prolonged the inevitable. I am silly.

But - oh well - what's done is done.

At no stage did I see the Queen. I am a bit worried about that, but perhaps less than I should be because, bless them, the bees went across quietly, and they all immediately gathered through the new hive entrance. Plus I know that if I've lost her, they have enough baby brood to begin building Emergency Queen Cells to replace her.

I know too how resilient these bees are; they are doing so well already and they have survived so much, so far, I know they are good.

Once again, they inspire me. It was satisfying to hear the audience suitably "oohing" and "aahing" through the course of the manipulation; My Guy said afterwards "you looked really confident and professional all the way through, Margs, more than ever."

* * *

I went straight in from the hive, stripped off a couple of sweated-through layers and sat down to lunch with Guy and friend. A glass of red wine gulped back with the magnificent meal - it all tasted wondrous. Endorphins enhancing the high, I'm guessing :)

Much later that evening, in the blue glow of twilight, I went back down to the apiary to check on the girls. The old boxes were clear of bees and I removed all the honey frames to the Kitchen lean-to room (hereforward to be known as The Beekeeper's Room) - first honey to process! It was fascinating to see that one entire frame - front and back - was glued solid with a black concrete-like honey. Ivy; the first I've ever seen; honey that granulates and solidifies so fast in the honeycomb that it's useless to the bees, who can't extract it in the winter and often starve to death in a hive filled with the stuff. Most interesting to see, and I wonder if it's still possible for me to extract and taste ... must investigate further!

The bees were still; a few circling in the air above, and dozens crawling all over the white exterior and marching in lines around the Pink and Yellow Squares. I do hope the fresh paint smell doesn't put them off. I fed them, and will feed them again in 48 hours. The sugar water stimulates their wax production glands, and they will be drawing out honeycomb furiously fast. I can't wait to see it!

* * *

I miss being close to my old beek association, and am looking forward keenly to seeing them all again in mid-April at the Secret Bee Hut. Never better than when a whole load of beeks stump into the old hut together and jabber away at top volume,"like a bunch of High Country farmers," says Guy "who've been alone all winter and can't wait to catch up on each other's lives!" :)

Too right, mate!

OW!

The day after we came back from New Zealand was warm - ok, not very sunny - but warm. You've got to be grateful for that, right?

I can't express the intensity of joy I felt at revisiting all my beekeeping stuff. To be pulling on my suit again; digging out my hive tools; even lighting That Blasted Smoker. It was like a trip down Memory Lane, but better, because you know that now summer is really back and you have the whole summer of beekeeping to look forward to again.

Of course, the girls soon reminded me of the more sobering stuff. You know, like stings and all that. :)

I tromped down to the beehive and made ready ...

Now initially, my elaborate plan was to use this visit to make the shift from the brood-and-a-half configuration to the new 14x12 hive. But of course, the girls have been living in a double brood hive during the winter and the two moves.

And as I sat for a while, watching the bees while the smoker fired up, I thought to myself that perhaps it might be better to just make this an Intro Visit - go in there to establish exactly how the colony is doing before I fling them willy-nilly into another hive.

Because of course, the new hive will have no drawn foundation for the Queen to lay; it will have no saved stores. They will have to start again from the beginning. Well, almost. They'll need a couple of drawn frames filled with baby brood and honey stores. But most of the frames will be undrawn foundation.

This is all part of another, hidden agenda as well, you see. If I move them to undrawn foundation, they'll be kept busy. Very busy. Too busy to swarm. Cunning, eh?!

So as I watched the bees buzzing around the entrance I decided to keep this visit to the very basics. Just check they're ok, see if there's signs of Queen-rightness, check on feed levels, see how many frames of stores are left, and how many frames of brood might be starting up.

Then next time will be the crunch-time; the time to do the traumatic move over to 14x12.

I quietly smoked the hive and popped the lid off. The colony is still there, so Check One for the girls - they've survived the bitter winter. But the numbers are noticeably low. Of course it would be so.

Frames 10, 9, 8 and 7 had small quantities of honey stores remaining, in half-moon shapes across the top. Frame 6 had very early brood sign. Ever-so-tiny rice grain eggs. Not a lot, but there they were. Yahooooo! She is there, and She is laying. Long Live the Queen!

Next, Frame 5 - slightly older, fat white juicy larvae. And on the other side of Frame 4 - a small panel of sealed brood.

It was interesting to see how she'd spread out her laying across the three frames. Is that a bad sign? She is not a young Queen, after all. We shall see ...

OW! BUGGER!

First sting - right in the groin. Those little beggars.

Thankfully I was able to keep my movements slow and sure, and wipe off the sting. The next two got me in the same spot though, and I had to drop the frame I was looking at and walk away to bite the bullet. Not very dignified.

(Odd though it sounds, I am actually glad to be stung. It was really noticeable to me that the arthritis in my hands and feet flared up again in the winter, and I'm looking forward to getting relief from it by being stung. Bee venom really does seem to help suppress the symptoms. My hands are noticeably more supple and my knees and feet less achey. As for the hayfever, I still can't verify that honey and venom are helping.)

I went back to finish inspecting the top box; I thought about shifting the top box to inspect the bottom one but decided against it. I'd seen what I had to see and was happy.

I closed it all up, and spent time just sitting and looking at the entrance activity once more.

When I left the apiary I was as high as a kite; happy, happy, happy. Enchanted and relieved and pleased and proud.

I'm so looking forward to summer!

Vive la Reine

Moving along the journey from beginner to novice, we enter new realms of knowledge all the time. Nowadays I spend a lot of time musing about Queens, temper, genetics and selection.

This is the succession of Queens I have experienced so far -

• First, there was the Black Queen, who arrived with the swarm in June 2009 and brought with her a summer of gentleness and getting-to-know-each-other friendliness.
• As my mentors suspected, and I discovered, that was also the summer of Supercedure for, when I next spotted a Queen in the same hive - Itchy Knee - it was early in the summer of 2010 and she wasn't Black, she was Lightly Ginger in colour.
• The early summer progressed companiably until the Prime Swarm of 19 May; which meant Queen Lightly Ginger went into San-Shi, and a new Queen reigned in Itchy Knee.
• the Cast or Secondary Swarm of 22 May, 3 days later, meant a young Virgin Queen was taken away by Patrice and Senpai Scott, together with her little colony.
• The New Queen ruled in Itchy Knee through to late summer, and caused so much grief with her bad temper rife throughout the colony, that we found her and killed her at the end of August 2010. She will forever be known as The Angry Queen.
• If there was a new Queen afterwards, she was sadly killed when I united the two hives, unaware of her existence. My bad!
• San-shi continued on, well-tempered, under the rule of Queen Lightly Ginger.
• When the two hives were merged at the end of Summer 2010, they continued to show good temper.
• So it is Queen Lightly Ginger who will hopefully survive through to the summer of 2011.

What will the Succession will mean for this summer?

Being born sometime in the late summer of 2009, and considering how quickly the colonies have replaced each Queen, it may be that -

• She may begin to reveal signs of aging by developing poor egg-laying traits, or laying only drones (meaning she is running out of sperm stored inside her body and so she can only lay unfertilised or male eggs), and so
• there will be a Supercedure; and/or
• highly likely they will try to Swarm again.

So I begin to think about genetics and temper-traits.

The Black Queen gave birth to Queen Lightly Ginger. Queen Lightly Ginger gave birth to both The Angry Queen and the Virgin Queen. Patrice and Scott have said their bees were gentle.

So when Queen Lightly Ginger gives birth to Queens this summer, it seems I have a 50/50 chance of a good or bad Queen, unless the genetic material has changed. Now let's consider the variables:

• Queens mate with between 10 and 20 drones (it is thought)
• Queens have been seen to lay in "pockets" of eggs; batches of which laid close to one another exhibit all one colouring, and batches laid further away, a different colouring. This reveals the genetic variance of many different fathers. As the sperm comes out of the Queen's body, it comes out in a "batch" left by a single Father; then another "batch" from a different Father, therefore the difference in colouring seen in worker bees born in different parts of the hive.

Are you still with me here?

• Remember female (or fertilised) eggs have a Mother and a Father; male (or drone/unfertilised) eggs have a Mother but no Father.
• Would it then be safe to assume, if I see Queen cells laid far away from each other in the hive, they would have different Fathers? And therefore different temperaments?
• I don't know how far about in the hive Queen Lightly Ginger was born from The Angry Queen. It's safe to assume however - different temperaments = different Fathers.

I wonder if there's any way I can manipulate The Succession this Summer, to ensure a new Queen with a good temper?

And thus avoid any more blasted stings this summer ...

Hmmmmmm.

A funny thing happened on the way to Slough ...

After the craziness of the house move, and the cataract surgery, sanity finally prevailed. I had to acknowledge that keeping the bees in The Secret Garden at Muswell Hill would simply mean too far to commute from Slough. So I decided to move them with me. Besides - selfishly - I miss them at the bottom of my garden.

So Guy and I applied the lessons, so very recently learned from Ron and Mary, and went to move them again. We carefully filled the entrance with a little piece of sponge, gently tied a cable around the entire double brood box, and slowly lifted the hive onto the trolley we'd brought with us.

We wobbled our way down the garden path, looked back for a last glimpse of a garden we'd hoped to grow and cherish, and then wound our way down to the little car. Mighty Mouse is a wee little car but is perfectly configured - once you've folded the back seats down - for fitting a standing hive in the back.

We drove away and off down the North Circular, on our way to Slough.

Now at this stage I must tell you - in five years of living and travelling in England - I have never once been pulled over by the police. So we were not expecting an eventful trip at all. Naturally, I had my bee suit on, but the veil off.

So when the blue siren went on behind us, I don't know who among us was more surprised - Guy, me - or 10,000 rather irritated lady bees.

Oh dear God! What had we done?

Guy pulled the car over, and I surreptitiously slipped on a jacket over my bee suit. I had of course, not bothered to put the statutory "Bees in Transit" notice in my car window, had I.

It turned out that the police thought my car was uninsured, and they fully intended to have the car towed away to a pound. I nearly fainted. I was rather glad at this stage that bees don't understand English. They might've rioted, or something equally scary ...

On top of that, I couldn't get out of the car because the passenger door doesn't work on the Mouse, which wouldn't have looked that good to the coppers.

Perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing, because it meant that I was forcibly confined inside the car - flathering away at Guy, who was meant to have organised the insurance. He spent 20 fraught minutes on the side of the highway, fast-talking the cops and the insurance company on the phone, while I and 10,000 close friends slowly simmered away inside the car.

Eventually it was all sorted out - it turned out that the insurance company had misspelled the registration number. The Old Bill turned away, visibly disappointed at not being able to tow my car, but gleefully listening to me ranting away at Guy about "getting it right the first time and why didn't you tell me and I could've done all this myself better and next time you'll know blah blah rant point finger threaten yell ...."

They left shaking their heads and smiling, and looking rather pityingly at my partner.

Yes, I'm proud of myself. I put on a Good Show for them, and they left none the wiser that they'd been one bee sting away from being assimilated by The Borg.

* * *

Once we arrived at the new house with the bees, we simply disappeared into the depths of the garage in Mighty Mouse and emerged out the other side into the privacy of the garden with the bees. We carefully trollied them all the way down the length of the long, long garden and round the corner behind the back of the shed.

We were in the process of carefully siting and uncabling them when I heard Guy shriek "they're all coming out the back end!" and he scorched off down the garden like a shot rattlesnake.

I popped my head around the edge of the hive and, sure enough, the cable had snagged on the Open Mesh Floor and pulled open a small hole large enough for several hundred extremely agitated bees to exit from.

"Holy Cow," I thought "imagine if that had happened in the car!?"

I must admit, I had a bloody good laugh!

They have settled now, after a few weeks, and seem to be thriving.

* * *

I've joined my local association, the impressively-named Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead Beekeepers' Society. So now I'm a member of two associations (I'd never give up my old one - I love 'em to bits).

To make friends with the new lot, I went on their Beginners' Beekeepers Course - not so much for the course content (although it was a great refresher, and I should be thinking about taking the Basic Beekeeper's Exam), but more to network among the local community of beekeepers. And it was great to do that; and to meet some more knowledgeable people.

It was also wonderfully inspiring, and got me down to the bottom of my garden this afternoon, in the sun.

Sadly, Bee Corner is rather tucked away in a dank and shady spot. I do hope it's not too cold and shady and secluded! They are buzzing, though, which gives me hope. And I spent the afternoon assembling all the new frames for my super-duper large 14 x 12 hive. It was hugely satisfying, banging and hammering and smacking away at things, particularly as I spent most of the time imagining it was Guy's head I was hammering.

Very useful anger management indeed.

Funny thing, beekeeping, isn't it?