A taste of honey?

Back in March, Judy Taylor (MHS’s beekeeper) wrote ‘Have you heard the buzz?’ telling us what her bees were up to in the spring. They have had the summer collecting nectar and, at the same time, pollinating many of our plants. So it is time to revisit the hives to see what honey the bees have made, with the hope of a bumper harvest. Though after this year’s poor summer, Judy was not optimistic. I accompanied her to investigate.

After lugging lots of heavy gear across the field and at a safe distance from the bees, Judy primed her smoker to calm the bees when she goes into a hive.

Next, she donned her bee suit, making sure that the trousers were well tucked into her wellies; sting-proof gloves were on and covers put over the wrists to prevent angry bees getting inside. Finally, the hood went on, securely zipped and velcro-ed.

Fully kitted out and armed with her smoker, Judy headed to the hives.

With the smoker aimed at the hive, Judy lifted the hive roof off. The next thing was to remove the crown board off the top ‘super’ which is where the bees store the honey in honeycombs attached to frames.

The aim today was to see how much honey had been stored. If there was plenty, ensuring that there was still enough left behind to feed the hive over winter, extracting would be possible.

Only about a third of the cells in this frame capped off! So, not a great result and a similar story in each of the frames.

With all the frames in the supers inspected, it was time to inspect the brood box below in order to check on the queen bee. Judy took off the queen excluder (the square, mesh-covered frame on the right) which keeps the large queen down in the brood box while allowing the smaller workers the full run of the hive. I decided to film this stage…

That was quite an experience as you can probably tell by the wobbly camera work! Knowing that Judy had to reassemble this hive then work her way through all the others, it was perhaps time for me to leave her to it!

The final thing Judy did to this hive was to put a lid on the brood box with a one way valve so that any bees going down into it couldn’t get out again.

This is done in order to clear the super, making make it easier to collect the frames tomorrow to take away for extraction.

With that I decided to go home and await her verdict in the morning. Were we going to return tomorrow to collect the all frames and spend the day extracting? Or not?

…Tomorrow dawned and sadly the answer was not enough honey to make it worthwhile, particularly as the hive will need what honey there is for the bees to consume over the winter.

So we now wait until the spring to see if farmers have planted oil seed rape crops within 1.5 miles of the hives which, weather permitting, will yield more nectar for honey next year.