Honey for Sale?!

I am sitting at the kitchen table putting the finishing touches to my labels for the 20 or so jars of honey I want to sell at the Nunney Street Fayre this weekend. It is a ridiculously small number to sell, but as Liam takes honey in his tea instead of sugar, he refuses to let me sell any more!

We have decided to try and explain the concept of raw honey - unprocessed, untreated/unheated honey which is wholly different from the "commercial" honeys offered by the supermarkets. I know that some people will baulk at the fact that it is granular in texture, but we couldnt bring ourselves to heat it in the oven or heaven forbid, the microwave and so alter the flavours.

We have had some interesting pricing debates too. I have seen Somerset honey for sale at £6 in the local farm shop and £5.50 odd in local delis. We have decided to aim for £5 for a pound jar.

The next few weeks will be busy ones. Tomorrow we need to check to see if our new Queen is laying in the original colony - and we need to feed our second colony who are slow to draw out the foundation in their hive. Once the Fayre is over we will also need to put our names on the list for the club extractor and take off the four supers for extracting!

4 stings and 2 bees inside veil

My last post was positively celebratory. This post reflects on the darker side of beekeeping....

We have been monitoring the hive every 4-5 days to check on the development of Queen cells. Originally, we were waiting to find a well developed Queen cell with an egg inside it and were then planning to split the hive - a process that would have involved trips to a second apiary site in order to have two hives, both with large numbers of forager and young bees. However, our bees did not bee-have and it is a case of too little, too late. True, there are now several million (it feels) Queen cells, but it is now a bit later on in the season, and the wise men of the Frome Beekeeper's Association have suggested that we simply take a nucleus instead.

However, I dont know if it is because we removed their honey, or, more likely, because the weather has been so rainy and stormy here, but the last two visits have been really unpleasant. The bees have been pinging off us and generally been extremely aggressive.

As we tried to find the Queen yesterday to remove her into the nucleus box, I was stung once, and Liam three times. Worse than this, I had the moment every beekeeper dreads when I realised the buzzing was actually coming from inside of my helmet! Thankfully I managed (blindly - as my fist instinct was to close my eyes!!) to grab at a loose piece of veil and squish, and actually got the bee before it got me. However, the result was that I then kept being dive bombed at the precise bit of my helmet where the bee was stuck - and I was so terrified more bees would get in, I was useless for the rest of the check.

Eventually we were forced to close the hive up without achieving anything and come away. Then, as I was about to remove my veil, Liam calmly noted I had another bee wandering around inside my helmet - it had probably been there the whole time...

All in all, we were both dreading today - where we faced repeating the whole thing all over again.

The aim was to:

1. Find the Queen and remove her to the nucleus box - this means the parent hive is Queenless and wont swarm once Queen cells are sealed.
2. Put Queen plus two frames of sealed brood and eggs into the nucleus hive. Forager bees should all return to parent hive. Again, this apparently means that this hive shuld not swarm as one of the constituents of the swarm (Queen, forager bees, young bees) is missing. Hmmm, touch wood...
3. Put brood frames with foundation in parent and nucleus hives and feed nucleus hive

This time, Liam and I were armed to the teeth. 3 layers of trousers, gardening gloves covered with disposable plastic ones, and my bee smock elasticated waist carefully not pulled down around my hips (we think the bee got in underneath!) Liam built a small fire which we carefully loaded into the smoker - today was not the day for it to go out like normal. Finally we gritted our teeth and went for it.

The bees pinged, they were a bit aggressive, but thankfully today is sunny and there were far fewer bees in the hive. This time, we found the Queen (albeit on the last but one frame) and quickly put her in the nuc with two frames of brood and a shaken frame of bees for company. And then we ran.

Well not quite. We had to go back and feed the nuc because quite honestly, there was no way we were going through the 3 layers of trousers paraphernalia all over again in one day.

Now we have to keep an eye on the nuc, turning the frames of foundation so they draw them out and maybe feeding again. Once established we can try putting them in the second hive and hope they build up into a full colony in the summer.

And in six days time, we have to examine the parent hive for Queen cells, choosing either just one sealed or maybe two - one sealed, one open and destroying the rest.

Fingers crossed!

First Crop

A very important post! As the oilseed rape faded from gold to green we arranged to hire the club extractor for a fiver. We picked it up on Sunday, and by Monday, we were ready for action.

We wore old clothes, and sheets of newspaper swathed the kitchen floor, the table and any clear surfaces. We had a serrated bread knife to uncap the comb and some industrial sized baking trays to take the wet cappings. A few jam saucepans were ready to collect any strip drips and we found two sieves to filter out any impurities. Ted Hooper was, as ever, on standby...

Liam went out to take the supers off the hive and managed without too much difficulty. We had used two Porter bee escapes, and these had got rid of all but a few bees. So far, so good.

Next was the problem of what to do with the liquid that came out when you shook some of the frames. Karen, another

Frome beekeeper had suggested we extract this "nectar" first and keep it separate from the honey. We put these frames into the extractor, nervously started it up and got about 4 jars of liquid. The consistency was not at all like honey (too watery) and we were glad that we took the time to do this first. Had we merged it with the honey, I think it might have encouraged it to ferment. Instead, I suspect we may explore the possibility of mead!

Next, we used our everyday bread knife to slice off the cappings from the comb. This was hugely time consuming and I suspect we took off far too much, but we did seem to get a bit quicker by the end. (Although as we finished at twenty minutes past midnight, this may have been out of sheer desperation to get the job done!!) The bread knife was definitely up for the job although we reckon a smaller serrated knife would also be good for small bits of undulating comb - a serrated grapefruit knife perhaps?

We tried our best to follow instructions and load consecutive bits of comb opposite one another into the extractor (for better balance) but in all honesty, it didnt seem to make a

huge amount of difference. We also tried not to get over enthusiastic with our spinning in an effort to preserve the combs and I dont think we did too badly.

Finally, we filtered the honey through our ordinary kitchen sieves - one plastic, one metal, and into a plastic 15kg honey bucket where we left it to settle for 24 hours.

Needless to say we couldnt resist taking a jar to "taste" - and it is good! Very sweet and very long tasting with none of the cabbage taste I was worried about. This first test jar does have lots of bubbles - noticeably more than the jars we

are now bottling up. (Another tip we learnt by accident - by covering the honey bucket top with cellophane, which "rested" on top of the honey, when we came to remove it, all of the air bubbles and surface "scum" was removed with it - far more neatly than we could have done).

We started off bottling into all the jars we had carefully saved over the winter. However, I couldn't bear seeing our precious honey being decanted into jars still sticky from the old labels so we ended up buying some new ones. At twenty odd p a jar I dont think this is too extravagant...

24 hours later, there was still no sign of crystallisation which prompted me to ask Norman if it was definitely oil seed rape honey. Apparently the sweetness is a giveaway - and it might change colour / texture in the next few days. We await developments with interest...

So far we have bottled 23 1 lb jars with another 2/3 of the honey bucket remaining. This gets done tonight.

Backward bees

A fourth super has now gone on - which is good (obviously) - however, it would seem our bees are possibly the only ones in the Frome Beekeeper's Association NOT to be trying to swarm. I find this amusing as our one ambition for this year was to split the hive - something we obviously failed to share with the bees...

(Although I thought most swarms happen in June not May - maybe all the other Frome beekeepers are just ahead of themselves?!)

Went to the Bath and West Show to pick up some more equipment - supers and a honey bucket - and learnt that oilseed rape honey can (to some people) taste of cabbage. Great! Will look forward to that... Now just waiting to hear when the extractor is available as we must take the oil seed rape honey off before it sets.

We did an inspection yesterday and one super is sealed, the other two still a bit drippy if you shake them. Don't think we will be able to borrow it until after the weekend but fingers crossed.

Super Number Three

It's incredible. In my last post, I mentioned (somewhat sarcastically) that the bees had been spotted in the second Super. Now, in less than a week, it is full. On Saturday, Liam and I hastily constructed a 3rd Super and put it on the hive, and in our inspection yesterday, some of the frames have been partially drawn out and nectar and pollen deposited.

I am no longer even worrying about them capping the frames. David, who dropped by to deliver the Somerset Beekeeping Association's newsletter, pointed out that the honey needs time to settle and "mature" before they will cap it. And, if it is oilseed rape honey, which as the picture shows, it could well be, I will need to take it off the minute the rape stops flowering regardless of cappings anyway!

A full bee inspection yesterday resulted in one sting (me), a sighting of the Queen, and a new Queen cup - this time with egg. Inevitably, this has happened just as it is least convenient. We have worked out that if we check the hive on Friday we SHOULD be just in time to avoid the worst happening. Fingers crossed.

And of course, we have now run out of supers. Back in March, 3 Supers seemed positively decadent. I am hoping to order one and pick it up at the Bath and West show.

Queen Cups moving up the frame

Another full inspection, and this time, the Queen Cups are moving up the frame. I think these could quite probably become full on Queen Cells and am busy planning my next steps.

Robin (bee mentor) has developed his own method of dividing a hive that is based as far as possible on the bees' natural behaviour, and which also (hopefully) will result in two strong hives rather than one strong and one weaker one. I will try and blog about this in more detail this week as it will involve me moving a nucleus hive and one of my main hives to his apiary. Every beekeeping association seems to have experienced beekeepers with their own methodologies and I thought it would be interesting to give Robin's method a go as it certainly seems logical! Wathc this space, and i would be interested in any thoughts / feedback...

And finally - it is official. Bees have been sighted in the 2nd super. There are rumours of one frame of drawn comb, and, in the first super, about 1cm of capped honey....

The realisation dawns...

Am feeling slightly stupid this morning... Liam and I have kept returning to the question of why our bees are taking honey from the super. Indeed, we were talking about it even as we assembled our 5th bonfire of the fortnight which is situated about 20 foot from our hive....

And yes, although the hive is screened by 2 giant leylandi, the bees will be inhaling a fair amount of smoke when the wind blows in the wrong direction. I assume that they then go into a panic, snort honey from the nearest place to hand, and then generally feel quite cross. Or sleepy. Or whatever.

Thankfully, we have now burned all of the debris that resulted from the laying of a 20 metre garden hedge (5 bonfires worth and considerable amounts of blood, sweat and if not tears, certainly agony) so hopefully the bees will consent to start SEALING SOME SUPER FRAMES!!!