LOTS OF LOVE AND LOTS OF LETTERS...

Where to begin with what has been another busy but wonderful week. How about with.. I feel blessed.. honestly I do. I am travelling around to schools and community groups giving talks about the honeybees to a fantastically wide range, both in age and type, and getting such a positive feedback every way I turn. I have worked for the majority of my life but never before have I felt the drive and the passion I feel right now and perhaps that is why I am getting such wonderful comments filtering back. Oprah Winfrey said “When you align your personality with your purpose no-one can touch you .” Well I can vouch for that!

Onward dear friends to the weeks events.

The week got off to a wonderful start with the 1st Loudwater Rainbows and 2nd Loudwater Brownies. Anita Haddon, Brown Owl, was wondrously warm and welcoming. We decided, as it was a lovely evening, to do the talk outside. The two groups joined together for the talk and once again I found myself with spellbound children absorbing all the information I ‘let fly’ at them! At the end of the talk a long queue formed as I signed books which always makes me smile on the inside…. Betsie Valentine going home with so many children.

I was presented with a beautiful Salvia, by one of the children, which now has pride of place in my garden and a lovely card signed by all the Rainbows and Brownies Somebody stop me smiling!

Tuesday was The 1st Ivinghoe Pitstone Guides. These were the guys I let down a few weeks ago. I was determined to make it up to them. They were a very small group but it makes not a pennyworth of difference to me, they were given the full monty nonetheless! Sometimes it is nice to have a small group because you can then spend more time with them at the end answering all their questions and going through all the equipment etc.

My last talk this week was with the 1st Chesham Rainbows followed by the 2nd Chesham Brownies. Two separate talks. The Rainbows were absolutely lovely and had many questions. They each took home a book! The Brownies.. wow what a crowd! Brown Owl said I would be lucky if they stayed still and listened for an hour. They did! Below is Carly, leader of the Rainbows, getting in to the spirit of the talk and a lovely picture sent to me by one of the Rainbows.. To top it all I got a lovely email from brown owl whose words included:

“We were really impressed with how you engaged the girls. we have never seen them so quiet for so long.”

Boom!

And so to the bees.

I have not been able to mark two of my queens because a couple of weeks ago I dropped the queen catcher and marking tube somewhere in the field where I keep the bees. I now have new ones.. Off I went on a mission to do three normal hive checks and find two queens and mark them. This shouldn’t take long - was my thinking - and I was looking forward to a lovely ride on my horse after the inspection. I called Amelie’s parents to see if she wanted to come along and help find her queen and mark her. Unfortunately she couldn’t make it but the inspections had to go on!

Red hive: No problem, all good, lots of lovely bees, marked queen seen, eggs and brood.. lovely.

The Nuc: Still not sure what’s going on in there. Not a lot. Saw the Queen again, she doesn’t seem to be laying, the bees continue to mill around and do very little. Last chance for them this week to get going with something. If not I will offer the queen out to someone, I don’t want to squish a queen, she may pick up with more enthusiastic bees, she may not. Nothing lost if someone who needs a queen gives her a try.. they can squish her if she is no good.

Green Hive: Veritably buzzy and extremely busy. Lots of eggs, brood, stores etc. Looked for the queen but could not find her but I was happy and sure she was there as there were lots of eggs, brood etc. I went through the hive twice, looking for her but the hive is so full and these bees are quite fast as they scuttle across the frames, she is clearly shy and doesn’t want to be found. Baring in mind I had another hive to look through and a horse I wanted to ride that afternoon as well, I decided to leave finding and marking her until next week. I did however remove some drone brood from the hive. A while back I had put in to the brood box a super frame, which is half the size of a brood frame, knowing that for some reason the bees tend to build drone comb underneath it rather than worker comb. See the picture below. It is a way of controlling Varroa. Varroa mites reproduce within sealed bee brood. A hormone that is more prevalent in drone brood cells triggers this. Once the comb has been covered you cut it off and the bees can build up the comb again. I have kept it as an example to show at my talks, rather than discarding it. Waste not!

Drone comb built and the brood covered underneath the worker brood in the super frame.

The Blue hive - Amelies hive: First frame I pulled out 2 huge queen cells and an open one with a grub inside. I popped it back in the hive and called R to ask him to bring up a new hive as I was going to have to find the queen, mark her and do an artificial swarm. The spare hive duly arrived and I put everything in place as is required. Having failed to find the queen in the previous hive I had to find her in this one or I couldn’t do the artificial swarm. I started to look really carefully. The bees were calm and completely unfazed by my presence which was great because theoretically it should have made finding her easier. However, try as I might, I just could not find her. I went through the hive several times, to no avail. It had really warmed up, the sun had burned away the clouds and I am afraid I was so hot in my bee suit, the sweat was literally dripping of me, not nice I know but it was!. After an hour and a half of diligently looking for the queen I phoned my friend Penny - Penny Bees - we call her and told her of my predicament..

“Penny, I have queen cells in one of my hives and I have been looking for the queen for an hour and a half and I cannot find her. It’s such a quiet hive I cannot understand why I can’t see her.”

“Are there any eggs in the hive?”

As soon as Penny asked the question I knew the answer! I had been so intent on finding the queen I hadn’t looked for the eggs but I knew as she asked me the question that there were not. Lots of stores in the gaps where the eggs should have been, which I had spotted but stupidly not put the two together. I thanked her and went back to the hive. No eggs! No eggs = No Queen. I couldn’t find her because she wasn’t there. The strange thing being, it was so full of bees it didn’t ring any alarm bells that she had already swarmed. I am thinking, maybe perhaps she had died or not taken many flying bees with her. I will talk it through with another beekeeper at our next meeting. Well I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort if I had had a clear head and thought through the inspection before forging ahead on a mission to find the queen with no regard for anything else that might be going on in the hive. A lesson learned yet again! I think I will use the excuse of the the heat getting to me and I wasn’t thinking straight. I removed one of the queen cells. Left a closed and open one and walked away with the spare hive and loaded back in to the car, exceedingly pleased to peel my bee suit away from my sodden skin! Willow never got ridden, I had run out of time. I would like to blame the bees. I did on FaceBook, but it was my bad beekeeping that wasted my time, not the bees!

Well that was the beekeeping. Not too bad. Still have three thriving hives but now have to wait for the arrival of the new queen in the Blue Hive - Amelies Hive. I have added a super to each of them so now all three have two supers on. A steady flow of nectar is coming in so definitely looking forward to some honey this year which is great, so all in all it is going well.

When I got back home I had received a wonderful card from the Owls Class at Pathways in Aylesbury with these fabulous letters inside. Chuffed? I should co-co. This is what it’s all about.

Finally, a lovely end to the week was spent on the Chalfont Beekeepers Society Stand at Chenies Manor Flower Show on Sunday. Chenies Manor is absolutely beautiful and once a year people come from all over the UK to exhibit and sell their beautiful flowers. I cannot thank my club enough for the continuing support they are giving me with Betsie Valentine. I had a whole area to myself for my book and their enthusiasm is heartfelt and appreciated so much. I sold lots of books and met with a potentially very interesting gentleman. I shall say no more but should anything come of our little chat I will be shouting about it from the top of the Chiltern Hills! Watch this space.

Fiona Matheson - our love Chairperson at The Chalfonts Beekeepers Society Stand.

One more thing, or as an old friend of mine would say “and another thing” before I sign off for this week. I got this message from Amelie’s mum this morning. I am so proud of her! What a fantastic response she is getting from everyone and it all started with Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees!

Thank you for logging in yet again..

“Knock knock”

“Who’s there?”

“Willow”

That’ll be me ‘orse… See ya!