Well it’s been quite a busy two weeks, but then when isn’t life busy where honeybees are involved? It’s what makes beekeeping so interesting!

In my last blog I had just taken a couple of supers off two of my hives. My girls did well. I got 41 jars of honey from two supers and I have another two supers to spin. This year we invested in a new spinner. We had an old electric one which I used to have to hang on to for grim death as it dance it’s way around the kitchen floor. As my teeth jarred with the vibration I would tell myself this was good for my upper arms! When I was very first married, back in the late 70’s, I had a washing machine that would travel across the kitchen floor during the course of a six hour wash cycle. I was young, with a baby and it had been passed on to me by one of my mothers friends, so who was I to complain? My mother did eventually fees sorry for me and bought me a hoover twin tub. Best washing machine I ever had.. and the house constantly smelled of comfort…Back to the new spinner. Oh what glee, what joy, what bliss. It is not electric but may I refer you back up the paragraph a little to my thoughts about my upper arms as I turn the handle to spin. It has a sieve underneath so the honey spins out of the frames and goes straight through the sieve in to the settling tank. It is then rested for 48 hours and Bob’s your uncle, well he might not be - who knows - out comes the liquid gold straight in to the jars. I think I ‘m in love with my new spinner.

When you have spun the frames you return them to the hives from whence they came. This is very important, you have to return the right super to the right colony, so you number the hives or, like me, I put coloured drawing pins in the brood box and roofs of my hives and in my supers so I know which super came from where. You leave a gap between the hive and the spun frames. If you don’t the bees will just fill them up again. If there is a gap between the brood box and the supers they will not associate the spun frames with their hive and therefore take it down in to the brood box for their winter stores. This takes them about 48 hours. The spun comb will be as clean as clean can be. Remove the clean the frames and freeze for 48 hours to get rid of any disease their might be and store them carefully away ready to return them to the bees the following spring. I then return the wax cappings to the hives, using the same procedure as with the frames, i.e., leaving a gap. When you go back 48 hours later they have cleaned the wax beautifully. It is then ready to either melt down and keep for yourself to make candles or beeswax wraps (my new craze!) or return to Thornes in Windsor who swap it for new wax foundation at a much reduced price. Boom!

And so to the afore mentioned ‘beeswax wraps.” Instead of just the recycling I have been doing over the years of plastic and cardboard, I am now making a conscientious effort to make my home as plastic free and environmentally friendly as I can. This year, as with previous years, come the spring, I hand over the top half of our garden to wild flowers. This means sewing wild flower seeds and not mowing the grass. Some years it works, some years it doesn’t. This year was exceptional. The flowers went crazy and it was alive with butterflies, wild bees, honeybees and countless other wild life all benefiting from my husband and my effort. It is not a large garden but it was very effective. Be warned though, when it’s over, it’s over and your garden ends up looking like something out of “Keeping Up Appearances” all it lacks is a rusty car and rabid dog and the look is complete! Once it has finished flourishing the garden has to be left for a couple of weeks for the seeds to self sow again and then it is quite a task cutting it all down and returning it back to a decent looking piece of grass. But.. it is worth it.. As mentioned above I am trying to rid my home of as much plastic as I can. This includes plastic soap dispensers and, of course, cling film. I have gone back to bars of soap and making my own beeswax wraps to replace cling film. You don’t have to make them yourself, they are now widely available in health food shops and market places. If you do want to make your own you can do what I did and google it. You Tube has plenty of different ideas of how it is best done and it is so simple! Above are a couple I made earlier in the week. It’s very difficult to rid your domain of plastic completely. Shampoo etc comes, of course, in plastic containers but I have sourced a cleansing cream that comes in a glass bottle, albeit with a plastic dispenser on the top, which is annoying. Here’s a little plug as it really is a lovely product which is an added bonus. Niels yard is the make. Their moisturisers also come in glass jars which is great. The other thing I have done is swap to old fashioned Nivea body moisturising cream because it comes in a tin!

A rather nice thing happened to me in the week.. I had a meeting in London at the Institute of Directors. I was early so thought I would find somewhere to have a cup of tea prior to going to the meeting. I spotted, directly opposite the IoD a lovely looking restaurant called Wild Honey (St James). I thought it looked rather grand but nothing ventured nothing gained… I popped in. I was greeted by an extremely friendly Waiter and I said I didn’t want to eat and asked if it was possible to have a cup of tea. “Not a problem at all” he said and guided me to a table. When he came back with the tea he showed me the menu - just in case I changed my mind - I saw honey ice cream on the menu, stating that it was their speciality and the honey was locally sourced. I was fascinated and asked where they got their honey from and we started chatting. I told him I am a beekeeper and he disappeared and re-appeared with a frame of partially uncapped honey fresh from a hive and offered me a slice. It was very nice! A few moments later the Maitre D came over and started talking to me about beekeeping and there, before me, appeared a bowl of their speciality honey ice cream and some chocolate and honey concoction to have with my tea. I said they should have hives on their roof and he told me that they were in the process of doing just that. The Maitre D looked at my book and said he would order some for the restaurant as they often have children coming in and it would be within keeping of their honey theme to have a book about the honeybees for the children to read while there. My half an hour was up and I had to leave to go to the meeting and when I asked for the bill they said it was on the house! The strangest things happen when you are least expecting them..

Early on in the week I agreed to go and help at the Club Apiary in Chesham Bois. It’s in a funny old place.. near a graveyard, which is fine, I quite like graveyards as it goes and when they are well kept they can be very beautiful places. However, the apiary setting is far from beautiful. Five/six hives buried knee deep in stinging nettles. I am not going to lie, apart from the honeybees it doesn’t lure me in! But Celia, the lovely lady who has been assigned the task of looking after it needs as much help as she can get so I go and do my bit! One of the hives, which a couple of weeks ago I suggested needed to be combined with another, was now under attack from wasps, or steak knives with wings as I think of them. They are vicious. So I transferred what was left of the bees and their queen into a nuc and took it up to my apiary. I am afraid it was the same there. I brought it home. Yes you guessed it… same again. I went through the nuc and saw at the bottom loads of sugar syrup floating around on the floor. Well no wonder the wasps were in a frenzied state trying to get in there. I found my nuc and transferred, once again, what was left of the bees and their queen who was still hanging on in there. My nuc was all dry and fresh. I made the tiniest entrance I could and to my delight the honeybees appeared. Some of the came pouring out of the hive and huddled up at the top leaving the wasps a clear run to get in. I checked inside and a few were clustered around the queen. I am afraid I eventually lost the battle. I think the bees in the nuc were young, and therefore didn’t have a developed sting and were not as yet flying bees so they had little defence. This is day three and the wasps have won and I feel very sad indeed. Poor honeybees. I was really hoping it would be a happy ending, but alas it was not meant to be.

However, I am pleased to say that my bees are doing really well. I took a break from writing this blog to go and check my apiary and I have literally just returned from going through them. The ones without their supers are now being fed and they are mullering their feed morning and night and the hives are beginning to feel heavy and are full of lovely stores for the winter. So this at least is looking very hopeful.

Above are a few photographs I took while inspecting the green hive. Very calm and happy bees they are too! From left to right: Lovely covering of bees on top of the frames in the brood box. Freshly drawn comb, all pristine and white, awaiting stores. Slightly older drawn comb with a healthy covering of bees. Close up of their stores prior to being capped and of course, last but not least, beautiful wall to wall brood.

I will leave you with one last image that I took while at a friends apiary. I love the two honeybees at the bottom on the left. They look like they are having a good old girlie gossip as they come in to land!

See you in a couple of weeks….

Oh… I nearly forgot. The proud announcement!

I have been accepted as a Speaker for the Buckinghamshire WI. I am so thrilled. I have already had five bookings for next year and I have applied to audition for Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Hertfordshire!