Swarm in the apricot tree

2 swarms and 3 casts (small swarms) in the last 2 days (warm at last!)

A nice big one in our apricot tree

on a ladder

shaking them into a basket

on the ground

New gate from our wood

I have finally finished our new gate, made from chestnut from our wood and planked with a chainsaw mill.

The cut pieces immediately turned into bananas!

The bees flying well today and gathering pollen (13th January)

Making (bee) frames

The weather is awful this week so our HelpX guest Claire is helping me put together bee hive frames ready for the honey season (there's optimism for you!)

What a difference a year makes!

Last year we were well into summer by now and my bees were ready to swarm.   his year I am finding it hard to get warm days for any bee keeping at all.   I haven't started any queen rearing yet!
I am delaying sowing tender plants like beans and corn (which I sowed early last year) to see which way the season will jump.   I will start sowing those next week.
On the plus side we aren't short of rain this year!  and the tomatoes in the greenhouse with the solar heat store are doing well and already in flower.

All tucked up cozy in the snow!

Bees do better in the winter when it is cold

Not much solar production from these panels today I am afraid

Zero (the dog) loves he snow after the first shock 

Yes 5 or 6 inches of snow last night - protection for the plants against the cold.  Only problem for me is that it will be impossible to work in the wood till the snow melts!

Queen rearing

Today (on the last warm day of this week!) I am starting my queen rearing process.  I confined the queen in the hive I want to breed from in a part of her hive (with a frame made from queen excluder plastic) and today I hope to take the comb of hatching eggs (she should have laid!!!) and make strips  of comb with eggs in to put into a queen-less hive, I will rub out two cells out of every three in a row to make more room for the bees to make the (larger) queen cells .  I am hoping the bees will make these remaining cells into queen cells.  If all goes well I will put the sealed queen cells into some mini hives (stocked with a cup full of bees each!!) and hope to have a supply of mated queens in about a month to use when needed.  Lots of things could go wrong so wish me luck!!

I love spring

Twenty One degrees yesterday!  My first beekeeping day of 2011 - I went through the 13 hives that went into the winter and the results were better than I had hoped for.  Eleven hives with a brood laying queen, one hive with bees but no queen or brood (I put a comb of eggs into the hive to give them a chance of making a queen cell) one hive dead - lots of food cause of death unknown.
Also the first broody hen - our bantam (a good reliable mother) now sitting on eight eggs.  And (would you believe it!!) our first courgette flower; on a plant under a large cloche made from recycled polycarbonate.   The tomato plants in the greenhouse and polytunnel are up to a foot tall and there is blossom everywhere, I love spring.

Processing chestnuts?

We have had a good harvest of nuts this year, almonds, walnuts and chestnuts.  Has anyone any good techniques for processing chestnuts - removing their inner skins etc?  The warmer weather in October has given us a boost in the vegetable garden with runner beans particularly having a new lease of life.  The bees to have been very active, working on ivy flowers for nectar and Hawkweed for pollen (I guess).

Dry and cold but still food to eat.

yes its been a difficult spring this year for the garden and the bees!  Very little rain in the last 2 months making it difficult in the garden with the late frosts and cold have kept us on our toes protecting potatoes and runner/french beans.  I found cut down plastic milk bottles much better than fleece as crop protection. I spite of the cold we have had plenty of salad, early peas, strawberries and beetroot in the poly tunnel and lots of purple sprouting.  The purple sprouting is an interesting case as it was stripped to a skeleton last year by cabbage white caterpillars and yet recovered to give us a great crop!  The tomato plants in the green house now have small fruit and over wintered broad beans will soon be pick-able.  On the negative side the overwintered carrots (under polythene) which we would be eating now have nearly all gone to seed - maybe I sowed them too early in the autumn?  On the bees; I had the same (new) problem as last year with two of the hives with queens that weren't laying?  I am re-queening them with queens from an early swarming hive.

The first Swarm of the season

The first Swarm of the season today - not great weather with a cold north east wind making it cold when the clouds covered the sun.  The went for a raspberry bush which meant they ended up on the ground but were persuaded to clime into my bee basket when it was placed over the pool of bees.  I hived them from a sloping board at about 5.00 and they went in  OK but with a large lump hanging on the front of the hive.  Hope they will have taken up residence properly by morning.  I am up late for the count tonight, three o'clock they say which is very late for me the I will see if I have lost my deposit (I am expecting to!)