New Generation Beekeeping

How time flies, my plans changed a bit this summer and suddenly it’s Autumn My intention to update this page more frequently was scuppered by a planned three week holiday in france turning into seven weeks but at least we missed the poor August weather and I had been able to harvest some honey in late spring and again in early summer. The four National hives from last year did me proud and confirmed that leaving them all their honey for the winter set them up well for a good start in February. At last I was able to get my first bees into the Warré hives and have had a mixed success. Most of these hives were placed in the gardens of people who responded to the invitation on this website. It seems that the queens made early in the year, by both myself and the bees, struggled to mate well in May when the weather was wet and cold for about 10 days. Some of the new colonies were able to create another queen by supercedure, unfortunately some died out and some were able to be merged to create stronger ones. I got my first colony from a swarm in June and housed them in a Warré hive where they took over the empty boxes at an amazing rate. Within five weeks they had almost filled two boxes and by early September almost filled the third box and until todays rain (Oct 6th) were foraging hard. The hive is extremely heavy so they should be ok for food this winter. Some of my weaker colonies have beeen fed sugar solution to help them as the poor weather in August caused many queens to slow down their laying until the weather improved at the beginning of September and so they are not as strong as I hoped they would be at this point in the year

Winter’s Nearly Gone I see that this page still refers to Autumn but fear not as I’ve mastered the art(!) of Blogging and am trying to update that more frequently so if you want to follow or just contribute please go here and join in. I was able to sell all the honey that you can see being extracted here and I managed to go into the winter with 14 colonies Eleven are in Warrés and three in Nationals, so far - Mid February - I think they are all still on the go but the hard part of the year is almost upon us so it will be interesting to see how many start their new year and how vigourous they are. Please feel free to follow and contribute to the blog at the link above and tell us about your beekeeping experiences and post some photos. Look forward to meeting you . .