Welcome to The Southdown Apiary!

The hives are moved, the website is re-directed, there is a new - albeit temporary - logo, and I have a shiny new email alert service - welcome to The Southdown Apiary!  (Which, if you hadn't already worked it out, is the blog formerly known as Beechen Bees).  I have everything I need for an exciting year's beekeeping... except... no actual bees.  Yet.  But swarm season is almost upon us, so I am somewhat optimistic that will get sorted out fairly soon.

The hives are ready - we just need some bees!

In the meantime, I have still been able to do a bit of beekeeping - the folk with the ZEST hives kindly invited me over last weekend to join in with their routine inspection, and I'm pleased to report that their bees are doing very well.  No winter losses, and the colonies are building up nicely.  The bees had already started to build queen cups (though no queen cells, yet), so they are at least starting to think about swarming.  Also, there were already quite a few drones around, which is a sign that swarming is on the cards sometime in the next few weeks.

While I wait for some bees to turn up, I have a few other tasks to get on with, including making up some new brood frames - all my previous stock of new frames went into the freshly cleaned hives, and I currently don't have any for the nucleus hives.  But a box of parts for 50 frames arrived on my doorstep this week, so I have plenty to do to keep me busy over the bank holiday.

The weather next week looks like rain - so there may not be any news about new bees for a couple of weeks.  I will keep you all posted if and when something happens!

Goodbye Beechen Bees - Epilogue

Spring is in full swing, the blossom is out, and the bees should be flying by now.  Sadly, mine are not.  I opened the hives last month, and found piles of dead bees, and some nasty mould:

I don't know exactly what killed them - probably some kind of virus, such as chronic bee paralysis virus.  Almost certainly spread within and across the hives by Varroa mites.  But it means - currently - the end of all my bees.  It's a shame, as they were all from the same family tree, right from my first colony that I got back in 2012, headed up by queen Rosalind.

Anyway, before I can get new bees, I needed to clean things up.  The first task was to burn all the frames.  They could still be harbouring the infection that killed my bees, so I can't take the risk of using them again.  The best way to dispose of old frames is to burn them.  They do burn well:

The next task was to scrape off any remaining propolis on the brood and super boxes, and sterilise the remaining hive parts.  This is done with a blowtorch.  The idea is to work fairly quickly, so as to scorch the wood but not burn it.

Then, I put new frames in.  Acting on a tip from fellow Widcombe beekeeper Jessica, I put in 10 new frames of wax foundation, and also a frame of drawn wax from one of my spare super frames:

The idea is that any passing swarm might smell the wax, take a look inside, and find an empty - but fully furnished - beehive all ready for them to move into.  New bee landlord Joel assures me that he usually gets a swarm in either his, or his neighbour's garden, every spring.  So, if I'm lucky, I might find a passing swarm setting up home in one of my hives.  That, at least, is the theory - we'll see how it works out over the next few weeks.

This will be my last blog entry as Beechen Bees.  But - assuming I do get some bees, one way or another, this season - it won't be the last you'll hear of me.  Stay tuned for some news from The Southdown Apiary!