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!