A Swarm of bees in May is Worth a Load of Hay

After my last disappointment with the bees, I was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that perhaps my beekeeping days were over. I was ready to offload all my equipment and concentrate on less baffling projects. A lifetimes association though, is hard to abandon, and so I prevaricated hoping that something might turn up. The swarming season was coming to an end and with no signs of bees anywhere else to acquire, my thoughts turned elsewhere, mainly towards Thistledew my ancient campervan, and taking to the road again.
So, a visit to Mill Garage in Duns (brilliant people with motor caravans and vehicles in general) was required to get an MOT sorted. As I walked in to the workshop Jimmy the owner looked up and said "David, just the man I wanted to see." OH, oh, I thought. Jimmy is one of this world`s jokers and is always game to pull your leg, so I was not sure what to think when he told me that a swarm had landed in his son`s garden, and would I like to go and see it? Every time I see Jimmy he gently and comically refers to my stolen bees, so I was ready for the joke which must surely follow. But no, this time he was serious and phoned his son to tell him that he had seen me.

I drove the short distance to Stephen and Leslie`s house to look and sure enough, a lovely semi prime swarm was settled in a text book position on the edge of their garden hedge about 2 feet above the ground.

Perfect.

The capture of the swarm was easily accomplished, gently shaking the swarm into the shallow super that I placed under it.

I left them until the evening, when I returned and found that they had all settled down. I secured the pack and loaded the new acquisition into my van for the uneventful journey to my new apiary site in the woods near my home.

This all happened on Friday, I left them to settle over the weekend, and this morning with some slight trepidation, Meghan and I paid a visit at 07.00 to check. No need to have worried they were busy doing what bees do at this time of year, coming and going with full pollen baskets and hopefully full honey stomachs, as if oblivious to the fact they were in a completely new location several miles from their previous home.

So a big thank you is owed to Jimmy, Stephen and Leslie and an even bigger thank you to Rebecca for the photographs.

Non beekeepers may wonder about the title to this blog.

It is from the old beekeepers mantra from the days when bees were kept in skeps, and the only way of keeping bees was to start each season with a new swarm and destroy it in the autumn to garner the crop. Thankfully we don`t have to do that these days. The full rhyme goes something like this :-

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay,

A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon,

But a swarm of bees in July isn`t worth a fly.

An incoming swarm of bees in any month is nowadays most welcome although they have been very shy over the last few years.

Tomorrow I plan to place a new brood chamber box under the shallow super and give the bees a sugar syrup feed to help them quickly draw foundation into those magnificently intricate combs, which will fill with brood and continue natures way of strengthening the new fragile colony.

Perhaps next year I can steal some of their hard won stores..............

What about Thistledew? Do I hear you say.

Well, after a bit of skillful welding at Mill Garage, a new MOT certificate was presented, so more money to part with for Road Fund Licence and we are off down to Hampshire for a farewell party at my son Adrian's house on Saturday. It will be great to see him, Lucy and baby Thomas again.

The farewell part?

Well, Adrian has been appointed Commanding Officer of the Falkland Islands Royal Navy Patrol Vessel/Guard Ship HMS Clyde and will be on Southern Atlantic Patrol duties for the next six months.

He leaves on Sunday for a `2 leg` 19 hour flight (via Ascension Island) leaving Brize Norton at midnight. Arriving in the Falklands Monday evening....... Bon Voyage Son.

So all in all we have had an exciting last few days, with hopefully more to follow.

We are hoping to travel north from Hampshire taking the best part of the week to make our way leisurely through Wales camping en route, to my sisters home near Chester for yet another party on the following Saturday. This time it will be Pam and Geoff`s 40th wedding anniversary........

Note to Phillip H. We are thinking of your dear wife`s admission to BGH today for the hip replacement operation.

We do hope that it goes well and that she will soon be chasing you around again. Give her our love., and you behave yourself whilst she is away!

MOVING ON

I am now resigned to the fact that I have probably seen the last of my bees and hives etc which were stolen from Penmanshiel.
The site was particularly good, situated as it is alongside the main East Coast rail line, where it passes for several miles through natural woodland, open country and a considerable area where very little intensive agriculture is carried out. It is also fairly close to foothills where heather abounds. Consequently the forage for the bees was particularly good with a comparatively long series of nectar flows. Unfortunately it was also in full view of the A1. This may have been the reason that it was targeted by possibly an opportunist thief, who had noticed it whilst travelling the A1.
I am now making plans to re-establish my beekeeping activities.
Before the hives were stolen, I had already made an arrangement with a local farmer to place some hives in a quiet woodland area on the edge of my village. This was planned for next season. As I now have only one colony, this move will have to be placed on hold until I have made increase to my stock.
The new colony which Pat so kindly gave to me, is situated in an ideal setting but it is approximately 30 miles from home, so I am probably going to have to move it, or increase the number of colonies in this locality, otherwise travelling costs will far outweigh the advantages of its location. More decisions to make! Meanwhile I have visited this hive and fed the bees via an Ashworth feeder with 10 litres of sugar syrup to ensure sufficient stores to get them through the winter. I am keeping my fingers (and everything else) crossed that they survive until the spring when I hope to use this stock as the nucleus for my new colonies.
One of the things that I learned during a lifetime of beekeeping, is that you have to work with the seasons when dealing with bees. So spring time, when the bees start to stir in their nest and the queen resumes more active egg laying, will be the time to try to persuade the bees to agree to increase.
I am also considering the purchase of several packages of bees to introduce into new hives, although the price required by the bee breeders may curtail this option. Bee packages containing around three and a half pounds weight of bees and one queen were last season costing about £120. Quite an investment for what is now basically a hobby for me. Hopefully I may be able to acquire some stray swarms during May or June, although with so many colonies dieing out through so called colony collapse disorder, and general winter losses, swarms are now a much rarer phenomenon than they once were. The demand for bees may well outstrip the supply and costs will probably rise beyond this next year.
More soon.

Recent Events Continued

You can probably imagine how I felt, seeing my little apiary devoid of any vestige of bees and equipment.
Just silence where one would normally expect, even at this time of the year, to experience the sound of bees.
It was a mixture of shock and disbelief, and then the realisation that all my efforts over the last 18 months had also disappeared, refurbished hive parts, and some old but still in use equipment, and an old but complete Glen hive which I kept for nostalgic reasons. Glen hives were once very popular in Scotland, but progress had overtaken them and most hives now in use up here are known as Smith hives. Sad to see a piece of history go with the rest. I am very unlikely to be able to replace that..
The majority of my stocks are were kept in Smiths as are 90% of Scottish bees. These hives are easily constructed, use short lugged BS frames, and are much easier to transport to the heather in the season.

Because almost all Scottish hives are of the Smith design, my missing ones are likely to go un noticed amongst others.
I contacted the local Police Station to report the theft. They were somewhat bemused at first but they realised that the loss of the colonies was probably a crime and they publicised the details. Any news regarding bees soon gets picked up by the media and the police press release certainly had that effect. BBC Scotland news carried the story and local press agencies spread the news amongst the Scottish Press. Unfortunately this has not led to the return of the bees. I fear that they are now long gone. It is a sad fact that bee and hive theft is becoming a growing problem throughout the UK.

I said in part one of this blog, that we have many ways to reflect. Bad, puzzleing and annoying are well covered by the foregoing saga, but life goes on. Moments of kindness come when least expected.

Another good beekeeping friend who is soon to move away rang and said that he had a spare colony located in a wood about 20 miles from my home, "Would you like it to start you off again?".

A simple question offering a generous gift, restoring my faith in human nature. To you, Pat, I thank you for your moments of kindness.

I had to cut part 1 of this blog short because of pressing family commitments. I am slowly catching up now, but more happenings have occured, giving me more moments on which to reflect and to continue the theme of the first 2 paragraphs of part 1.

I shall update you later this week, when hopefully some sort of normallity will have returned to my life..

Recent Events

Many things in life can trigger in us, time to reflect.

You know the sort of thing - close escapes, moments of kindness, emotional trauma, unexplained happenings, unexpected encounters, disbelief in the actions of others etc.

Well, the past 14 or so days have presented me with a varied selection of ways to reflect. Good and bad, puzzling and obvious, annoying and gratifying.

Let me explain.

I have been a keeper of bees for almost as long as I can remember. sometimes with success, often with failure, but always with a sense of gratification that the bees exist, not only as part of the greater plan to help our survival on this fragile planet we call Earth, but also to add to the rich and varied life and wonderment of the human race.

I don`t morally own my bees any more than I own the thousands of acres of fabulous and bounteous Scottish countryside, over which they are free to fly at any time, any where they choose. I suppose that I may briefly own bees that I may buy commercially from the bee breeders, but surely, as soon as I hive the bees in one of my hives, the bees are free spirits and can just as easily merrily fly off, to what to them is a more attractive location. leaving me out of pocket and out of luck. I merely own the structures in which I hope that they will cluster and carry out their focused lives. If I am lucky, my clumsy attempts at husbandry do not cause them to decamp and in good years I can steal a proportion of their hard gotten gains - the honey crop.

I don`t own the land on which my apiaries stand either, but I refer to those small parcels of land, as my apiaries as a matter of course. My bee hives are there due to the goodwill and co-operation of enlightened land owners, who appreciate the benefit that bees will surely bring to the flora of the surrounding land and to the eventual mutual benefit of us all.

Bees have been at my Scottish Borders Apiary for around 20 years. I was asked if I would like to take over the site by a beekeeper from Edinburgh, who sadly, through the passage of time, family health problems and the high cost of fuel, was finding it difficult to find the time to tend to the bees. He was given the bees and equipment by another beekeeper who had sadly also been unable to devote enough time to the upkeep of the hives. Unfortunately, among the 20 or so individual bee hives only a few were deemed to be worth saving and restoring. most were not and were beyond any economic repair.

Ted, (not his real name) told me that he thought that several years had passed since the hives had received any serious attention, before he became aware of them, but a few colonies had survived and were worth saving. He tidied up the site and repaired and replaced some hives and they were starting to thrive .
Ted was experiencing difficulties finding time to devote to the bees, and happily accepted my offer to take over the apiary, hives and bees.
So here I was once again patron to bees. This time in the Scottish Borders. I spent time and some money in restoration and made a decision that during my first year with these bees I would assess their potential with a view to increasing stocks and building up the colonies with the aim of better honey production in the future.
New stands were made, frames rescued and fitted with fresh foundation. old equipment was removed and either made serviceable, renewed or discarded, and the bees once again responded and gathered quite large quantities of honey.
Came the time this autumn to assess the situation in the apiary, to see if any colonies needed further help to go through the winter, so I paid a visit to the apiary.
Nothing.
No Bees, no hives, no stands, just empty spaces, a small pile of black ash, some scrap hive parts and the obligatory odd bricks that seem to accumulate in almost every apiary.
The whole caboodle had been removed.
Nothing left at all.
Everything, lock stock and barrel had gone!

More to follow on this theme as soon as I can