1:40pm Saturday 5th June 2010
I’ve just read half of Bill Turbull’s book “The bad beekeepers club” in one sitting. What a fabulous, truthful book from a man who I am sure is a much better bee keeper than he claims to be. I winced as I related to his accounts of what the bad beekeeper does compared to the good beekeepers view. I, for example, have just been down to the bees and forgot my hive tool How can you forget anything so vital? Let me recap. At the weekend my friend Richard (a very good beekeeper) came over and we approached with some trepidation the hive that last winter we had fed and closed with the words, “we’ll sort it out in the spring!” It seemed such a long way off in October.
What had happened was that for some obscure reason the hive had only four frames in the brood chamber (presumably because the colony was so small or even empty). But it wasn’t at all empty. A very strong colony seized upon it and built their own city in the brood box around the few frames and so far have resisted any attempts to get them to move to the nice, orderly brood box, full of frames, above them. So we took the hive to bits and re constructed it – it was like lego at one point and we were seriously wondering which bit went where in our plan to get them to move. On the top was the brood box they were supposed to move into which they had filled with honey. The idea being that if we moved that away from the rest of the hive, the bees would leave it and we could try again with another brood box to get them to move up. So today my simple task was to go and see if this had happened. I have learnt the hard way to kit up every time.
Take no chances. Jeans, over trousers, jacket, veil, gloves – I have it all. But no hive tool. So when I go to take the lid off the hive it is stuck to the brood box – of course – because bees seal which obviously I did know. With a bit of wriggling I do get the lid off and then face the problem of getting the brood box off but luckily there is a piece of metal handy so I improvise and do what I need to do thinking that I more than qualify for membership of the Bad Beekeepers Club.
Mission accomplished I leave the girls to it. The really good piece of news is that being the bad bee keeper that I am, when I should have brought an empty hive back to the house I didn’t and I left it up in the apiary. Thank goodness I did because with no credit at all to me, there was a strong colony in it and all I needed to do was fetch a super and frames. I might even get some honey this year…..
Liz is reading The Bad BeeKeepers Club by Bill Turnbull and Hedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton Seal and Matthew Seal published by Merlin Unwin. She is at Hay Literary Festival this weekend, in conversation on Sunday 6th June with GreenPrint Director, Andy Fryers at 2.30pm talking about her new book, the Book of Self Sufficiency published by Gaia.
To read more of her blog, visit the Editor's Blog and please do leave a comment.
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