Bees in the Hive?

When I began to think about bee keeping and took a course I was given a little laminated card with the 5 questions to answer when you do a hive inspection.

Earlier in the year after a family get together when we had to deal with a swarm we found our 5 questions had been made 6! 

Well this week the answer most definitely was no, some of them were under the hive! The last colony we have this year with a white queen had decided they wanted a new queen- they began making queen cells. We removed the queen and left just one strong cell. All seemed well until it seemed obvious there was no laying queen in the hive. We decided to unite it with the hive nearest which had a good laying queen, ultimately we want to go into the winter with 4 hives again and after artificial swarms this year we have 8 so it seemed logical to begin uniting now while there is a good nectar flow on. The hive with no queen has filled the brood box and 2 supers with stores and seemed very calm, so preparations were made. Gradually we moved the hives closer and it was then that I noticed a huddle of bees between the hive floor and the varroa slide. 

Thinking the queen may somehow have ended up under the hive I tried to brush them out and them emptied them back in the hive. Next day they were back, so we decided to leave them and deal with them after we merged the hive and could get to them under the floor. It took about 3 days to get the 2 hives gradually close enough to merge and on Saturday evening we united the 2 hives with the newspaper method- I will explain this another time!

It became obvious in those 3 days the bees had made themselves at home- they had begun to make comb! 

We had taken a nucleus box with us and emptied the bees into this and as I emptied them in I saw the queen- a beautiful big plump queen! The comb they had made was lovely new wax and it clearly shows how bees make their own bee space as they build. As I looked through the comb I could also see new eggs- so the queen had mated - quite how she had ended up under the hive is a mystery- we have had some awful weather and it may be that she had somehow not made the entrance as she came back from her mating flight and had just crawled up underneath and taken up residence there. The bees inside the hive must have sensed  her there and just kept on doing what they should.

After 24 hours the merged hive looked busy- no signs of newspaper outside yet, but lots of bees going in the nuc box as well. So although we have merged 2 hives we now have ended up with another nucleus to deal with, and one with what looks like a lovely queen at that!

Wormery

I have long promised myself a wormery and as the compost bin in the garden was on the verge of collapse it seemed the perfect time to get a wormery to put in the garden to cope with the waste we produce in the kitchen. So I ordered a wormery from Wiggly Wigglers (www.wigglywigglers.co.uk) and this week I have set it up! It fits neatly next to the recycling bins, is easy to to set up and the worms are fascinating. Most of the things that we would put on the compost can go in, as well as things like dust from the vacuum cleaner.

Adding worms!

When the worms have settled in it is OK to start adding waste. Not too much to start with, the worms need a chance to get going - but to keep the wormery fresh it is a good idea to add crushed egg shells or lime mix regularly to stop everything getting too acid. We keep a caddy in the kitchen to collect the waste so it is more convenient to go to the wormery when that is full. An important spin off to getting lovely compost to use in the garden or allotment is that the worms produce liquid feed that can be drained off and diluted to water on the fruit and veg!

Worm Cafe in use

Preserving

Having arrived back from our holidays to find the weather had not improved we were surprised to find loads of strawberries- we picked 8 punnets of lovely ripe fruit!
As there were too many to eat fresh I decided to make some strawberry conserve- I used fresh redcurrant juice from some redcurrants that I had in the freezer to help with setting and the jam set beautifully and I also found a use for some of the many redcurrants that I still have stored!

As well as the strawberries the cherries were starting to ripen on the tree- and the birds were having a feast. We decided to pick as any as we could - again a really good crop. I love the idea of preserving - a row of jars,  tins or bags full of things ready to store to eat later gives me a real sense of satisfaction. (Simple pleasures!!) So, something I have never done before- cherries in brandy- I followed an age old recipe by Mrs Beeton, basically pack the cherries in to jars with layers of sugar and top up with brandy. Very easy but after a couple of weeks the cherries have gone an anaemic colour- the recipe says to leave them a couple of months - I was hoping to use them at Christmas. We will just have to wait and see if the bottle of brandy was worth the expense!!

Coll and Tiree

Summer holidays? OK so we have had a great holiday on the Hebridean island of Coll, with a visit to Tiree thrown in, but I'm not sure about whether I can call it a summer holiday because the weather throughout the UK does not seem to realise that it is July!!

Beautiful scenery and some of the best beaches in the UK, we saw basking sharks, heard Corncrakes, had regular visits from a male Hen Harrier, saw Red Throated divers with their chicks and practised 'strolling' and kite flying!

Fantastic beaches 

Coll has some of the rarest Bumblebees in Britain- the Great Yellow Bumblebee is found here and although we didn't spot it we did see the Moss Carder Bumblebee on the machair. In Coll the RSPB manage areas of the machair for the Corncrake population and as the bees are found in similar areas it could be supposed that the management techniques are beneficial to both.

Moss Carder Bumblebee working the white clover