Old Hatch Apiary

The first proper warm week

The hawthorn opened on Wednesday and by Thursday morning the bees in hive 4 were already heavy on the front door. I left them alone until the afternoon, when the sun was on the lid, and lifted three frames out of the brood box to check stores. They were nine frames of brood already — the queen has been busy. I put a super on, with one drawn frame in the middle to give them somewhere to go.

Hive 9, the colony I split off from hive 3 last September, has come through the winter on the small side. Two and a half frames of bees and only a thin patch of brood. I didn't open it fully — just lifted the crown board for a minute. They had stores, they were calm, and the queen was laying. I'll feed a little thin syrup next week if the weather turns cool again, but I think they'll be fine. They are slower than the others, not weaker.

Wax moth traps went out this morning along the back fence. The two empty nucs from last year had a little webbing in the corners and I want to keep ahead of it before the hot weeks.

A quiet week of counting

I spent most of last week doing the bottom-board counts. Twenty-four hours under each hive, then mites brushed off onto white card and counted with a hand lens at the kitchen table. The numbers are roughly where I expected them — three of the colonies on single figures, two in the teens, and hive 7 a touch high at twenty-eight. I will treat hive 7 with oxalic vapour next time the foragers are out late and the brood gap is short.

This is the part of beekeeping that visitors never ask about. The honey people imagine. The mite drops on a sheet of card under a quiet hive at half past six in the morning, with a cup of tea getting cold beside the notebook — that part stays out of the photographs.

If you keep good notes, the bees mostly tell you what they need. The trouble is keeping the notes.

Setting up the second site

Crow Field belongs to a friend who used to keep a small flock of sheep there and now leases the grazing out. He has let me put four hives on the south end, near the hedge that comes up against the lane. I drove the stands in on Saturday morning — pressure-treated four-by-fours sunk thirty centimetres into the ground, with a strip of recycled rubber matting on top so the floors do not soak up moisture from the wood.

The point of the second site is just to spread the colonies out. Twelve hives in one row at home was getting crowded, and the gardens around the village had started to feel saturated when the lime came out. From Crow Field the bees have a different forage radius — more oilseed rape early, more bramble in July, less garden flower-bed in August. I expect their honey to taste different by autumn. We will see.