www.tanstaafl.co.uk

I went out to put a super on a hive this morning and to deliver a few (rather late) jars of rent. As I was suiting up two young girls, perhaps five and seven years old, ran to the gate of a nearby house and one excitedly asked “Are you a beekeeper?” before disappearing back indoors.

I sorted the super, dropped off the rent and on the way back past left them with the spare jar I’d brought with me. The chap who answered the door said that he knew a beekeeper who had lost all their colonies this Winter and was desperately upset by it.

Whilst I was at the site I had a bit more of a look around at what the water company have been doing around the pumping station. It’s much more tidy whilst at the same time removing any semblance of privacy for the garden of the adjoining house, but one of the manholes (there are many) has a steady stream of water running out of it. The landowners told me that workers came in when a major water main a couple of miles away was “punctured” during construction work a couple of weeks ago and they had to divert the water otherwise all of Taunton would have been cut off. They’re coming back “some time” to sort everything out, probably with earth-moving machinery, so I need to have a think fairly sharpish about how I’m going to keep the hives out of harm’s way.

The first apiary I visited today was the one I’ve been setting up for a local charity. I’d taken a second brood box and spare roof as I knew the roof needed some repair work and I was kind of hoping they might need more space. In fact I didn’t do the inspection. I got one of the people I’ve been teaching to do it. Everything went well and whilst the colony isn’t building as fast as I was hoping, it’s looking very healthy and happy and, for the moment at least, very calm.

The second was a bit more of a handful. I’d noticed yesterday that one of the colonies was still on a floor without a rim that I could vape through, so I took the entire hive apart to replace the floor, which wound them up a bit. As did the breakage of a couple of frame lugs which snapped as I was pushing the main body of the top bar sideways. They’d been building play cups like crazy too and obviously I had to find all of them to make sure they weren’t real queen cells. I’ll drop back with a super tomorrow and next week I’ll have to keep an eye out in case there really are queen cells. Talking of the queen, I saw her. Most of her “red blob” has worn off, but I felt as though I’d wound them up enough at that point. I’ll re-mark her next time.

The colony that I’d noticed was barely flying yesterday evening was much busier today, but still only has at most three frames of brood. I did my best to piss them off too by replacing the entire hive (and breaking another frame lug in the process). Most of the hive parts were pressed into service last May when I’d started running out of kit for swarms, so they weren’t in the best shape necessarily and I wanted to get that sorted. There was an entire family of slugs in the brood box. Hopefully I got all of those out before I put it in the car 😀

If anything, the water company (I assume) have done rather too good a job of clearing the brambles around the site. All the work they’ve done has removed any protection from stroppy bees for the garden of the house next door, so I’d best take some honey and make a pre-emptive house call tomorrow. Not that they’ll know it’s my bees if they do have a problem. I know of at least two feral colonies the other side of their house. But they’re bound to assume it’s mine….