Summer's Bounty

It's that time of year again, and we have an abundance of produce!

We always plant a few potatoes, these are Roosters, and it's impossible to beat freshly dug, boiled potatoes with a dab of butter.

Mange Tout are in full swing and cook really well steamed over the aforementioned potatoes.

Blackcurrants are also on the go and Helen has been busy making jelly as well as lots of summer puddings!

Helen also makes homemade Ribena using a Darina Allen recipe which is absolutely delicious and freezes really well.

 Our earliest plums have just come ripe and Helen has made a wonderful jam this year which is really good on toast for breakfast and is also goes well with Moonshine Dairies organic natural yogurt.

 The clover and blackberry seems to have yielded really well for our bees. This is some brace comb that I cut off one of the supers, packed with honey and our first taste of this years harvest. Eating it is a bit primative and is a case of biting off chunks, savouring the honey and spitting out the wax. Once the initial frenzy has worn off, it's really good spread on buttery toast!

Honey Bees (Apis Mellifera)

The weather is wonderful, and for the first time in about eight years it is coinciding with an abundance of blossom from which ours bees can get ample supplies of nectar and pollen. So far it has been a great year for bees, acres of dandelions which yields nectar at low temperatures and plenty of pollen from Pussy Willow etc gave them a great chance to build up numbers over the last month or so and now the hives are bursting with bees and they are taking full advantage of the opportunity, and so am I!

The Horse Chestnuts and Sycamores are both in flower...

 ..as is this tree in the orchard, an ideas as to what it is?

It's a Quince and sorry to go all flowery again but they really are spectacular.

Our native apples are also in flower.....

...and indeed this Ecklinville Seedling is only just about to start.

The only real way to tell what blossom the bees are working if you don't actually see them on it, is by the colour of the pollen, and in this case it looks like Sycamore. There is also brick red pollen going in which  means they are also working Chestnut.

As you can see there are lots of bees in this hive, and these are probably only the house bees since the photo was taken on a warm sunny day (yesterday) and all the flying bees are out foraging.
You may notice a drawing pin on a frame on the LHS of the photo. There is also one that you can't see on the RHS, these mark the extent of the brood nest at the last inspection and in this hive there are 15 sides of brood which means that the colony is building up really well and could do with more room. It's time for a 'super' and we'll hopefully get some honey.

'Supers' on and fingers crossed for some honey. The whitethorn is about to flower so if the weather holds we should get a good crop.
The tall hive on the left is the strongest, and has already supplied 2 frames of capped brood to the colony on the right which was wintered as a 'Nuc', thereby allowing it to build up more quickly. Not only that but it has a second brood box on because I wanted to get some frames drawn, and they have drawn 5 frames in 4 days. Busy Bees!


We are members of the Midland Beekeepers Association  whose help and training has been invaluable. If you are interested in beekeeping it's important to find a local association for help and advice particular to your area.

Spring Photos

Ok, ok, I admit the whole job's going a bit flowery but it is Spring and I'm allowed! Anyway, a few late nights lambing and I should be back to normal!

Bull Rush seed head, an interesting shape!

 Pussy Willow. This one was full of bumble bees making a tremendous racket as they went about their work. Our honey bees are also on pussy willow although I didn't see any in this tree, but there is lots of bright yellow pollen going into the hives.

The damsons in the orchard are also in flower!

Despise ye not the humble dandelion for it is a very important plant for bees. There is lots of pollen this time of year, but very little nectar available to honey bees, and dandelions provide the first significant source of the season and equally importantly, they yield up their nectar at low temperatures!

Our whitethorn hedge, planted 2 years ago and doing well, plus one of my favourite tree the Scots Pine, not yet magnificent but it will be some day. Interesting thing about whitethorn is that it flowers on last years growth, so if you clip it every year it can't flower!

Extracting Honey

We thought that a few quotes from 'Pooh's Little Instruction Book' might be appropriate:
"When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is not to let the bees know you're coming"
"When carrying a jar of honey to give to a friend, don't stop and eat it along the way."

We have been keeping bees now for about 5 years. It has been a very steep learning curve and indeed would not have been possible without the help of the Midland Beekeepers Association and Jim Donohoe in particular. Disease, weather conditions and man have all conspired to make it very difficult to keep bees. For the past number of years it has been a case of trying to keep colony numbers up, rather than trying to produce honey.
This year, however, we had about 2 'supers' of honey to extract. It is mostly clover honey, which would be our favourite!

A frame of honey ready for extraction. We uncap the frames using an electric paint stripper! sounds a bit vicious but it works and is much less messy than uncapping with a knife.

It works because our native bees leave an air space between the honey in the cell and the wax cap, so you can melt the cap off without damaging the honey!

We use National Supers which contain 10 frames. When the Super is on the hive there is a queen excluder underneath so that the queen cannot get in to lay, so that only honey is stored.

The extractor takes 3 frames which are spun around, in this case manually,

and centrifugal force flings the honey out of the cells.

The honey is then drawn off through the tap at the bottom.

It really should go though a strainer and be allowed to settle before being put into jars, but this is for our own consumption, and is delicious just as it is!

The colour and consistency of this honey would suggest to me that it is clover.

I'm sure Winnie-the-Pooh would approve. An essential part of anything to do with honey is regular sampling, just in case... and because...

"Always be aware of how many pots of honey you have in the cupboard; it's nice to be able to say, "I've got fourteen pots of honey left." Or fifteen as the case may be."