Barrel of Bees!

An unusual offer appeared on my local Freecycle group recently; a barrel of bees!

Hi everyone! We have a blue plastic barrel with lid (I think originally a water butt with holes drilled in) which has amongst the old grass cuttings inside it, a lot of bees! ... Being a little afraid of angering them, and not wanting them in our garden near our toddler and baby, I was going to pop the barrel in a big sack and take it to the tip, but thought I'd see if there are any apiarists? (bee enthusiasts) out there who would like to adopt them! Thanks Becky

I replied to Becky's message immediately and said they were probably bumblebees. The next day she went out and took some photos of the colony. From that I was able to tell her they were definitely bumblebees, and although I'm very far from an expert on identifying bumblebee species they looked to me like they could be bombus hypnorum, also known as the tree bumblebee or the new garden bumblebee (or "le bee" by the redtop newspapers). They only arrived in Britain in 2001 from France but have spread astonishingly fast. That was quite exciting and I suggested she get in touch with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and get their opinion.

By this time Becky was quite interested in her bees, but still unhappy about them sharing the garden with an inquisitive toddler who liked to poke her fingers into the holes in the bee barrel. As a result of her Freecycle offer somebody took the bees to live on a farm near Matlock. And the Bumblebee Conservation Trust told her they were common carder bumblebees (bombus pascuorum) which isn't quite as interesting as having bombus hypnorum in your garden, but still pretty cool.

A Market for my Honey

In the local health-food shop today I noticed they didn't have any local honey. They said their usual supplier had lost all his colonies to a virus. I asked if that meant they were looking for a new supplier. "Oh yes," they said, "Do you know anyone?", "Well, it just so happens..."

So now I urgently need to get labels printed and buy some new jars of the proper size. And, of course, encourage the bees to make more honey. When we checked them on Sunday morning they still hadn't begun to draw out the frames of foundation that we put on when we took the honey over a week ago, much less start to fill them with honey. It's a bit of a mystery.

We put a second brood box on top of the first one to give the queen more space to lay eggs. We want to build up a really strong colony so we can divide it and have two strong colonies by the time winter comes. And we gave them back the drained frames we took the honey from. They should lick those clean, repair them, and start to fill them with honey again. The weather has been great and it's the height of the nectar flow. They should be able to fill a super with honey in a couple of weeks in conditions like this.

Honey

I went to the apiary on Friday and took a super full of honey (a beehive is a series of boxes and the ones on top are called "supers". Maybe I'll write a piece about what's inside a beehive in the near future).

When I brought it home I lifted the frames one-by-one over a large clean container and cut off the wax cappings with a knife dipped in hot water. It's extremely satisfying to do - it's almost impossible to resist dipping your finger in and having a taste. Then I suspended the frames over the container and let the honey drip out. You end up with a container full of mixed up honey and bits of wax.

So I strained the honey through a jelly strainer. Because honey is so thick it's a slower process than straining jelly, so I covered it to keep insects away and left it overnight. The strained honey is clear and golden and beautiful to see. I put it into washed jam jars and labeled it by hand.

I need to read up on the laws about selling honey. They're not too onerous, but I'll need to get the right size of new jam-jars (the government don't approve of re-using jars) and get some labels printed with the right information on (weight, producer, type of honey etc.) and then I'll be able to legally sell my honey. I can't legally sell these jars I've just filled, but I don't want to anyway. I want to use them myself and give them to family and friends.

The cruddy bits of left-over wax can be rinsed in water, then melted and strained to produce pure beeswax. And the drained frames can be put back on the beehive where the bees will lick them clean and then begin filling them with honey again.

A Day at the Apiary

The weather brightened up so I did go to the apiary yesterday afternoon with my bee guru, Arnie. We had a few tasks to do and they were all fun.

First we transferred a swarm Arnie had collected from a nucleus box into a proper hive and fed them. A nucleus box is a small temporary beehive. Arnie collected the swarm in Bollington, but we don't know whose bees they were. The queen was marked with a blue spot which means she is four years old. That's pretty old for a queen. Beekeepers paint coloured dots on queens' backs to make them easier to find in the hive and also show how old they are by the colour.

Next we transferred my bees into a WBC hive. Finally! I've had them for more than a year and they were always supposed to be in my own WBC hive but they have remained in a borrowed National hive instead. Now I can clean up the National hives and return them to the person I borrowed them from. The colony is doing really well. The bees are strong in numbers and they have loads of honey stores, despite it being another poor season. Arnie says he has been feeding his bees because their stores are so low.

I saw my queen! I have never seen her in the year I've had her. I've just had to rely on the presence of eggs to reassure me she was still there. But I spotted her before Arnie did. She's huge! I don't know how I missed her before. She's unmarked, so I want to get in touch with Ally from Ducking for Apples and ask her if she knows when the queen was hatched. The we can mark her with the prope colour, and also have some idea how much longer she's got in her. Arnie wants me to ask Ally about the breed of the bees. He thinks they might be Welsh blacks. Ally sold me the bees in the first place, but she has just had a family bereavement and I don't want to intrude.

Even more exciting than seeing the queen is taking some honey. A WBC hive is slightly smaller than a National hive, so I took home two frames of capped honey and we all had honey on toast as an after-school snack. It was delicious. No trace of mouse pee this time.

The final exciting thing came as a big surprise. The landowner had told me there were three beehives somewhere else on his land, left behind by the chap who had this apiary before me. Arnie and I went to investigate, thinking we'd just be taking away some empty equipment to clean up and reuse. But when we got there we saw bees flying around. Two of the hives were empty (though infested with wax moths, and one of them housed a wasps' nest, now vacant), but the third clearly housed a colony. I hastily replaced my veil and gloves, but Arnie had left his gloves behind thinking we wouldn't need them. We began to disassemble the hive to inspect the colony anyway - some beekeepers work bare-handed as a matter of course. But these bees were unused to being handled and were quick to use their stings, so we left them for another day.

We're going back in a week and we'll check the swarm colony, check my bees and take more honey, and inspect the surprise colony. I want to divide my bees some time this season so I end the season with two strong colonies going into the winter.

I understand something now I didn't fully understand before. It's not about honey. Frankly, beekeeping is a complicated, labour intensive and expensive way to get honey. If you're just after honey, you're far better off buying it in the shops. The real reason to be a beekeeper is simply because it's a heck of a lot of fun.

Painting Beehives

I spent most of yesterday cleaning up a WBC beehive. I scraped any wax or other crud off it, expelled a few spiders, and sterilised all the parts with a blowlamp (that's my favourite). Then I sanded and painted all the exterior bits with ordinary white gloss paint (after filling with wood-filler where necessary). I got some frames with foundation wax I had already assembled. Then I was ready to go.

But today it is cold, miserable and raining. Not at all the right kind of weather for beekeeping tasks. If I opened a hive today the brood (the maggoty baby bees) would get cold and die. Also the bees would be cross and would try to take it out on me. The hive parts are all damp and that's really bad for bees. So nothing doing until the weather brightens up.

A Taste of Honey

I brought home the empty hive from the colony that died. Mice got in during the winter and did a lot of damage, and the colony never recovered. It's very sad, but the hive had three frames of capped honey in it. That's honey that is finished and the bees have covered the cells with a cap of beeswax to store it. So I thought I could extract that at home and get one or two jars of honey to use.

I de-capped the cells with a dessert spoon and strained the honey through a muslin-lined funnel. The golden clear honey ran into a dish. It smelled fantastic. I dipped my finger to taste it. The first taste was sweet and complex, delicious home-produced honey. And then another taste came through - the unmistakable taste of mouse pee. I had to drink a pint of orange juice to get the taste out of my mouth.

I Am A Bee Murderer

I've been neglecting my bees. I can't believe it was all the way back in February I checked them and found that both colonies survived the winter, although one had suffered mouse damage. I bought new woodwork and made up 40 frames with wax. I rescued some old used equipment and disassembled it, cleaned it up, and put new wax in. I melted and filtered the old wax and I made up several litres of sugar syrup to feed the weak colony.

And then I ground to a halt. I never went back and put all these things in place. Why not? Well, sometimes the weather was poor, sometimes I was busy, sometimes I forgot. I know - pathetic isn't it?

I went to the apiary today and found that the mouse-weakened colony is dead. Totally gone. Cleaned out. I probably could have saved them if I had done all the things I meant to do. So it's my fault they died.

The other colony is fine. They're a bit under-strength for the time of year, but a lot of beekeepers are finding the same thing. They're showing no signs of swarming. I'm just going to let them be, and keep my eye on them to see if they build up in strength.

I'm going to go the the bees at least once a week. My plan is to go every Monday. If for some reason I can't go on Monday, I'll try again on Tuesday, Wednesday etc. Then I'll go again the next Monday. If I just can't manage to find time to do that, I'm going to sell them. It's what I'd do if I had a dog and I couldn't take care of it properly. I'm going to be a proper beekeeper or I'm going to quit.

Bear Convicted for Honey Theft

I've been both very busy and rather poorly for the last week or two, so I've been mostly blogging about news stories, books, other blogs and so on. But my dad has now gone home to Ireland and my cold is much better, so I am determined to blog about things I'm doing - checking on my loft insulation, digging the allotment, raising seedlings and so on.

But I couldn't resist sharing this news story - a court in Macedonia has convicted a bear of theft and criminal damage after repeatedly attacking a local beekeeper's hives. I loved this bit:

For a while, he kept the animal away by buying a generator, lighting up the area, and playing thumping Serbian turbo-folk music. But when the generator ran out of power and the music fell silent, the bear was back and the honey was gone once more.

I wonder if Jethro Tull would have the same effect?

Being a wild animal, the bear had no owner, so the court ordered the state to pay compensation to the beekeeper of $3,500 (£1,750 or 2,238 euros). I wonder if it is possible under UK law to sue a mouse?

And in case you're worried:

The bear, meanwhile, remains at large - somewhere in Macedonia.

How to Assemble a Bee Hive Frame

I bought the frames and wax foundation to replace what the mice damaged. It came to £70. Two mouseguards would have cost £1.08. That's an expensive lesson. Not to mention the honey I will lose whilst my bees expend energy replacing the eaten wax and stores. On the other hand, my bee guru, Arnie, has given me some old frames and hive floors that used to belong to another beekeeper who passed away. I'll clean those up and repair them. The mice would have cost me even more without Arnie's generosity. I know I'll never neglect to fit mouseguards again.

Today I've been busy assembling lots of brand new frames and fitting them with wax foundation. They come flat packed - lots of odd-shaped bits of wood, sheets of beeswax stamped with a hexagon pattern and reinforced with wire, and 19mm gimp pins. You'll also need a hammer and/or pin punch, your hive tool, and probably a pair of pliers for removing any nails that go in wrong.

The first thing to do is to identify a top bar and snap off the foundation-retaining slat using your hive tool. Clean off any slivers of wood that remain stuck to the top bar and the slat.

Then lie the top bar on your work surface flat face down, and find two side bars. Orient them so the foundation grooves face inwards, then gently push them onto the top bar. They should fit snugly. If they are too snug to push into place by hand, tap them into place with a hammer using a waste piece of wood to avoid hitting the slotted ends and damaging them. Pin the top bar to the side bar through the side, not through the top. When the frame is laden with honey a nail through the top may not take the weight, with sticky consequences.

Now take a sheet of wax foundation and figure out which way up it goes. You should have three long loops of wire at the top. If you have two short loops it's upside down. Bend the three loops at right angles and gently slot the foundation into the grooves. If all is well it will fit snugly, but if necessary trim a little wax off the side.

Find the slat you separated from the top bar earlier, and put it back in place. Pin it with three gimp pins through the loops in the wire. Take care not to lose concentration and put your hammer through the beeswax. It's really annoying.

Nearly done. Now find two bottombars and gently fit them into the slots in the sidebar. Be careful not to bend the foundation at this stage. Pin the bottombars through the bottom, not the side. At some point you will want to partly disassemble the frame and remove the wax. If you nail through the sides it will be almost impossible to avoid damaging the frame if the pin goes through the side.

And that's it. I now have one complete bee hive frame. Only 39 more to go. Sigh.

The End of February

I usually hate February. It's cold, it's dark, it's wet and windy. It seems like ages since I felt the sun on my shoulders (especially this time - it's been two years since last summer). And this February is worse than normal because it has an extra day in it.

But actually this February hasn't been too bad. The weather has been mostly dry and bright and even warm at times. I've been extremely busy too, so I haven't had time to dwell on how horrible February is, or fret about the gardening I'd rather be doing. It's been a busy time at work, it's been a busy month of singing, and just lately I've had a lot of bee-related work.

Yesterday I dismantled lots of wax frames and removed the rotten wax. Then I melted down the wax over a double boiler. My guru, Arnie, assured me that all the crud would float to the top and could be skimmed off. However there was more crud than wax, and the wax I managed to get was jet black. Hmmm - I don't think this is right. I'll show it to him next time I see him and ask what I should do with it. I was going to make some of it into furniture polish, and I bought some pure turpentine to do just that. But if you rubbed this into wood, surely it would darken and dirty it? Maybe it's fit for gothic-looking candles. Or maybe Arnie knows a clever way to purify it.

So February has almost gone and I hardly noticed it. But now I definitely notice that the days are longer and the nights are shorter. My garden is full of flowers. My bees are flying and active. My chickens are laying more. I want to sow some seeds and chit some spuds. We're hurtling towards the equinox and I feel good. How about you?

My Bees Survived the Winter

I went to check on my bees today to see if they survived the winter. I would have been very happy if one of my two colonies had survived, as I could quickly build back up to two colonies if I had at least one. But I was braced to lose them both, and have to buy bees this year. My guru, Arnie, lost six out of his ten colonies this winter, and if he can lose so many I didn't rate my own newbie chances.

To my great joy, both colonies survived! One is very strong, with loads of healthy active bees and lots of honey stores. The other colony is much weaker; few in numbers but active and with honey stores - but it has suffered terrible mouse damage. I haven't seen anything like it. Some mice made a nest in the brood box and chomped their way through honey, wax, and woodwork. The buggers! The bees must have been too drowsy and perhaps too low in numbers to attack the mice. The mice have cleared off now the weather is warmer and the bees are more active, but they've made a terrible mess. I didn't take my camera to the apiary so I can't show you the damaged hive. But I brought some stored wax combs home to clean them up. The mice have had a good munch on those too, and that's what you can see in the photo.

I'm going to take off the honey that's there and extract it, so I'll have my own honey soon! I'll melt down the damaged wax, fix up the damaged frames and give my bees new frames with new wax foundation to work on. So I'll have my own wax soon, too. Then I'll feed my bees to build them up good and strong so they'll have plenty of workers ready to collect the spring nectar when the flow is strongest. If there is any sign of varroa I'll treat them with Apistan, a thymol-based anti-varroa treatment. That's why I've got to take the honey off, because the Apistan would contaminate it.

I'm very grateful for the expert help of my guru Arnie. He also helped me compile a shopping list so I can get everything I need to get my colonies back on track. And I'm grateful for Sam's help. He was feeling quite perky by the afternoon (he was off school with a cough and a temperature) and wanted to come and see the bees, so he suited up and came with us. He wasn't at all bothered when the bees flew around him and landed on him, even on his veil right in front of his eyes. He had a good close look and was very interested in the mouse damage. Maybe he'll be a beekeeper when he grows up.

Flipping mice! Eating all my honey! Grrrr!!

Bumblebees

We've been enjoying beautiful weather here in North Cheshire in February so far. The skies have been clear, resulting in frosty nights and warm sunny days.

Any time now my honeybees should start emerging from the hive to collect nectar from crocuses and other early flowers, and the queens should start laying eggs again.

Bumblebees too will soon be emerging. You'll first notice a small number of huge fat bumblebees - these are the queens, the only bumblebees that survive the winter. Unlike honeyebees, they truly hibernate, and then emerge in February to feed on nectar and find a nesting site. In late February or early March you'll notice a new flush of much smaller bumblebees. This is the new brood and they're scrawny and undersized because the poor old queen has had to feed them herself, and it's tough to collect enough nectar at this time of year to feed them up properly, especially when there's only one bee to do it. But the skinny first brood will feed the second brood, who will feed the third brood, and so on. By the time summer arrives you'll see lots of full-sized bumblebees buzzing about.

Bumblebees are great. They're very docile - you really have to work at it to annoy one enough for it to sting you. They're great pollinators, and if they like your garden you'll get more flowers, fruit and vegetables as a result of the work they do for you. They're cuddly fluffy little guys and I love them. If you'd like to encourage bumblebees in your garden, www.bumblebee.org has instructions for building nest boxes for them.

(I know it would have made sense to illustrate this blog post with a picture of a bumblebee, but I wanted to share this painting of Van Gogh's sunflowers that Sam did. He's only 6 and I'm very proud.)

Beekeeping Course

Last night I went to the first evening of the local Introduction to Beekeeping course. I tried to sign up for this in the autumn of 2006, but was told it was already full. So instead I went on a two-day course in Keele which was excellent, and gave me the confidence to get two colonies of bees last summer.

But I still wanted to go on this more in-depth course, which has nine two-hour theory lectures in February and March, and six hands-on sessions in May and June.

It was a good lecture last night - I learned some things I didn't know about bumblebees, and I got to meet some other local novice and would-be beekeepers.

Plans for 2008

As 2007 draws to a close, what are our plans for 2008?

1. I've signed up for a 9-week beekeeping course run by my local beekeeping association. I'm hoping to supplement what I learned on the 2-day intensive course I attended last spring. Maybe I'll even get a honey harvest from my bees, unlike 2007.

2. We now have a full allotment plot. With any luck the weather in 2008 will be warmer and drier than in 2007, and we can raise a fabulous harvest. Ed wants to grow giant pumpkins on our new section of plot.

3. We've discussed going on holiday to Cornwall this summer. We went down there in 1999 to see the solar eclipse and had a wonderful time. We'd like to take Ed's telescope and view the stars without the light pollution we have here. I want to visit the Eden Centre. Can any Bean Sprouts readers recommend other places to visit and things to do in Cornwall?

4. I'd like to learn a new craft. I have books about hand-made paper and hand-made books. That sounds like a lot of fun.

5. I want to add a regular podcast to this blog. It would be a 20ish minute-long MP3 you could download and listen to at your computer or on your iPod. It would be about the same topics I write about - fruit and vegetable growing, beekeeping, poultry, sustainable living etc. And I'd include interviews with interesting and knowledgeable people. I hope to produce one a month, and see if it is popular.

That's it for plans. I have shedloads of vague ideas (I'd like to mill my own wheat and make a loaf of bread absolutely from scratch) and grand ambitions (I'd like to buy or rent a plot of land and keep some livestock. Goats perhaps, or pigs). And I'm sure lots of interesting things will happen in 2008 that aren't planned or foreseen. But for fixed plans, that's my lot.

What are your plans for 2008?

2007 Retrospective

2007 was the year it rained. Non-stop. We had a lovely warm spring, but in May it began to rain and it didn't stop until August. This had a bad effect on our fruit and vegetable growing. Although some crops did well, others suffered either directly from the wet, or indirectly from the slugs and snails and our failure to go to the allotment as often as we should.

We got two colonies of bees from Ally of Ducking for Apples, but they went berserk and attacked all my neighbours, so I had to move them to an apiary a few miles away. We haven't taken any honey from them this year. Due to the weather the bees weren't able to forage as much nectar so their honey stores by the end of the season were low. But our own foraging efforts were pretty good as the weather dried up somewhat in the autumn. We made beer, which exploded, several batches of wine which aren't ready yet, and lots of different types of liqueur.

I became interested in ginger beer, and made a yeast-culture ginger beer plant from scratch. I later learned that real ginger beer is made using an authentic symbiotic culture called ginger beer plant. So I got one of those and now have my own continuous ginger beer production line. I picked wild mushrooms for the first time in my life. I cooked and ate them and didn't die. Which was nice. I haven't had any success identifying other types of mushrooms in my area, though, so I've left them alone. The ginger beer got me interested in other useful microbial cultures, and so I started making sourdough bread using wild yeast rather than packets of dried yeast from the shop. There are other types of useful culture, such as kefir and tibicos, and I'd like to try those in future.

I'll be glad when 2007 is over, just because of the ghastly weather we've had all year. The rain has been heavy again in November and December, and often when I've been out driving I've had to slow right down to go around puddles that cross both lanes of a dual carriageway. There are what look like ponds in the middle of many fields which should be dry, but they have had a standing puddle so long the grass underneath must be dead by now. I know there's no logical reason to imagine that on 1st January 2008, the sun will come out and everything will be different. But psychologically it feels like it might.

Beekeepers' Meeting

Last night I went to a Stockport Bee Keepers' Association meeting. Boy, am I hungover this morning. Those beekeepers really know how to party.

Not really.

But it was a very interesting meeting, with a presentation by the Regional Bee Inspector, and a chance to catch up with my beekeeping pals. I'm also signed up for the beginners' beekeeping course which starts next March. I tried to sign up for this last year, but I was too late, it was already full. I'm hoping it will be more detailed than the 2 day intensive course I attended in May.

So how are my bees doing? Not too bad. They're still alive and seem to be fine, but I can't really inspect them properly. If you remember they had been in a type of hive called a WBC, but these are difficult to move so when we fetched them from Wales to here we transferred them into a type of hive called a National. I was all set to transfer them back to their WBCs when they went berserk and attacked my neighbour (and his dog, and the postman, and another neighbour...) so I had to move them quickly to an out apiary. Not long after that we went on holiday for a fortnight and one thing and another, they're still in the National hives now.

The problem is that WBC hives have ten frames in a box, but National hives have 11. If I'd known they would be in the Nationals for so long, I would have put blanking frames in
(that's a frame with no wax foundation or comb or anything, it's solid wood and just fills the gap where a frame would go). But I didn't, so the frames weren't spaced to exactly the "bee space" - the magic space which is big enough for bees to move around but narrow enough that they won't build comb in it. And now the bees have build "wild comb" in the gaps. Instead of having neat rows of comb that I can easily remove to inspect the brood, extract the honey etc, all the frames are fused together and I can't do anything.

It can be fixed. I don't know exactly how but my bee gurus assure me it's fixable. But not until the spring when the weather warms up again and I can manipulate the bees without killing them by exposing them to cold. The task now is to make sure the bees can survive the winter, by figuring out how much honey stores they have (no easy task when you can't inspect the frames) and feeding them if necessary, and treating them for disease if necessary.

A Touch of Frost

I went to the allotment this morning to drop off some paving slabs I scrounged, and I saw that there had been frost overnight. It seemed to be patchy - my squash was untouched, which is good because they're very sensitive to frost and deflate like popped balloons when the temperature drops below zero. But the grass was still rimed when I got there at about half past nine, and the sage in my herb patch looked like it had been dipped in egg white and caster sugar. I kicked myself for not bringing my camera with me.

I'll go later and remove all the remaining fruits from the squash, whatever size they are. I'll get all the runner beans, too, and any lettuce. And I urgently need to look at my bees, and make sure they'll be OK during the winter.

Review: Guide to Bees and Honey

Ted Hooper's Guide to Bees and Honey is the beekeeping bible. There are a heck of a lot of books about beekeeping available and I'm prepared to bet that each of them contradicts all the others in significant ways. But Ted Hooper is universally regarded as the last word.

So what, if any, are the drawbacks to a book which unites all beekeepers?

• It's not a light bedtime read, unless you suffer from insomnia. It's extremely dense and detailed. This is what makes it so valuable, but if you try to read it cover to cover (as I did)your brain will eventually dribble out of your ears.


• Hooper writes from a British perspective. For example it deals almost exclusively with National hives, which are by far the most common in Britain. In other countries, different hive designs and even different bees predominate.


• The book tells you everything you might want to know, but it doesn't tell you what to do. I'm sure this is deliberate - I'm all in favour of encouraging people to develop and use their common sense, rather than relying on dumbed-down instructions for every situation. But some of the other students on the course I attended a few months ago yearned for a clear set of instructions, at least when they were just getting started.


• Some of the instructions do seem downright dodgy. For example I read the section on moving colonies very carefully before collecting my bees a few weeks ago. Hooper said one should knock two-pronged staples into the hives to hold them together in transit. My other major beekeeping reference (Yates and Yates Beekeeping Study Notes) disagreed, saying this was a really good way to annoy the bees and make lots of holes in your woodwork. I agreed, and relied on ratchet straps and a lot of sticky tape instead.

If you keep bees, or would like to keep bees, and are British, you really have to own this book. Make sure you get an up-to-date version. The early editions pre-date the varroa mite, for example, and other important recent developments in British beekeeping, but the latest editions have been brought up-to-date. Once you know the book inside out and back to front, you can choose to ignore the advice in it and keep bees your own way. But when you are starting out you should follow Hooper's advice closely, and you won't go far wrong.

Chadkirk Festival

All eight of us (five of us Rimmers and Steph's family) went to the Chadkirk Festival yesterday. The weather was glorious and we all overheated in our jumpers and raincoats. The festival is small enough to get round easily but big enough to be interesting. There were people in period dress doing folk dancing, stalls selling local crafts and stalls promoting local charities and organisations, and other interesting things going on including a chainsaw demonstration and a beekeeping demonstration.

The main reason I wanted to go is that one of my bee guys told me he was doing the beekeeping demonstration there, and if I brought my beesuit I could go behind the scenes. I couldn't imagine what a beekeeping demonstration might involve so I was fascinated.

It turns out that he has several hives in the walled garden of Chadkirk chapel, surrounded by a seven-foot high mesh screen. So people can see the hives, and the bees coming and going, from close-to, but the bees mostly fly off at well over head height so don't cause any problems to passers-by. The demonstrator stands around in his beesuit and answers questions from the public. I got to go inside the screen and look at all the different kinds of hives, including the familiar Nationals and WBCs, and also the more exotic top-bar and Dartington hives.

Stephanie chatted to the mayoress, the kids all made puppet dragons, and won prizes by hooking plastic ducks in a bowl of water, and we all ate ice-cream and had a super time. The festival is also on today so if you're in the area I'd recommend you go along. Admission is £1 for adults, free for children.

My Beekeeping Assistant

Steph, my sister, wanted to see the bees, so I lent her a spare bee veil. She came with me to the apiary and helped me feed one of my colonies which is dangerously low on stores of food. She was a very able assistant (although she did let the smoker go out).

She seemed to get a buzz out of it (sorry), and it gave me a boost to pretend to be an expert to someone who knows even less than I do. I'm rapidly regaining my confidence and enjoyment for working with my bees.