A DIFFICULT YEAR FOR BEEKEEPING!

Apart from the weather, which has been all or nothing, a problem occurred at the end of May when I was involved in a car accident. The seat belt and air bag possibly saved my life but left me very bruised around the rib cage. This made it very difficult to bend forward to put my socks on or tie shoelaces etc and lifting heavy supers etc was impossible!

That lasted for some weeks but then things got worse when the medics suggested that I might have had a mini-stroke, whether cause or result of the crash hasn’t been mentioned. The GP forbade me to drive and then I had a letter from the DVLA requiring me to hand in my driving licence! They say it will be about 6 months before I get it back, if I do.

I have 18 hives in 16 apiaries scattered around the County (with one over the boundary in Somerset at Bee Happy Plants). Only two are in my village so I can visit them but will need to get a wheel barrow to transport supers etc.

Yesterday I walked over 4 miles to an apiary at Higher Wraxall sited under lime trees where the hive last year produced 4 supers of honey but died over winter of isolation starvation. I last looked at it in May when there were lots of bees visiting it, presumably robbing out all the remaining stores, but there was no sign of a queen or any brood. They were busy again yesterday with wasps as well as bees going into the lower entrance, but mostly they were using an upper entrance in the rim of the queen excluder.

I put the heavy super aside to examine the brood box and once again found it empty! I then looked at the super which was all cross combed so I couldn’t examine the brood that must have been there. The swarm must have entered via the top entrance so the queen couldn’t go down. I have now removed the queen excluder in the hope that the bees will complete filling the super with honey, forcing the queen down to the brood box. I shall walk there again in a few weeks.

Three more hives are only about three miles away so, weather permitting, I hope to visit them soon carrying my veil and tool belt in a knapsack. I hope things get better before too long!