Diary

Beekeeping 2RSS feed

Posted: Monday 15 March, 2010

by Rosemary at 7:34pm in Bees Comments closed

I saw my first bee of the year today. We have some heather flowering, so I hope it got a feed. We're on the second last week of our beekeeping course this week. I'll miss it because I'm working, but John will keep me up to speed.

Last week's lecture covered diseases, pests and illnesses. It's the part that makes you think "Why am I doing this?". We covered varroa and the foul broods plus other less common problems. One of the experienced beekeepers told me he's never seen either foul brood infection in 20 years. I hope we don't either :-(

Our equipment should come next week. We've ordered a National hive and some extras, like a spare brood box and crown board, so that we can deal with swarms. Not that we're likely to get a swarm this year - getting any bees might be a good trick!

We're planning to play with the hive before we get bees. The secret to good beekeeping seems to be preparation, focus and calm - know what you're going to do, do it and get out, quietly. We'll practice as much of the routine operations as we can, without 50,000 bees around so that when we do it for real, we'll know what we're doing and are more relaxed. Bees pick up on tension and it upsets them. So does body odour, perfume and whiskey breath apparently.

Our apiary visit is on 18th April, so we're looking forward to that. I must get the suits ordered this week. I'll post a photo so you can all have a good laugh at our expense.

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