Some Sun

At last some sun, and boy do the bees know it! Our hives have gone from needing feeding to having at least two supers on each hive.

All our queens (except two) are laying as if there is no tomorrow, one queen within nine days produced 7 frames of brood, we were amazed, just hope she can keep it up through next season.

Has any-one had any problems with their queens and if so can they let me know?

Barry and I have teamed up with a charity called “About Turn Supporting Veterans”. It helps ex-service personnel who have fallen to the way-side and are trying to re-build their life. We have agreed to help and mentor some members in taken up beekeeping. Will keep you posted on how things turn out.

If other beekeepers have a space for a hive and would be prepared to give up some equipment and time to assist, please drop me an email?

I have been approached by some-one who has land and would like to have bee hives in their garden in the Whickham area, number of hives would need to be discussed with owner but would be around three. It’s free but Terms and conditions again would have to discuss with owner. If any-one is interested for next season again drop me an email.

As we all know, all things attached to beekeeping have become the new health fad and as such I have produced a piece on the new wonder food “Pollen”, I hope some of you may enjoy and find it en-lighting!!! Comments welcome?

It is strange how new ideas come about. We received some BS National DN1 frames (we have used nothing but DN/SN 4 frames since starting) and had to buy some spacers. The first thing we noticed was that with DN 4s we could get 12 frames in a box but using spacers you can only get 11. Now I was taught that 11 frames per box was the correct amount so why can you put 12 in! Any way over what summer we have had we noticed that the bees were producing more honey by using spacers and more importantly they were a lot happier with the extra space in the brood boxes.

Is any one else using spacers and if so how do they find them?

So we are in the process of changing all our frames by using spacers.

Has any-one had any losses due to the weather this summer? Speaking to a large bee keeper down South and she said that some of the large keepers have had losses of up to 50%. I am assuming that this was due to starvation but failed to ask!

Just watched Dorian Pritchard on the NE news talking about finding a colony of Black bees here in Northumberland, he seemed very surprised. Our Black bees are doing great and we are hoping to breed queens next spring (weather permitting) off our Black queen and increase our stock as they are very quiet bees.

Coming up to the Heather season, must try and get a patch some-where for next year to give heather honey a try!