One year on

As of today I've kept bees for one year. It's been an interesting year, for me anyway -regular readers may disagree. It was a year ago yesterday that I drove home from Woodmansey Town Hall with about 15,000 stinging insects in a wooden box in the car boot, the lid secured with a poundshop ratchet strap and a bit of kitchen sponge keeping the entrance closed. Shortly after this I made my first faux pas by culling some queen cells to avoid them swarming, unfortunately it turned out the queen had already left and one of those two developing queens could've been her replacement. In the end I wound up getting a replacement queen from an online supplier, I'm not entirely sure of her lineage or country of origin but the colony survived. The second colony came a month later from a breeder in the York area after a short bidding war at an auction in a tractor museum

Since then I've bought a lot of sugar, made a lot of syrup, experienced a few stings and killed my food mixer making winter bee food. After a little time with Google and Youtube I also managed to make my own brood boxes, a couple clearer boards and most recently a nucleus hive.

Compact Des Res ideal for a young Queen just starting to build a family

Since acquiring the colonies I started regularly checking the weather in my urban neck of the woods having up till then been relatively happy to let it remain one of life's many surprises. In readiness for the honey harvest I got into the habit of saving jars, this lead to a formidable stockpile of things which I realised I'd probably never use and subsequently repurposed. As a result I now have jars of nails and screws in the shed, jars of apple and cranberry sauce in the fridge as well as feta infusing with chilli and basil, eggs pickling and three kinds of kimchi slowly fermenting. Speaking of consumables I've made some forays into the world of brewing with two batches of mead, a melomel and a cyser the latter two of which are still slowly clearing. I've filtered wax, made furniture polish, eaten undeveloped drones, been to no less than three auctions, posted countless picture of my kitchen, and my cooker, inside and out -something I'd never imagined I'd be doing. And of course harvested some honey.

Now the winter is over and the colonies both still alive my plan is to increase from two colonies to three, well two and a half really as I hope to populate my nucleus hive to hold a spare queen in reserve. Can't say if it'll work out for sure, but I'm fairly optimistic. I'm also hoping for a larger honey harvest this year too. That said I'll be fairly happy if I get through this year without losing a swarm or accidentally killing a queen. Fingers crossed.

 Another year of bees in the garden