Plan Bee Going Well

‘Plan Bee’ is going well.

On Sunday evening under the cover of darkness an estate car pulled up at the house containing two people, two beagles a cat in a box and a mysterious cargo in the boot. With hushed voices so as not to wake the neighbours and donning head-torches we unloaded some carpet, carried it to the bottom of the garden and arranged it on the grass. Next came a wooden stand and finally a large square wooden box tightly bound with yellow straps.

We placed the stand on the carpet and then arranged the box on top of it. We delicately unfastened the straps made sure all was secure and then carefully removed a piece of foam that was blocking the entrance to the box and made a hasty retreat.

Hooray – We have bees at the bottom of the garden!

Beehive in the garden

Beehive in the garden

Yep, the box was actually a beehive complete with a large, healthy colony of bees. It isn’t ours, we just have them on loan for about 6 weeks which is a perfect start for us on our adventures in beekeeping. They actually belong to Ann who wanted to place some hives closer to some heather to get heather honey. We aren’t that close to the heather but there is a chance that the bees will get to it. However, it is an ideal opportunity for us to see how we get on living with bees in the garden.

We’re hoping to start properly with hives of our own next year but this will let us see how it feels.

We don’t know how well the bees will do here yet, but hopefully these six weeks with Ann’s hive will give us an idea of how much they find to forage on and how they cope with the winds. It will also give us an idea of how we manage to live alongside them and share the garden with around 50,000 new inhabitants.

I checked on them in the morning and all seemed fine. There were a few bees out flying around the hive, orientating themselves and heading off on exploratory flights. The field behind us has plenty of clover in it at the moment and there was also evidence of honey bees on some of the plants in the garden. They were checking out the Innulas, Marguerites and the Hebe.

Lets hope the like it here and we like having them.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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