Beekeeping Archives - A Simple Life of Luxury

Weekend Weather Rollercoaster: Rain, Runs, Honey, and Windsurfing

Alan Cole — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 07:54:06 +0000

I think the most notable thing about the weekend was the rain on Saturday. When I got up early, the little raindrop on our home info panel that I built was already full to the brim. The Borth & Ynyslas weather station in our garden had already recorded more than 25 mm of rain. At...

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Honey Harvest 2025

Alan Cole — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 12:48:48 +0000

It’s been our best year yet for honey production. We haven’t finished harvesting, but from three hives we should end up with around 80 lbs of honey—mostly from two hives, as the third wasn’t really a production hive this season. The weather has clearly been kind to bees, judging by the sheer amount of fruit...

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Summer Sunshine, Busy Bees, and a Burst of Colour

Alan Cole — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 14:36:03 +0000

It’s been the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures at the Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station reaching 28.8°C, and it could get hotter yet. The long days are really helping our solar production too — it’s been a record-breaking year on that front so far, so let’s hope it continues. The bees...

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Boundary Wires, Bees, and BST

Alan Cole — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 17:29:00 +0000

After a busy couple of weeks with a trip to Fuerteventura and then a week at a conference with work, the spring garden was looking a little overwhelming. Things—namely the goosegrass, dandelions, and stinging nettles—were getting out of hand, and I’d yet to get Hector, our robot lawnmower, up and running. Robot Mowers Harriet, the...

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Spring has Sprung

Alan Cole — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 15:05:35 +0000

What a lovely day today. Spring has finally sprung! The garden has another new shed as well, and there are lots of new gardening tools on the way. Hopefully, if I find the time, I’ll get the garden looking nice again. There’s certainly plenty of signs of life out there. The bees are busy, the...

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Another Honey Harvest

Alan Cole — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 10:29:55 +0000

Having harvested some honey a few weeks ago, the bees fought back and stopped us taking any more for a while. One of the hives had honey that, at the time, wasn’t fully sealed, another decided to sting us and prevent us getting any off. So, we left them for a few weeks and then...

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Honey Hostilities

Alan Cole — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 06:04:59 +0000

This weekend was all about the honey harvest! Anna collected the extractor on Friday afternoon and I’d already put clearer boards on a couple of our hives. The ‘Bedroom’ Hive was huge with 4 completely full supers and a fifth that was half full. ‘Dyfi’ hive had two full supers and ‘Leri’ had a couple...

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Making Increase

Alan Cole — Fri, 31 May 2024 13:58:10 +0000

I thought I was doing quite well with the bees this year. There was an early swarm or possibly a supersedure in the hive by the bedroom at the beginning of April. This was actually a fairly good thing as the hive re-queened and the queen was laying last time I looked. All good there...

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An Early Swarm

Alan Cole — Thu, 16 May 2024 13:43:29 +0000

After a very cold and wet start to Spring things warmed up enough for me to inspect the bees a couple of times. The first inspection was mainly to put the queen excluders back on and see what was happening. I knew there were bees in both hives but the queen excluders had been removed...

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Explosive Easter

Alan Cole — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 07:35:28 +0000

I managed to go the entire Easter weekend without turning my computer on, hence the lack of blog posts. I thought you wouldn’t mind waiting as turning my computer on would only mean that I’d end up working. Staying away from it and out of the office was best. That said, I did of course...

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