Category: Beekeeping

Hives 1

Busy Beekeeping Day

We had a busy day yesterday full of all sorts of things. Triathlon Training in the morning, followed by beekeeping in the afternoon. The triathlon training finished a little late so we then had to rush off to Llanafan for a beekeeping meeting. There was no way we’d make it by 2pm so we let them know...

Donating Eggs 2

Donating Eggs

Well, the bees are up to no good again. Clettwr, the stronger of our two colonies has been struggling. We found their queen dead at the bottom of the hive just over a month ago, but they had already started raising a new queen and had some queen cells on the go at that stage....

Bees 0

Honey, but no queen

Morgan and I have just carried out a bee inspection on our two hives. Clettwr The first hive (Clettwr) is the one in which the queen died a few weeks ago. We last saw here on July 1st when all looked goo, but on July 7th found her dead at the bottom of the hive....

Anna 0

Days 16-18 of Summer – Playing on the beach

Yep, that’s 18 days of summer so far and counting. Admittedly yesterday wasn’t quite as nice as it had been as it was now a bit muggy but the temperatures still made it to 25.1°C which is pretty warm for these parts. It was also a Monday which is never much fun after a nice...

Dead Queen Bee 5

Death of a Monarch

There’s always something with those pesky bees! Today’s inspection turned into what we though was going to be the performance of an artificial swarm. The first hive we inspected had some queen cells in. All were uncapped but had some well developed larvae in them so there was only one thing to do. The plan was to find the queen, perform...

Busy Bees in Clettwr 1

From Nucleus to Hive

Just a quick update on our bees. Since installing our new honey bee colonies in the garden a few weeks ago, the weather hasn’t been great. There have been a few sunny days but the temperature hasn’t really risen much and activity has been slow. There have been bees coming and going and all seems fine...

Bees at the Bottom of the Garden 4

Beekeeping Records and a Garden Update

The garden has been growing like mad. I was only away in Turkey for a week but it seems as though everything has become overgrown whilst I was away and I haven’t had much chance to get out there and get it under control. It’s not as bad as it sounds though, just that all...

A Dead Colony 5

What happened to the Bees?

Some bad news I’m afraid. Our final colony of bees has died. We lost the other colonies going into winter as they didn’t manage to re-queen last summer due to the terrible weather and then weren’t strong enough to get through the winter. The one colony we did have left was strong and looked healthy...

ABKA Newsletter 1

ABKA Newsletter Publishing

I’ve just finished the Spring edition of the Aberystwyth Beekeepers Association Newsletter. It’s a lot of work writing the content, editing it, sourcing content and images and then desktop publishing it all ready for the members but I quite enjoy it and I’m always pleased with the result. Best of all, the association members seem...

Plants for bees 3

Plants for bees

Anna and I, along with half of the Aberystwyth Beekeeping Association attending a lecture in the National Library on Wednesday. It was a lunchtime lecture so we all met up for dinner in the cafe first and then headed into the very nice lecture theatre. The lecture was titled ‘Plants for Bees‘ and was given...