Swarm in a tree top.

It was a lovely bright but frosty morning so I decided to pop down and check the bees. 

I have tried two hives on open mesh floors this year and until today had left the bottoms open. A week of night frost’s have panicked me a bit and today I took boards and slid one in each hive. 

As I left I just stood and realised just how many leaves have fallen since I was last there. It was at that point I noticed the pale item hanging in the tree in front.

I wandered over for a closer look and my heart fell. 

Hanging from a branch above my head was the saddest sight I have seen in my beekeeping life so far.

A swarm of bees had started a nest amongst the leaves sometime recently. The frost has caught them and every single one will have died.

It’s a good size swarm and although I think it’s unlikely, they could be mine. I closed my bees down a few weeks ago and after that I don’t reopen until the spring. This gives them time to propolis the joints and settle before it goes really cold. This year it was later than usual as it’s been so warm and I knew my hives were all full of food and bees. I worried they were crowded but had no choice. It was to late to split them and I didn’t want to give them so much extra room the hives got cold later on. 

I won’t know until the spring. There’s nothing I can do. It’s to high to bring down but everytime I visit from now on I will be saddened again. 

I’m angry with myself for not finding them earlier. I know it can’t be helped. It’s just a sad day! 

Autumn harvest.

It’s been frosty here a couple of mornings this week and suddenly everything I have been putting off needs doing with more urgency.

It is easy to forget that winter is on its way when the garden looks so good still. There is more colour than expected for the time of year and growth is still good.

In the polytunnel although I cleared out the tomatoes I instantly started filling the space with pots of plants. These are things I either want to over winter or, as in the case of these flowers, I just want to enjoy for a bit longer. Really I should be washing the walls and digging the ground over but that has to wait for now. 

This fuchsia has edible berries. All fuchsia are edible, but I’m told these ones actually have some flavour. The plant only just survived last winter and was slow to take off in the spring so now it is slow to ripen. I must remember it’s there and water it occasionally. It apparently make a tasty jam but whether I have enough to try is debatable.

My sweet peppers are still flowering and being pollinated although by what I have no idea. The only insects around seem to be whitefly and mosquito style flies.

I have no intention of harvesting any more of this Cayenne pepper as it is just to strong especially for one so small. The sweet peppers and other chillies are definitely worth having though. 

As is the sweet potato. Grown this year for the first time. I think the pot was maybe a bit small, even though it was the largest I had at the time. The roots seem to have grown around each other which will make peeling difficult! 

I only got a few but I’m definitely going to try again next year.

As I also am with the oca or New Zealand yam. It’s been such an easy plant to grow although it has taken up a lot of room. I just hope it’s all worth it when I harvest. It doesn’t start to crop properly until after the first frost so, as the leaves have been knocked back this week, I guess that’s about now. The little red blob is the very first one, found when I gently moved some soil after my impatience got the better of me. I’ve waited so long I hope I actually like the taste of it! 

Getting ready for winter.

It’s been very cold here in the mornings and it’s motivated me to think of my bees. 

Now they are in my village I am able to visit much easier. In fact I have become a cycling beekeeper. Monday saw Miss C and I riding across the field. Me with a bag of suit and mouseguards and her with a bike basket full of folded woodpecker cages. 

Miss C was so convinced she did not want to be noticed, even though her friends would/should have been in school, that she insisted on wearing dark glasses so she couldn’t be recognised. It’s apparently that embarrassing to be seen with a beekeeper. I would point out that I was not wearing full suit and veil but apparently my gardening coat is embarrassment enough! 

The view across the fields on an autumn day. 

The bees were sitting in full sun and a number were flying around. Even in colder weather bees will leave the hive around midday. They are tidy creatures and like to leave waste away from the hive. Neighbours of beekeepers will be well aware of the small brown piles splattered on their cars if parked in the bees flight path! Dead bees and hive rubbish is also cleared out in the better weather.

The first job was to attach a mouseguard to the front of each hive. Drawing pins in each corner secure them and it’s just a matter of making sure the holes align with the entrance so the bees can still come and go but mice are stopped from making nests in the corners of the boxes. Mice can do a lot of damage to combs and while the bees are in a huddle they will not defend the hive against them. 

I often don’t put my woodpecker cages on until later in the winter but this is a new design for me and I wanted to try it out. I used to build a wooden frame and wrap that in net but my Bee Buddy swapped to this idea as he got older and it certainly is easier to fit. 

Just small hole wire shaped around the hive and tied at the back. I hope I will even be able to lift the roof to add fondant without removing it. This will save a lot of time and inconvenience. 

Unfortunately he didn’t use landing boards quite like mine and I hadn’t taken that into account. A bit of reshaping was needed on one hive to take the width of that into account.

The hive I had to unite in September is far to big and needs a different idea. I’m still working on that but I’m sure I’ll think of something. When I first approached it all was quiet but as I attached the guard a lot of bees appeared. I am trialling an open mesh floor on this hive and am a bit worried about draught so it was good to know they are still alive and well. 

I hope the bees will work their way through the stored honey from the bottom. Moving to warmer frames higher up as it gets colder. Come the spring the idea is that the queen will then be at the top, ready to start laying in the warmest part of the hive. I can then break the hive down to a more manageable size. This queen has been amazing this year so I hope for good things from her in 2018. 
My new apiary is a mixed blessing. It’s local but isolated. Protected from weather but also from view. It’s difficult to decide whether I’m happy with it yet. There has been some trouble with organised dog fighting and hare coursing in the area and this week someone has dumped a huge pile of rubbish at its main entrance.

 I’m guessing my winter might be challenging this year but only time will tell. For now I’m just enjoying being a cycling beekeeper! 

A long overdue autumn clear up.

It’s been a while since I last posted. Partly because I have had nothing to say that I didn’t say this time last year and partly because I will been busy doing all those same things. That’s the joy of nature, it happens every year. No matter how we feel or what we are doing, outside in the ‘wild’, life just perpetually turns. 

In my piece of this wild I have an area that truly is just that. In all the years we have lived here we have tried to ignore it. Until this year, when we could leave it no longer. It was a piece of no man’s land between us and the neighbour. 20 foot high with elder trees and ivy. Piled at its base with all my neighbours hedge cuttings over at least the last 20 years. 

We started by getting a man in to top the trees to a manageable height. He carted them away as well which was a huge task and possibly the main reason we have never really tackled the area before. 

The last two weekends I have slashed and burned the rest

It’s still not pretty but we are getting there.

Today’s fire has been smaller than last week’s. Yesterday’s pouring rain made things smokier and I had no desire to upset my neighbours to much. 

It’s a work in progress but I intend creating a vegetable bed there by next spring. I’m covering a spare piece of lawn with cardboard and all spare compost/soil. I’m working my way towards the no man’s land by which time I hope to have gained another bed at least 8ft by 25ft and a south west facing boundary fence to grow a peach tree against. 

Think of all the extra veggies I’ll be growing next year. Lucky I brought so many seeds in the sales!