May '16 Skep making workshop

Well we certainly picked the right day for it...

The bees were happy foraging somewhere away from the apiary which meant we could all sit outside in the dappled shade and learn about the ancient craft of Skep beekeeping from Chris Park of Acorn Education. Chris brought a selection of British and European skeps to illustrate the skills we needed to develop to make our very own skep...

The kit needed to make a skep is really pretty simple, just some long straw and willow lappings to bind it together....

Traditionally the "feeder" for the straw is a piece of old cow horn, but these days a piece of 2" pipe will also work...

The "Fip" or needle to "sew" it together used to be made of bone... but a piece of split garden cane of a modern metal spike also works...

As with many crafts, its the getting started well that is essential to the success of the finished project. Watching an expert makes it look easy...

Then it was our turn...

 

 

 

You could hear the concentration....

But as we fed more straw into the feeders our skeps gradually grew bigger and bigger...

And before we knew it, it was time to pause for lunch...

So we downed tools and tucked into a great spread...

Fully refreshed it was back to the job in hand, and the skeps grew well as the sunshine continued to smile on us...

We all had a terrific afternoon and have come home with enough kit to finish our skeps....

though I'm not sure how many of us will make one strong enough to hold or outlive the beekeeper that uses it!

April: Beginners class gets started....

Its always a bit of a tough question.  When does the beekeeping season start?

Many books claim it is 1st April, others say wait for the weather to be "short sleeved shirts" kind of warm.  So we were delighted when the thermometer crept up above 12'c on Saturday 2nd April...

Getting stuck in....

Getting started on some spring cleaning....

All in all a very successful first day's beekeeping for the season.  Now if we could just have a consistent supply of warm dry Saturdays...

December: Ewell Yule

We were delighted to be offered a stall at this year's Ewell Yule event.  With the high street closed to traffic and lots of local businesses "doing something special" for the evening as well as the living advent calendar it promised to be a great evening.

First to make our stall suitably festive, bunting and tea light candles in honey jars seem to do the trick...

We set up our displays of local honeys...

Don't our 10 local honeys look gorgeous? who could resist tasting them?

September: Nonsuch awareness day

Although September is often the end of the active bee keeping season it isn't quite yet the end of the being busy for beekeepers...

Autumn brings the opportunity to meet and greet our public and sell them some honey.

Today's event was all about raising public awareness of all the activities that take place in Nonsuch Park...

We set up our stall bright and early...

and stacked the table high with honeys....

Six different local honeys to taste....

The Bees wax candles were popular....

We attracted the attention of dignitaries from across the ages....

Everyone seemed to like what they tasted !

September: The things we do for bees...

It all started with a small hole in a garden wall about 2 years ago, which looked like a safe place for some bees to hang out.  Fast forward to 2015 and the family living there are concerned about the state of the wall and the brickie who agrees to fix it would like the bees removed before he starts work ( can't say I blame him!).
So its just a case of finding someone who is brave (a.k.a. daft) enough to try to get them out of the wall...

It doesn't look that intimidating does it?

Just a little tap or two to get a few bricks loose...

Ah.....maybe they don't like that so much...

Thankfully the mortar is very soft so the bricks come out quite easily....unfortunately there seems to be rather a lot of wild honeycomb behind them...

 

 

We set the bricks carefully to one side....

 

And got on with digging the wild comb from the cavity inside the wall...

 

They were pretty big pieces of comb, most of which was full of honey...

Eventually we found some that had brood in...

And were relieved to find the back of the wall cavity...

The problem now...was just how far the colony extended to the sides. Leftwards we appear to have found the edge..

But rightwards....that seemed to go on a way up and on to the right...

It was time to scoop as many as possible into the box, and tip them into the hive...

 





Unfortunately that meant that that we also got rather a lot of brick dust in with the bees at the same time...

What a good job we can tie most of those frames of honey into another box...at least they'll have some clean food to keep them going in their new home...

Meanwhile a closer inspection of the wall and a quick committee meeting started to strongly suspect that there was either a second entrance to the colony in the wall or a completely separate second colony...

 

There was definitely no sign of the queen, nor any bees scenting and fanning to indicate the queen was in the hive...

And rather too many bees still hanging around on the wall looking like they want to go back home...

 





There's nothing else for it, we are just going to have to clear as many bees off the grass as we can...

 

Make the cavity in the wall as inhospitable and obnoxiously smelly as we can...

 

 

And pop the roof on the hive and hope that as many as possible can be persuaded to move in overnight...

The things we do for bees eh?