Honey, Honey, Honey!!!

At last, some sticky honey!! Although we've lost a few bees (Remember the swarm in the garden?! June 2010) we have finally got our hands on the sticky stuff! It tastes great, really tasty.

Mmmm!!!!

Delicious!

It's Swarm in the Garden

These are the ones that got away!

One minute they were there and the very next... they were gone!

It was a hot, very hot Saturday in May. Thankfully The Pumpkin Patch workshop was just about to end... we'd just watered the greenhouse plants... very nearby and then the sky turned black and very noisy!!

Lucky for us, they quickly settled on to low bush of honeysuckle (ha ha!!)... the perfect place for us to catch them!! We phoned a friend for a spare hive to put them into and waited... took loads of photos and enjoyed the apparent calm of the swarming bees!

How silly we were! Why didn't I get a box, knock the branch and drop our bees into the box and close it up until the hive arrived????? I just took photos!!!! The bees in the meantime got ample time to gather their thoughts, calm down, do a headcount before leaving for pastures new!

Our friends arrived, took one look, gasped in amazement and watched as the whole swarm of bees broke up and once again turned the sky black and took off like a long black cloud. They were gone!

A sad day! An expensive day!

Thankfully we have been left with a good and strong hive, the queen has since been replaced by another younger model and we now know the cost of taking photos rather that taking action!

We now have four hives from the two we had last year. We had already successfully divided both hives during early May. One of the newly divided colonies soon ran out of space got a little congested and warm in a confined space and decided to take action... and move out.

The queen ensured that she laid plenty of good quality queen cells to replace her and off she went! I wonder where she is now?

Spring Lamb and Green Fingers!

The spring has well and truly arrived with lovely bright mornings and light evenings .. a great time for gardeners! The crisp early mornings are still cold enough to damage small seedlings, so we still need to be careful about what we plant out.

Just to remind ourselves that Spring really was on it's way, we got ourselves five little (tiny!) pet lambs. Very sweet, very cuddly, adored by the children, but lots and lots of bottle feeding!!

The greenhouse is now full of seed trays which need regular watering.

Don't forget that even when it rains.... it doesn't rain in the greenhouse!!

So far we have French climbing beans (purple – remember the magic beans from last year?), French dwarf beans (yellow), Pumpkins (of course!), Swiss chard, peas and sweet peas, Parsley and leeks, Gourds, courgettes, and mixed salad leaves.

* * *

I've had a great time digging and planting and now it's your turn! The vegetable plots are looking bare ...time to get busy! We do have a few broad beans coming through and the onion sets are growing nicely, but it's now time to plant beetroot and radish, rocket and lettuce directly into the ground (now that they won't be damaged by late frosts)

. . . .

The potato tubers we placed in the greenhouse have now chitted (produced little shoots) and also need planting into well manured trenches. This year we are only planting those knobbly little Anya and Pink Fir Apple salad varieties. They are difficult to find in shops and are very expensive... so a great vegetable to grow for ourselves!

After months of worrying about the bees, and whether they would survive such a bitterly cold winter.... out they came! They've been out and busy in the garden for weeks now. The next worry is... will they swarm, when and to where? Our job now is to keep an eye on them and to check them regularly.

Sweet Sweet Success!!!

After months of cold winds, severe frosts and week after week of below zero temperatures and snow, the bees decided to reveal their success story!!

Once temperatures reached double figures they began to spring clean the hive and we breathed a sigh of relief! They had made it and winter was officially over!!

Joshua and his old (but still young!!) form teacher, Paul,

opened and checked and cleaned each hive.

The queen in green (she's marked with a green dot, see below) was still present.

Joshua, so pleased to see his bees again!!

With the recent warm weather and the huge activity at the hive we're hoping for an early harvest of honey, we can't wait!!