I've had the "Camilla face-lift"! - Telegraph

I've had the "Camilla face-lift"! - Telegraph

Where is mummy?

It's been a while, I know. But we are having a few Jeremy Kyle style issues with our girls. Firstly they did away with Peg. Then before we got a new queen a slutty worker decided to start laying in the honey stores, getting far to big for her station. Then we got another new queen, and she too has gone AWOL. Today is the moment of truth as there were still signs of laying last week. But if today there are no eggs, we know the girls have kicked her ass to the curb and unfortunately that's it for the hive this year. I'll keep you posted.



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Location:Parkview Park,,United Kingdom

Where are the bees in Malta?

I'm a bit thin on the posts at the moment, this is due to sunning myself in Malta. Don't worry, the hive is being looked after by the crack team. I have to say though, I'm alarmed at the lack of bee sightings in Malta. I think I've seen one, and even then it was at a distance so I'm not sure. You can't describe Malta as having lush greenery, more dry brush so the lack of flowers will be a big reason. It's weird though! I'm not used to seeing so much sun and so few bees.

AWOL Queen Peggy

It's been a little while since my last post. I wanted to come to you with great news from the hive, of Peggy, our new queen laying away and bringing up lots of happy bee babies. Not so my friends, not so.

We chose a method of requeening the hive, where we placed Peggy into a little cage that was blocked with food at one end. The clever idea is, you place her on a frame in the brood box where all the laying takes place. In the time it takes her to eat through the food and go waddling off round the hive to start her reign, the bees will have gotten used to her pheromones and won't bump her off as an impostor.

So she was put in and left to munch away to her heats content. Kind of like a woman in a room full of cake.

But on the next inspection, she was gone. There was no sign of her on the frames and there were no eggs to speak of. So it looks like she emerged and the current hive turned on her. Poor Peggy! I'm gutted for her, I feel like we sent he to her death to face 60000 murderous bitches. Can you imagine?!

So we are back to square one. We have another queen arriving soon and hopefully we will have more success this time round. However, if they continue to act like she devils then we will move on to plan B. Which I will of course blog about should it happen. In the mean time, here is a link to a great song in memory of Peggy, queen of our Vic though short! http://youtu.be/HELofmbpDM0

The Queen is Dead, Long live the Queen!

I've refrained from posting about our hive for a couple of weeks now, because our queen went AWOL. For those that are totally new to beekeeping reading this, one of the main reason's for opening the hive and checking through each frame of comb is to find the queen. You need to check she is laying by spotting very very tiny white eggs in the cells and also check that the worker bees are not raising a new queen.

If the workers are raising a new queen, they build the grub a palace (Queen cell - see pic) and feed that grub Royal Jelly. Yes girls, Royal jelly isn't just a gift set of smellies you get from boots at Christmas for your grandma. It's an actual substance with and actual function. If these queen cells start popping up all over your frames, it can usually be a sign that the hive could be getting ready to split and swarm... or your queen's reign has ended and she's popped her clogs. If she is still alive and kicking, you can knock these queen cells down to avoid a new queen hatching and the hive swarming off to start a new colony. However, if she is not laying you can leave these cells and the hive will crown a new queen. (Usually they raise a few and the first one to hatch goes on a murderous rampage and kills all the other unhatched queens... BITCH FIGHT!)

This is the tricky bit, there could be a cross over period. So the queen could die just before you open the hive. You spot eggs, brood cells etc and just assume you have missed the illusive lady amongst the other 60K+ bees. Then merrily go forth and knock down the queen cells. This is when a Jeremy Kyle (Jerry Springer for any American readers) state of affairs ensues and the babies are left without a mummy. This is exactly what happened to us :-(

So the past couple of weeks have been spent planning the coronation of our new queen, flown over from Greece and landing in...... Oswestry last Thursday.

She's in the hive, safe and sound in a little cage for now so the worker bees can get used to her pheromones and not bump her off for being a trespasser.

I ran a competition on Facebook last week to name her and can now reveal that she has been crowned... Queen Peggy. Well done Kathy, I'll get some Honey over to you at the end of the summer :-)

It's official - Beekeeping IS sexy

I was trawling Etsy today for all things bee related. If you are unfamiliar with Etsy, it's like one fantastic gigantic handmade and vintage craft market online. There are some absolutely amazing and unique items on there, literally something for everyone. Don't believe me? Well here is the proof! Someone out there, namely www.beekeepingissexy.com has made a range of T shirts that couldn't be more in tune with my blog if they tried. This website, by far is my favourite bee couture discovery so far... love love love! Now I only have to wait until August when I go back to work to afford to buy it all up - I can hear my credit card screaming at me from downstairs "buy...buy...buy..!" But I have to stay strong. Damn you statutory maternity pay!

Bee Real Estate - The Period Property of Bee Hives

It’s cold, and it’s wet and so our bees are tucked up warm in their hive not to be disturbed, because like most women, the cold and rain are not their friend. So I thought I’d write a bit about the types of hive you can get your hands on.

First and foremost the most recognisable hive is the WBC, imaginatively named after the designer William Broughton Carr – there is another pub quiz question for you right there!

It’s a thing of iconic beauty. The Chanel red lipstick of beehives. The beautiful period property that lines country roads and screams quintessential English quaintness. But, as the saying goes… “Fashion is pain” and the whole form over function argument is called into play when arguing the toss for this type of hive. As much as it is beautiful, it’s a bit of a pain to maneuver around. It has pros, such as being double walled so insulated, and have I mentioned it looks beautiful? But on the scale of practicality, it’s overtaken by the National (this is my personal opinion, I’m sure there are beekeepers out there who can argue the case for the WBC better than I could). The National is something I’ll post about soon, but think of it as the new build flat to the WBC’s period property.

But, if like me, you are inclined to go out on a Friday night in a pair of shoes that cripple your feet but look nothing less that fabulous. Then you can more than cope with a WBC. If you like the WBC however …. Wait until you see the Beehaus.

The Swarm and the City way to remember the difference between brood cells.

So in my last post, I mentioned the mass massacre of all the poor drone brood in the hive to manage the Varroa mite infestation. It was a hardcore feminist's dream, but not my kind of fun! Poor boys! When you get stuck into a hive you will become familiar with all the components that make it up. I'll post up different kinds of hive and their components soon.

This post is purely a simple easy way to remember how to spot which cells house a drone larva / Pupa. Think of it like shaving rash. When a larva is ready to pupate into a bee, the lady worker bees cap off the top of the cell with wax so the bee inside can get changed in private. If the bee inside is female, the cell is capped off flat. If the bee is male, the cell is capped off raised, so the surface of the comb has bumps on it like shaving rash on a fella's chin. Also, more often than not the lady bees raise drones round the edges of the comb. I've attached a picture I've taken for you from inside our hive, with some big massive red arrows pointing to the drone brood shaving rash cells. Now you have no excuses for getting brood cells mixed up. If this ever get's asked in a pub quiz and you win, you owe me a cocktail!

Getting your man to wash is not just a human problem...

Ladies and Gents, do you sometimes feel you have to write your other half a written proposal as to why they should take a regular shower? Well, itchy man syndrome is not just isolated to the human race. The poor lady worker bees are in a similar situation, their men have crabs.
Well not the sort of crabs that get human pants itching, the crabs in question here are a mite called Varroa and it's driving the beekeeping world crazy. These nasty little critters cause all sorts of problems such as Deformed Wing Virus and in severe cases can completely screw over your entire colony. So it's important to keep on top of them and treat the hive with one of the variety of treatments out there. If you are new to Beekeeping, your supplier will be more than helpful with which best to choose and all are relatively simple to administer.
This nasty little mite unfortunately has a preference for the drones (bee talk for Man bee).. So after seeking advice on how to treat our hive from a more experienced keeper, we were told to treat the hive with a chemical treatment called Apistan (or Happy Stan which is how I remember it). Once the treatment has had 6 weeks to work, we then needed to kick the poor drone brood to the curb. This was to make sure we were getting rid of the majority of the last of the mites. It's not a pretty job, it made me feel quite sad - and I did commit a few acts of mercy if I could see the drown actually hatching out of the cell at that moment. I just checked him over and sent him on his way. But a regular an intermittent cry of "Sorry Dudes!" could be heard from inside my hood.
The female workers are like 40000 Anthea Turner's, constantly cleaning, feeding, shopping for nectar etc (Sound familiar?). Any dead brood that I hadn't managed to clean out properly, you could see the girls immediately heading for that cell to drag out the larva / Pupa and chuck it out of the hive. It's the biggest collective case of OCD you will ever witness, those girls need a rest, a facial and wing rub.

Beekeeping couture

Think beekeeping suits are limited to white? Today's beekeeping couture is courtesy of BBWear LTD which produces range of suits in a variety of colours. With Denim jumpsuits gracing the high street this season... you can be bang on trend with the Denim colour bee suit. Though I wouldn't advise it as a practical outfit for out on the town as it's hard to poke the straw from your cocktail through the protective mesh.

Some pictures for you

It's always good to put names to faces, even if those faces are behind protective hats.
So here I am with my massive bee, then Melanie, lastly my Stepdad and Harry (in the fencing style hood).

How it all came about

In my 20 somethings I had many ambitions. They were mainly all centred around a means to buy silly priced, beautiful Chanel sunglasses that I can't really afford. Oh.. and sustaining my partying lifestyle. Beekeeping doesn't usually naturally fall onto the radar of someone who's main priorities start with a Friday night Vodka and end with a Sunday evening hangover.

It has been on my peripheral radar however since the age of 15, this is when we moved in with my Stepfather. He kept bees at the school which he taught at, and having our own honey was something I took for granted. I had no real interest in his hives at all. Then one year an electrical fire burned the lot, all those years work looking after multiple colonies was destroyed in a matter of hours .

Being a brat, with far greater concerns (such as how many shades of Barry M eyeshadow I could wear at once, and trying to snog skateboarders) I barely even noticed. It wasn't until the following summer when I got my first bout of hayfever in years, I realised that there were significant and definite perks to having our own local honey. An immunity build up to the local pollen was one!

I just assumed that my Stepdad would get the kit and start over, but as the years went on It seemed like his heart wasn't in it. Who's would be after losing everything that had taken years to build?

By my mid 20's that little part of your brain that controls empathy, (the one that seems to hibernate in youth) had kicked back in. I thought it was a real shame that he didn't seem to want to keep bees again, it was such an interesting thing to do. So, I got scheming. I figured if I went out and learned how to do it, it might be something he would be up for doing together. A chance for some father daughter quality time.

Sure enough when I enrolled on the Cheshire Beekeeping course that year, he enrolled to.. you know.. to err "keep me company" and so the journey began. It was on this course I noticed that I didn't have a great deal in common with anyone else other than learning about bees. Everyone was lovely, but I was very unlikely to bump into them that weekend raving it up in Manchester.

My course was in two parts. A theoretical course in the winter (Bees are like anyone else, they get narked off if they get cold or wet so you leave them alone in the winter) and a practical part in the summer where you get stuck in to the hives.

It then took another 18 months to find somewhere to put a hive.

Beehives seem to be idiot magnets. Oxygen thieves take great pleasure in throwing rocks at them, then wonder why all of a sudden they are surrounded by a bunch of very angry house proud, stingy women. So you need to find a place where they won't be bothered by said idiots. Then when you have found this place, you need to convince those in close proximity that the bees have far better and more pressing matters than to go round on suicide missions stinging everyone. This, is most definitely the hardest part.

Just for the record, I have worked hives in colonies of about 8 when on the course. That's a LOT of bees (average of about 40K per hive I think) and I am still yet to be stung. That even includes 2 occasions were bees have managed to get into my protective hat. I'm not saying they never will, and I'm sure over the course of this blog I will get stung. But bees don't fly around looking to start fights unnecessarily, it's us humans that do that.

Then, whatever you do. Once you have found this rare and special place, please please dear reader, don't then go out all weekend, get heroically drunk and get pregnant. Because as I found from first hand experience, they don't make maternity bee suits for good reason.

So this brings you up to speed and to the present. Last year was written off due to me doing my best impression of a hippo. Luckily my Stepdad, Harry and Melanie (our fellow beekeepers who kindly allow us to share a hive in their garden) got a hive built up and colonised. So begins the story of Swarm and the City, I hope you enjoy reading it over the coming months, now i'm off to find out if Jimmy Choo do wellies.

So what's this all about then?

Hello there! Have you voyaged through the Bloggsphere and stumbled upon this page? Or have I shamelessly pestered you into reading this? Either way you deserve an explanation as to what this is all about.

I'm a 30 year old woman with a fantasy Chanel habit I have no way of affording. My husband is a Jungle DJ and producer so my music tastes are varied but heavy basslines are what get my feet moving. On Wednesdays I go Burlesque dancing as it's the only exercise where it's encouraged to wear high heels and full make up. I live in a fairly built up suburban area which I love, and enjoy a career in advertising with a national newspaper. I'm terrified of spiders, woodlice and earwigs.

So that's me.

Oh... I'm also learning how to be a beekeeper. A fairly vain, scared of most insects, jungle loving, burlesquing dancing, glamour loving beekeeper.

If you have any preconceptions that beekeeping is reserved for those living the good life, fitting it in between feeding the chickens and milking the goat then stick with me. Because my aim is share what it's like from the perspective of a young(ish) professional urban female. I'm fairly new to it so it will be a bit of journey of discovery, but if it encourages anymore unlikely city beekeepers to have a go then mission accomplished. Because bees are like water, It's not just nice to have them around they contribute to our survival and at the moment they need as much help as they can get.