Uninvited Guest

You work tirelessly to provide your family with sufficient stores to get through winter, but food is now scarce. Your stores are low when spring arrives. The work to keep the family fed begins all over again. Every day you're out there, bringing home what little you can find. Now is not the time to be entertaining any guests, and especially not an uninvited guest. Worse still, your uninvited guest is a hungry one who eats not only your food, but also the cupboards you store it in and the walls holding up the cupboards. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the mouse.

A couple of weeks ago, I inserted inspection boards under each of my four beehives. As you know, I treated them in mid-winter to reduce the levels of varroa infestation. The purpose of the inspection board is check the extent to which varroa mites could be building in number again within the colony. Even though I hadn't yet opened the hives, I knew each colony must have brood (bee larvae) as on warmer days the bees were returning with full pollen bags (brood food). The female varroa mite lays her eggs within a brood cell, so her babies hatch out with a pupating larva on which to feed. A growing brood nest brings with it the risk of a growing varroa mite population. Mites that die, or are dislodged from busy bee bodies brushing up against each other or during grooming, fall to the floor of the hive, through the mesh and onto the inspection board. I count the bodies.

Last week I removed the inspection boards to do just that. As I pulled out the first board, varroa was immediately of secondary concern, for there, to the rear of the board were bee body parts and mouse droppings. #@!*&💀↯

I whipped out boards two, three and four. More body parts. More mouse droppings. #@!*&💀↯#@!*&💀↯

To add insult to injury, only a few days earlier I'd washed and patched up my nearly new bee suit after discovering it had been a winter home for a nesting, nibbling, peeing, pooing mouse.

Perhaps, being smarter than the average mouse, that same mouse made the connection between bee suit and beehives, and swiftly abandoned its cocoon in my suit to sniff out my apiary. Such a shame he didn't meet Steve, Nessa or Charlie on route and become the dinner not the diner.

Colonies 1 and 2, my strongest colonies going in to winter, put up a fight. Their uninvited guest appeared to have pooped and left, for there was no sign of comb chomping. Colony 3 was less successful, with one frame eaten through and a pile of dead bees amongst the comb crumbs. Colony 4 fared the worst, with three frames tunnelled through and a greater number of bee body parts (mainly heads and legs, the crunchier and less nutritious bits). No sign of the twitchy nosed intruder himself.

Inspection complete, I closed up the hives and pinned a mouse guard to each entrance, the sound of tens of thousands of tiny voices shouting "too little, too late" buzzing in my ears. Never having suffered a mouse intruder before, the guards have sat for years unused at the bottom of my kit box. Lesson learned. Just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean you shouldn't protect against it happening.

There is a happy ending to this tale of whiskered woe, for the bees, though perhaps fewer in number, seemed none the worse for hosting a mouse. All queens are present and laying, the new season's brood nests are starting to expand across the frames. The only sting in the tale was the sting in my finger.

Blood sucking dinner plate

Imagine if you had a dinner plate attached to your body. Wherever you go, the dinner plate goes too. Even when you're sleeping. Imagine if that dinner plate was a blood sucking dinner plate, feeding on you to keep itself alive. Imagine if that dinner plate made you weak, susceptible to infection, left you with deformed legs, unable to leave the house. Imagine if there was absolutely nothing you could do to get rid of the dinner plate or stop the rest of your family being overcome by yet more blood sucking dinner plates.

Welcome to the world of the honey bee and it's parasitic sidekick the Varroa mite, or Varroa Destructor to give it its full and graphically apt name.

I have done many unpleasant things to my colonies over the years in my battle against Varroa infestations. Today I added to that list. Let me introduce you to "The Vaporiser". No, not another Marvel comics character dragged onto the big screen in yet another excruciating performance by Nicholas Cage. This is a tool. Oh, so not that different then (snigger). As I was saying, this is a tool designed to vaporise crystals of oxalic acid within a closed up hive, the vapours rising up and permeating the hive, then re-crystalising on the hive surfaces, including on the bees, and including on the mites that are on the bees. Why it is fatal to the mites, but not to the bees, is beyond my knowledge and quite frankly, if it works, I don't care. Many beekeepers have been treating their hives this way for a number of seasons now, so I trust those who have gone before and am arriving late to the vaporising party. Fashionably late, naturally, and with glitter and sequins (okay, no glitter or sequins, more grubby fleece and mucky wellies).

 

There were the usual mishaps to be expected when using a new toy. Like forgetting to close the hive entrances earlier in the day and trying to coax errant sluggish bees back into the hive so I could gas them. Like not realising the jump starter was already powering the vaporiser and accidentally scorching the instructions for use (thankfully still legible, if a little crispy in places). Like not totally sealing the hive and running away, nose in jacket, from the wisps of toxic oxalic vapour curling up out through the gaps. 

Take note, this is a live action blog written by a fool and not a painstakingly researched how to guide written by an expert.

Tomorrow I shall count the bodies of dead mites fallen from the bodies of my beloved bees and dance a merry jig. Take that you pesky Varroa mites! 

Superhighway

An amazing thing happened today. It has probably happened here many times in the last five years but I have never witnessed it. The difference of five minutes forwards or backwards and I would not have witnessed it at all.

It was a hot, humid day. In anticipation of the forecast rain storm due to arrive tonight, I headed out to the cut flower patch to collect a bunch of sweet peas and calendula for the kitchen, and cut some helichrysum (also known as straw flowers or everlasting flowers) to dry, fully expecting to wake up tomorrow to a battered patch and forlorn flowers. As usual, on arrival at the plot, I got distracted, and a five minute task became a 30 minute potter. Everything changed in that time. The temperature dropped. The sky darkened. The wind picked up. You could feel the storm in the air. My trug full of flowers, I left the plot. Like losing the plot but without the anger issues.

Part way across the field I realised I had company. A lot of company. I was standing in a bee superhighway. Bees to my left, my right, below me, above me, and if I didn't get out of the way soon there was going to be a collision. I crouched down. A steady stream of my honey bees, some flying high, some flying low, some zipping along at high speed, others taking a more waivering path, but all flying very definitely along the same route, from the same direction in the neighbouring field, to the same destination in our field, namely the apiary. It was as though a bell had rung, calling all workers home, urgently, no shilly-shallying along the way, do not pass Go, do not collect any pollen on the way. Even ducked down I was at risk of getting a face full of bees, so I lay on my back, watching them fly over me, hundreds of them. They knew a storm was coming and bees hate rain. I could see the full pollen bags on some, predominately a whitish colour. Perhaps my girls had found themselves a patch of late summer heather and had been working it en masse in the afternoon sunshine, all available foragers called up, all leave cancelled.

Gradually the numbers died down. The stream became a trickle. Bucking the trend a lone bee headed back in the other direction. What was she thinking? Sent out to find missing workers? Determined to hit her daily foraging target whatever the weather? Did she make it home?

David returned from feeding the pigs to see me lying in the middle of the field, and assumed I had fallen over, as though that is a regular occurrence, as if I am prone to random tumbles. I explained the reason for my position, so he joined me and together we watched the last of the field workers head home as the first rain drops began to fall.

Bee-ing Moved

The bees have moved, or rather the bees' house has moved. Houses. Three hives, one new apiary. They haven't moved far, just 15 feet or so up the field from the hedgeline. We sited our first hive along the field edge back in 2010, and in the intervening six years the hedge has done what hedges do, grown. As the trees grew, so did the length of the shadows they cast, and as the shadows grew the window of time within which the sun could shine on the hives got shorter and shorter, until in winter, when every scrap of sunshine is precious, there might be just a sliver falling across the roof.

With the flock now occasional grazing in the field, there was the added incentive of needing a barrier between the sheep and the hives that is more secure than a few hurdles. It's doubtful the sheep would ever be stung, a more likely outcome being defensive bees dying tangled in a woolly tomb or an entire colony finding itself upended into the grass. In my experience, a fat fleecy sheep isn't always aware of her own dimensions, and that awareness drops off considerably when said sheep is in deep in ruminative contemplation. The new apiary is enclosed by sturdy fencing, with just enough distance between hive and fence to ensure that no matter how far a greedy sheep stretches her neck in search of the greenest, sweetest blades of grass (you know who you are, Babette!), her nose won't (or shouldn't) reach the bees' front door.

The general rule is to move a hive a distance of 3 feet and under or 3 miles and over. A flying bee, absent on a foraging mission while her home is moved, will still find her front door if the shift is within 3 feet. Move it further than that and a bee on the wing, and even a bee leaving after the move, may return to the old spot logged in her navigation system as being home and not be able to find where her front door now is, with lost bees eventually giving up the search, clustering where the door should have been, ultimately dying. If the move is over 3 miles, whilst any still on the wing at the time the hive entrance is closed will be lost (minimised by closing up at the end of the foraging day), those still inside somehow know to reset their inner satnav on first leaving the hive at the new location and learn how to recognise their new environment instead. As we were moving our hives within that 3 feet to 3 miles danger zone, I decided to make that move during winter, at a time when the bees are foraging rarely and have not been flying at all for 2-3 weeks. With their hedgeline position having become so shaded and damp, I didn't want to wait any longer than necessary, but while we waited, and waited, and waited, for winter to arrive we prepared the new hive sites. Digging a level square out of a sloping field is an exercise in frustration, for what the spirit level says is a level patch of mud is strangely no longer level when a paving slab is placed onto the same patch of mud. Dig out a bit more mud here, add a little bit more mud there, wedge some stones in that corner, jump up and down in the other corner.

Whether you're moving a hive by hand across a short stretch of field or by car for miles, the risk of slipping, tripping and dropping is the same, and thus the precautions taken are the same. It's all about strapping and balance, keeping the hive level at all times, minimising disturbance so as not to break up the cluster. All of which is made trickier when your field is a hummocky mole hill minefield, one of the carriers has a dodgy back and the other is inexplicably prone to inappropriate fits of the giggles when moving heavy awkward objects.

As Dave prepares the strap for the move, Steve slinks off to avoid helping

The last hive in its new muddy but level location

All three hives are now in the new apiary. A couple of bees flew out and went back in. Then everything went quiet. Too quiet for my liking. Tap, tap, tap on the side, buzz, buzz, buzz comes back. But that buzz is getting fainter. It's late February now and the colonies will soon be gearing up for spring when, hopefully, the queen will start to lay again. After a wet, mild winter, there's no knowing what spring might have in store for us and the bees. Barbecues in March? Snow in April? Please, please, please let one of my colonies make it through.

Mad as a Box of Bees

"There's quite a few bees in the wood shed", said Dave one morning.

It's not unusual for this to happen. Every year a keen foraging bee will sniff out my stack of super boxes (the bit of the hive where the bees store their honey and where I steal it from) and invite a few of her sisters along for a robbing party. If there's so much as a drop of honey clinging to the frames in the super boxes the bees will find it. However, on this occasion as soon as I got within six feet of the wood shed I knew that this was no robbing party, but an illegal rave. A peak under the lid at the top of the stack confirmed my suspicions that Dave's "quite a few bees" was a full on swarm!

Obviously, given my far from perfect track record as a beekeeper, my first thought was that my own colony, purchased for the princely (or should that be queenly?) sum of £150 just  two weeks earlier had done a bunk while my back was turned. Bees do that sort of thing. Just because they can. But no, for once I was in possession of someone else's bees instead of the other way round. The scout who found my stack of super boxes will surely be nominated for "Scout of the Year" at the annual colony awards, for not only did she find them a home, but a fully furnished show home with a well stocked pantry. At the latest they could only have moved in three days earlier, but the ever efficient worker bees must have been hard at it from the off, cleaning up the mess of the previous occupants, making the cells nice and shiny, getting their queen popping out eggs to order. Unfortunately for them, this show home was spoken for and I was the white suited busy body coming to evict them. Unfortunately for me, this was one of the hottest days of the summer yet and after two hours in a beekeeping suit I was as hot and bothered as the bees, and probably just a little bit stinkier. It was worth the effort though - now the colony has a new home in my apiary and I have a new colony in my apiary. Everyone's a winner. Except for the lost flying bees. You can move a colony, but you can't re-program the internal navigation system of the bees quite so easily. For the next few days Dave would report "bees in the wood shed again", "there are still bees in the wood shed", "how much longer will there be bees in my wood shed". Each evening, as the temperature fell, lost, hungry, docile flying bees would form a small cluster on the hive parts I'd deliberately left for them to sniff out. So each evening I carried said hive part to the apiary, whispered a few words of encouragement, carefully brushed the bees back into their hive, then pressed my ear to its side to listen for the sound of the homecoming party.

I love having bees again. I really must make more effort to stop accidentally killing them.

Resolutions Revisited: Part 2 of 4

According to Resolutions of a (Nearly) 40 Something, the person I was back in January 2012 believed that to claim the resolution of “to be a better beekeeper” passed, it would be a MUST to have achieved the following: (1) find an unmarked queen; (2) mark a queen; (3) not kill a queen while finding her, marking her or generally doing anything at all with a hive; (4) do a successful artificial swarm; (5) pass the Welsh Beekeeping Association Basic Exam.

The person I am now, sitting here in pyjamas and dressing gown on a wet Sunday morning in autumn, having just waded through the wettest UK summer in 100 years, is grateful just to have a honey bee colony at all! Nevertheless, lets look at the evidence and see how it stacks up against my best intentions.

In January my apiary was home to three hives each containing a colony: one a captured swarm, one built up from a nucleus purchased in June, one being my long suffering but surviving first colony. I knew in my heart the swarm and nuc colonies should have been united before winter and were the most at risk, but whilst I procrastinated and generally ummed, aahed and hesitated, autumn became winter and the moment had passed. It came as no surprise therefore that come March the swarm colony was no more, just a tiny cluster of dead and dying bees starving amidst plenty. I was heart broken, guilt ridden, and just a little bit peeved that my bravery up a tree capturing the swarm with a brush, a big stick, a box and a blanket had come to nought. All was not lost, however, as the nuc colony seemed to have survived, the queen was laying and the colony starting to build up. All was lost, however, when a month later the nuc colony dwindled, the queen stopped laying, the bees shivered and starved in the space of two weeks. The reason for this dramatic and disastrous turn of events is still a mystery to me, but what I do know is that I won’t be using VitaGreen (a natural oils based product that is supposed to stimulate colony development) ever again.

So far the evidence is stacking up against me. Looks like I have more chance of being a better astronaut than a better beekeeper!

In my defence, not all of my self-imposed goals has gone unachieved. I scored a hat-trick with Goals 1, 2 and 3 hot on the heels of kicking Goal 4 into touch. The queen reared from my artificial swarm is a beauty – more of an Italian honey bee golden brown than a dark Welsh honey bee – but beggars can’t be choosers when you have track record as bad as mine for losing queens. The big yellow blob I’ve daubed on her back rather spoils her natural good looks, but she (and all her daughters) should be thankful my shaking hands didn’t run her through with the pin of her own marking cage. I’d post a photo of her in all her glory, but if I woke her up right now for a photo shoot she’d be grumpier than a teenager with an alcopop hangover on an early Sunday morning.

I’m sorry to say that the queen in my original colony fared less well. More to the point, she upped and left. She didn’t even leave a note. Just left a box full of her angry kids for me to look after. Her replacement – safely installed and accepted by the colony back in July – took exception to be being treated for varroa mite. Horrid little bugger the varroa mite. Visible to the naked eye, on the back of a bee it’s like a small backpack, but without the tasty picnic inside.

I had to treat the colony, the infestation was too bad to risk going into winter untreated, but the treatment is harsh. Imagine if someone dumped a vat of jello in your attic for you to wade through, with clumps getting stuck to your skin, clothes and pretty much everywhere in your house, and emitted fumes to make your eyes water and your nostrils sting! My bees put up with a lot, but it seems this was the last straw. I don’t know if the queen rolled over and died or simply walked out the door, but after a few weeks it was pretty clear she’d abdicated and there was nothing for it but to unite the orphaned bees with my remaining colony. And so two colonies munched through a sheet of newspaper and became one. It’s now a waiting game. Did the remaining queen lay enough winter bees in time? Have the worker bees capped enough stores to feed the family over winter? Will the winter weather be kind to the bees? Did I achieve my last remaining goal and pass the Welsh Beekeeping Association Basic Exam? Only one of these questions can be answered with confidence. No, I didn’t pass the exam. But then I didn’t even take the exam, so that’s one less thing to beat myself up over.

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

Why the long absence? I could tell you that I bagged myself a six figure book deal and have been beavering away on my first novel. But I’d be lying. Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been on an all expenses paid trip of a lifetime to Africa? No, I wouldn’t either. How about if I said I’d spent the last two months trapped under something heavy? If a weight of rainwater counts then that would be closer to the mark! The truth is even more mundane. I simply blinked and the past two and a half months slipped passed me in a drizzly damp blur.

As you may have gathered it’s been a bit wet here lately. It’s been a bit wet everywhere lately. It’s still a bit wet here. It’s still a bit wet everywhere. Summer, schmummer ….. mustn’t grumble though (grumble, grumble), as compared to some of our fellow Cardies we’ve come through the worst of it unscathed. While others in the north of the county were watching their caravans bob about like giant buoys or scrabbling to save belongings from the raging torrent in their living rooms, all we lost was some stones from the drive. Not easily deterred, our guests at the time braved the overflowing stream to head out for dinner – this was what greeted them at the bottom of the drive ….

… but when you’ve got to eat, you’ve got to eat, even if it means swimming to the restaurant!

The pigs take a similar approach, though their trip to the trough is more of a bog snorkel than a swim. The pen is so thick with liquid mud in places that I’m considering setting up Dave in a tent with his guitar, rigging up a bar in the pig ark, and calling it a festival. 

Desperate times called for desperate measures. We stole a patch of field from Babs, Margo and Myfanwy to give Larry, Pip and Mo a daily break from the mudfest. A few harsh lessons were learnt when snouts met electric fence, and Teri rediscovered what happens when fur meets 12 volts, but the conclusion of this sophisticated scientific experiment is that sheep have better memories than dogs as Babs, Margo and Myfanwy have steer well clear of the new pop-up boundary and were in need of no shocking reminders. Electrocution aside, judging by the high levels of bum cheek slapping, side to side tail wagging going on the pen extension has been a source of great pleasure. In two weeks, our trio of porcine rotivators turned this ….

 

into this ….

 

The boys are serious rootlers and clod tossers. Everyday the lower wire of the electric fence has to be dug out from under piles of sodden mud clods and strips of turf. Available for hire for garden clearing at the price of a box of stale cakes per pig per hour.

Other headline news from the frontline of smallholding:

Black Rock shock as six become two

Hera turned all Ray Mears on us, insisting on spending nights under the stars, which went pear-shaped for her and dinner-shaped for Foxy Loxy. Six became five. Two days later, to celebrate Athena’s miraculous recovery from her egg bound hell, we captured her in a fishing net and packed her off to market with Aphrodite and Hestia. Five became two. Blodwen and Branwen kept their distance and eyed us warily for a while, but the bullied soon became the bullies when the new pullets on the block turned up …

   

– Dilys (perfect) & Deryn (bird) the Calder Rangers and Eira (snow) & Enid (spirit) the Speckledys.

Sheep lose coats and dignity on road trip

On a miraculously sunny day in June we packed Babs, Margo and Myfanwy into the trailer for a mini-road trip to visit the mobile shearing unit. The speed and ease with which I write those words is inversely proportional to the speed and ease with which the described act happened. Obviously we had to go through the usual Benny Hill style sheep chasing shenanigans. It’s harder to fool a sheep than you think. Once at the shearing unit our girls were on the receiving end of some rough handed man handling – those shearers have no truck with sheep tomfoolery, it’s grab, tip, shear, grab tip, shear. Zippity zap and the coats were gone, exposing three rather round tummies and rumbling my secret treat feeding regime. Whoopsie.

Queen goes missing, colony at risk

Where do I begin with the bees……. two steps forward, six mile jog backwards. This has been the summer from hell for my colonies. I had three colonies in March, down to two in April, down to one in May, up to two in June. Lack of sun means lack of nectar flow. Too much rain means too little foraging. My one achievement was to do my first artificial swarm. The glow of satisfaction soon became the fug of despair when the old queen absconded anyway, probably flicking a V sign in my direction as she departed. A few phone calls later and a new mated queen and entourage arrived in a travelling cage packed in a jiffy bag labelled “URGENT – LIVE BEES INSIDE”. I bet the postman loved delivering that package. So now I have two colonies, each with a new queen. Sit tight, wait for the sun, hope for the best, try to make the remaining few jars of last years honey last until August 2013.

Accident prone cat saves local veterinary clinic from financial ruin

Not content with scaring me silly with his brush with death by poisoning, Charlie decided to go for a hat-trick of “bad things”. One morning he’s fine, the next afternoon he’s hobbling along on three legs, the fourth being a puffy club foot of a paw. Suspected broken leg, vet talks of feline orthopaedics and metal pins, flashing pound signs in his eyes. We fork out for anti-inflammatory drugs and x-rays. Turns out it was a bad sprain and Charlie is under vet’s orders to rest up for a few weeks. So what does he do? Heads out and comes home with a big bloody hole in his neck. Back to the vet. More fur shaved off, gaping hole is cleaned and stapled (yes, STAPLED!) closed. He can’t walk. He has metal staples in his neck. Charlie has transformed into “Frankenhobble”.  Vet’s bill arrives. Sharp intake of breath. Reach for cheque book. Take big swig of wine.

Not So Magic Animal Magic

Keeping animals brings joy. Like being treated to one of Teri’s aerial displays…

   

…. or watching the chickens gossiping like old women …

 

… and witnessing trophallaxis between honey bees

(don’t be smutty, it’s the posh word for food sharing).

But with joy comes the triple whammy of helplessness, guilt and frustration. Helplessness because you want to help but don’t know how. Guilt because you wonder if it was all your fault in the first place. Frustration because saying “I’m trying to help” and “this will make you feel better” mean “blah blah blah” to the sick animal who has one eye on its escape route and the other on the loaded hypodermic needle in your hand.

Once upon a time you would have found the likes of Elvis Presley, Rhett Butler, Mr Darcy and John Cusack sipping champagne at my fantasy dinner party. Now I’m thinking of ditching John Cusack in favour of Dr Dolittle and shoving Mr Darcy out of his chair to make way for James Herriot. Dr Dolittle could teach me how to whisper words of comfort in an assortment of animal languages (well I’m learning Welsh so how much more difficult can piggish and chook-speak be). Mr Herriot could teach me all I need to know about animal anatomy, be on hand for all the tricky bits, but in return for fabulous cooking at each fantasy dinner he’ll never charge me a penny for his veterinary services. In fact, while we’re on the subject, goodbye Rhett Butler and hello Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - if all hell breaks loose and Dolittle and Herriot mess it up, the cooking tips may come in handy. Naturally Elvis retains his place at the fantasy dinner table. Afterall, someone’s got to keep my champagne glass topped up and entertain the diners as they exchange hilarious animal husbandry anecdotes.

So why the tales of woe? The bible tells us that when Noah stocked his ark, the animals came in two-by-two. What the bible didn’t go on to explain was that when the animals on the ark fell sick it wasn’t a case of two-by-two, but one after the other in quick succession. It started with a cat(and now I find myself humming the tune for Hot Chocolate’s “It Started with a kiss”!). As Charlie lacked the opposable thumb and technical savvy to check his symptoms online, I played hypochondriac by proxy. It didn’t take long to diagnose him as being on the cusp of multiple organ failure and generally knock, knock, knocking on death’s door. Cue sharp intake of breath, hand wringing, heart ache. The vet only had to say “so what seems to be the problem” for the dam to break. Rendered incapable of speech due to tears and unable to mime “he’s puking his guts up all over the stairs, please save him or I’ll never forgive you and will curse all vets ‘til kingdom come”, Dave had to come to my rescue. One neck shave, one blood test, one thryoid test, 3 injections, many pouches of dirty cat comfort food and £130 later, he’s right as rain, thinner but just as lazy. Diagnosis – poisoning.

Exactly one week later I’m stood at a sink gently massaging the abdomen and applying Vaseline to the vent of a chicken who’s standing in a bowl of warn water quietly clucking to herself. Within the hour I’m back at the vet, but with a chicken instead of a cat in my cage. One abdomen syringing (nasty, really nasty, seriously nasty), 10 traumatic days of antibiotic injections and £22 later, she’s still alive and has laid the sum total of one small funny shaped egg. Diagnosis – egg bound infected abdomen.

Two weeks later, my heart sinks as I hear the words “Fatty’s limping”. Lo and behold, within 48 hours I’m welly deep in mud watching Dave attempt to pin down 20 kilos of angry, squealing, limping pig. Don’t try this at home, kids. Believe me, not one of us is enjoying the daily bum injection. Diagnosis – God only knows, but please, please, please let it not happen again.

So what next? Well, I lost a honey bee colony. And I’m pretty sure I saw the dog limping yesterday. Is that sheep just resting?

Resolutions of a (Nearly) 40 Something

It’s 2012. It’s the year in which I hurtle inexorably downhill towards the conclusion of my 40th year on planet earth. No more frolicking in the garden of the House of 40, nor tip toeing down the path, my foot is firmly on the doorstep, the delaying tactic of pretending to fumble in my bag for the front door key is fooling no one any more. Thankfully there’s a bunch of friends already in the front room plumping the cushions & getting the drinks in ready for my arrival. Some of them (who shall remain nameless) are already in the kitchen heading for the back door and then it’s over the fence into the garden of the House of 50!

Anyway, on the assumption that it is indeed possible to teach an old dog new tricks, my first “(Nearly) 40 Something Resolution” for 2012 is to learn Welsh. I should come clean and confess that the very same resolution also made the list in 2010 and 2011. The Teach Yourself Welsh CD-Rom has been languishing on the self, next to the dusty Welsh dictionary, for some time. Teaching ourselves at home was not a success. I should have known that introducing “homework” would dampen Dave’s enthusiasm pretty sharpish. Flying solo got me through the alphabet, a few place names, some comedy verbs and some token greetings. Not so impressive for 2 years work. So I’m going for hardcore, full on, no turning back, learn ‘til you bleed classes – Beginners Fast Track – 5 hours every Wednesday for 20 weeks. Learning doesn’t get tougher than this…

Warming to my theme of it’s never too late for self-improvement, I have taken to heart the breaking news that scientists believe “mental dexterity and brain power deteriorate earlier than thought”, and memory loss “can begin from age 45”. Personally, I struggle to remember when I started to lose mental dexterity, it may have been that time in the 1970’s when my best friend cut the fringe of my hair down to the roots… or was it that time I was offered a bowl of cornflakes with Jack Daniels instead of milk …. or perhaps the Bros concert .. so many possibilities. What was I saying? Oh yes, maximising self-improvement before hitting the age of 45 … let me introduce you to the 3B resolutions…

BE A BETTER BEEKEEPER

Well let’s be honest, I could hardly be a worse one, but if I can go into my third season of beekeeping with three colonies and come out of my third season with three colonies, a few jars of honey, no tears and no panic phone calls, it will be an improvement. To be able to say, hand on heart, that I truly am a better beekeeper these are the goals I must achieve in 2012: (1) find an unmarked queen; (2) mark a queen; (3) not kill a queen while finding her, marking her or generally doing anything at all with a hive; (4) do a successful artificial swarm; (4) pass the Welsh Beekeeping Association Basic Exam (in English - I suspect that Fast Track or not, trying to combine learning Welsh with Being a Better Beekeeper might just end in a soap opera style punch up except it’ll be in an apiary instead of a pub).

BE A BETTER BAKER

I’ve seen the programmes, I’ve read the books, I’ve got the kit, but it seems what I’m missing is the knack. My white bread is passable, my wholemeal edible, my bullet buns legendary, but the fluffy muffin eludes me and I’m pretty sure that the perfect loaf is a mythical beast whose existence is perpetuated by cruel hearted so called “celebrity” bakers just keep their viewing figures up. I know there are ordinary people out there who can bake, I’ve seen their blogs, I weep with envy at images of their crusty farmhouse loaves and their warm and buttery breakfast rolls. I’m not asking for the world, I just want to share in their joy of dough and bake a loaf worthy of praise just a few notches up the laudatory scale from “well at least it’s better than your last loaf”. Oh yes, and I’d also like to make a ciabatta with real airholes instead of finger poke holes, a Victoria sandwich without crunchy edges and rolls that won’t take down a passing bison with a single blow to the head.

BE A BETTER BO

This is a tricky one, with goals as hard to define as sheep are hard to catch. There have been some improvements in my shepherding skills since losing my sheep on day one - I can now identify each one by sight, but I can’t say we’ve bonded in any way, which I guess is fair enough when as far as they’re concerned 50% of the time my arrival in the field leads to chasing, tipping, clipping & sticking with a needle. What I really want to achieve is a sense of ownership, of connection, of feeling like I’m just a little bit relevant to their lives. I’m not expecting them to gambol across the field bleating my name lovingly as I open the gate, or to roll over for a fleecy tummy rub, but it would be nice if it felt less like having three malevolent squatters in my field who, whilst presently content simply to humiliate me on a regular basis, are ultimately plotting my downfall. In practical terms, the goal is to get to the end of year with none of them dying and all three of them in lamb, but I’ll be grateful if come the midnight chimes of Big Ben and the singing of Auld Lang Syne, I’m not face down in the field shelter with nibbled ears and hoof prints on my back. 

House of Wax

“How hard can it be?”, said Dave. “Don’t you just roll it?”. Oh yes, candle rolling, sounds simple doesn’t it. We had the wicks. We had the beeswax. We had the confidence. All we needed was a warm room. Oh, wait a minute, we live in a draughty Welsh farmhouse where warm rooms are in short supply. That explained why the first attempt was less candle rolling and more wax snapping. Dave had a brainwave - warm the wax sheets in the oven. Pop it in, just a low heat, don’t want to melt the wax. Whoopsie, forgot we’d just cooked dinner. That’ll be a tray of melted wax then.

Dave had a second brainwave - why don’t we just mould a candle instead of roll one ….

 

Hmm, maybe not. Not sure that purple dog turd candles make good Christmas presents.

Dave had a third brainwave. I wasn’t sure we had enough beeswax sheets left to cope with another Dave brainwave. The oven’s too hot, but what about using the open oven door as a warm rolling table.

Finally, a genius idea. Dave’s brainwaves are like buses – if you wait long enough one will turn up that takes you where you want to go!

 

The Honey Monster

Have I told you how amazing honey bees are? If you’re not convinced, get hold of a copy of “The Buzz About Bees” and then tell try telling me they’re not one the most incredible creatures on the planet. As my first full season as a “beek” (that’s cool geek speak for beekeeper) draws to a close, I have a new found respect for the honey bee and as daft as it sounds I’m really rather fond of my colonies. It may come as a surprise to those who have the misfortune of hearing my frequent wails and tales of woe (most notably my long suffering husband, parents and parents-in-law), but I’m glad I persevered, and just a little proud of myself for doing so as over the year the rollercoaster ride of beekeeping has seen rather more dips than rises (unless you count the financial investment in bees & kit, in which case it’s a ride with a rise to leave the Blackpool Pepsi Big One in the shade!). There has been many an occasion when the words “give up” have loomed large in my mind, but each time those words teeter on the tip of my tongue, ready to drop as the next disaster befalls a colony, wiser beeks than I insist there are good times ahead. And they were right.

My first colony has weathered some serious bad times. First there was the flood (my grasp of basic physics failed me and I inverted the feeder of sugar syrup over the open hive without waiting for the vacuum to form). Then there was the famine (as I was safe & dry indoors during 2 weeks of heavy summer rain, the colony ate it’s way through all the honey stores & were on the verge of dying of starvation). Then, after the colony pulled through and made it through another long cold winter, all hell broke loose after summer turned up in April, the swarming began, I flapped & faffed and the colony ends up without a queen! No queen, no eggs, no brood, no new bees. Whoopsie. A wise beek came to my rescue, yet again, and lo the colony proves it will not be beaten by inexperience, incompetence, neglect and stupidity. How do I thank them for being so marvellous? I steal their honey!

Give them fields of rosebay willow herb and clover, and let them work their bee magic …

 

… sticky hands, sticky arms, sticky everywhere, spin the extractor & out it flies …

  

…. my oh my, such delicious, glorious, golden honey. Thank you muchly my fuzzy, buzzy critters.

As I swirl this deliciousness on hot buttered toast I feel a twinge of guilt. I’ve never felt guilt over honey eating before. But then up until now I’ve never really appreciated the effort that goes into its production, the miles flown, the energy expended in maintaining hive temperature at just the right level as another Welsh summer lives up to expectations. I feel sadness as well as guilt, for as the end of the nectar flow draws nigh and the bees strive to bring in those last drops to replace stolen stores, my beek rollercoaster plummets down another dip because evil doers await my bees – the wasps descend. Last week, colony 3, my apple tree swarm, was overrun with the yellow peril. I rushed to their aid with jars of jammy water to distract the wasps from the scent of honey. Within hours the jars were awash with drowning wasps, but still they came. Having all but wiped out colony 3, the wasps drifted over to colonies 1 and 2. I’ve squished the wasps with my hive tool. I’ve cursed them. I’ve emptied jar after jar of jam into wasp traps. I’ve washed hundreds of wasp bodies down the stream. Yet still my poor bees are besieged. I fear the worst but dare not open the hives for making the situation worse. Fight bees, fight!

How many bees make five?

Back in May I thought I caught a swarm of bees. Silly me. Turns out that was no swarm, just a few bees out on a jolly on a sunny afternoon. A REAL swarm is really big, huge, ma-hoosive, biblical, of epic proportions. No really, I’m not over-egging this.

Once upon a Saturday I went about my business as usual – changing beds, hoovering, nagging Dave, making cake – before taking Teri for a stroll up the lane. As I wandered back up the drive, dreaming of a cup of tea, piece of cake & some quality time with “Cosmos, Earth & Nutrition” (it’s a book about biodynamics, burying horns, planting by planetary movements and all that jazz), I became aware of a background hum, that became a buzz, that became a roar. Oh me, oh my, the sky was black with bees, a serious amount bees. Think Exodus and the ten plagues of Egypt! Obviously I remained calm and at no point did I suffer flashbacks from a night watching the 1970’s film “The Swarm” and I certainly didn’t run to the front door shouting “disaster, disaster, let me in, LET ME IN!”.

While I fumbled with my bee suit zipper, Dave watched in awe as the swarm condensed into a cloud & slowly drifted en masse over the roofs of the cottages, up the drive, looking for a temporary home. So there they were, tens of thousands of bees clinging in a clump 12 foot above the ground in an apple tree. And there was I, climbing up a ladder, sweating in my bee suit yet again (note to self, must get suit dry cleaned), box in left hand, brush strapped to a pole in right hand, heart in mouth. With every step up the ladder, the tree swayed and the curtain of bees swung & wobbled like a living jelly with multiple legs, wings & stinging things. Urged on by brave Dave standing at a safe distance, I looked a bee in the eye and swiped at the swarm with the brush. And again. And again. “You missed a bit!”, came the helpful cry from the ground.

The bees were now everywhere – the air, the box, the tree. I just had to hope that my swiping had knocked the queen into the box. We bundled the box into a blanket to create an enticing dark space with a wee gap to allow bees separated from the swarm to find their way back to the colony. All we could do now was wait and hope, and greet the arriving guests (of the paying human variety rather than the unexpected non-paying buzzing variety)!

Bees are truly amazing creatures. Word got round that the queen was in the box, and in they came, crawling through the gap in their hundreds, literally a river of bees flowing inside. An hour later, as dusk descended, we had a box full of bees, with only a few stragglers still hanging around the apple tree as the last wafts of the queen’s pheromones dispersed.

A few shakes of the box and some bee spillages into the grass later, the swarm was ensconced in a hive with a sugar syrup welcome hamper to feed on. And lo, two hives become three. I think that means I can now officially call that patch of field an apiary!

 

 

 

Keep Calm & Carry On

I procrastinate. A lot. When I’m not procrastinating I’m getting distracted. In between procrastination and distraction I’m writing lists of things to do that I can procrastinate over and be distracted away from. Absent deadlines or pressures I’ve morphed into a butterfly brain flitting and not completing. No surprise then that this week I found myself in possession of a swarming bee colony.

The fact is that honey bees live to swarm. It’s their bee all and end all! No swarming, no procreation of the species, and if ever there was a species that needs to procreate it’s apis mellifera. Sitting in bee school lessons hearing of swarms, how to catch one in a cardboard box, how to prevent one happening in the first place, was all well and good, but the whole time a voice in my head was saying, “don’t worry, it’ll never come to that”. Somehow I convinced myself that my colony would break with thousands of years of evolution and be the colony that never swarms but lives happily ever after in the same hive just churning out honey and causing no trouble. Admittedly this was flying in the face of the evidence before me at each hive inspection. Ostrich. Head. Sand. My bees were intent on building queen cells. Every queen cell is a potential swarm. At the last count I had six of the beggars. And still I procrastinated. The books said I should create my own artificial swarm immediately. My head said, maybe tomorrow.

And so it came to pass that on the only day in the calendar so far this year when I am out all day and due to go out the same evening, a quick post-polytunnel watering hive check revealed that all hell had broken loose at bee central. Bees were pouring out of the hive. Before my very eyes the front & sides of the hive were blackening with a blanket of bees. It’s compelling viewing. The air was thick with bees. If I lose the swarm I lose two-thirds of my colony. At current prices for a new honey bee nucleus, that’s potentially £120 pounds worth of bees flying off over the hedgerow. If it was a deadline I’d been waiting for, I certainly had that now!

Bee suit on, with heart pounding, I tracked the line of bees.

The buzzing grew louder and louder and reached a crescendo about 15 feet along the hedge line. I could hear them but I couldn’t see them. So into the grassland, round the other side and into the ditch I go, and sure enough hanging in the thick of the blackthorn tree was a small rugby ball shaped cluster of my bees. I’d never seen a real swarm before. I thought I never would. Now face to face to with one (or rather face to thousands of 5-eyed fuzzy faces), I felt strangely calm, albeit a hot & sweaty kind of calm. I spread my sheet in the ditch, placed my bucket under the swarm, and reached for the branch loppers. Damn and blast, the angle was all wrong and there was no room for manoevre. I swapped loppers for big stick and gave the branch a whack. Dave chuckled at my performance as the Ninja Beekeeper in the hedge inexpertly abusing a tree with her Kendo sword.

Easy to laugh when you’re watching from a very safe distance.

According to my bee book, one whack of the branch and the whole swarm should fall in heap into your bucket and stay there. When you’re standing in a field in West Wales, sweating in your bee suit, what you actually get is a face full of bees. The bombardment on my suit sounded like a heavy shower of gold ball sized hailstones. Very persistent hailstones that keep coming back for a second, third, fourth attack!

Some whackings later, I had a bucket of bees. Me and my black cloud of angry bee followers headed back to the apiary (grand name for a patch of grass and two hives). According to my bee book, it’s a straightforward task to tip your bucket of bees into your empty hive brood box. When you’re standing in a field in West Wales, dripping with sweat in your bee suit, what you actually get is a trickle of bees dropping into your brood box and flying back out to join the bees that escaped en route. Meanwhile, on the other side of the hedge, the swarm was re-forming. If I don’t get the queen, this could go on forever. It took four increasingly fraught and sweaty trips before the swarm stopped re-forming. My state of mind wasn’t helped by the fact that Steve was determined to test the “curiosity killed the cat” theory to the limit, to-ing and fro-ing across the field with me. It’s difficult to reason with a cat at the best of times, but trying to do so while holding a bucket full of furious bees was never going to work.

The next morning all was quiet down at bee central. The only clue that something untoward might have taken place was the presence of discarded lopped off tree branches scattered amongst patches of flattened grass.

   

Muted buzzing sounds emanated from the new hive. My swarmed colony had survived their first night. By midday bees were emerging from the hive – thankfully one by one not all at once!

All creatures great and small

It happened while I was in the veg plot. I heard it as I squatted down to whisper words of encouragement to the drooping purple sprouting broccoli. I’d last heard that sound some time back in October but there was no mistaking it. And then there it was again, this time near my left ear. I smiled to myself, feeling relieved and uplifted in equal measure. Yes, the bees had made it through the long winter and on the first day of real sunshine, the kind that feels warm on the face and raises hopes that just maybe spring might really be around the corner, they were out and about, flexing their little wings & stretching their fuzzy legs. It looked like party time outside the hive as bee after bee emerged from the hive, hovered tentatively & then shot off over the field buzzing busily.

I’m a beekeeper with a tendency to worry constantly, so relief soon turned to anxiety. Would my bees overdo the exercise, fooled by the sun into thinking winter is over, fly too far in search of non-existent nectar and pollen sources and not make it back before the sun drops and the temperature plummets? If the queen is still on a winter egg laying break then these precious worker bees still had a vital role to play in keeping the colony alive until there is new brood ready to hatch. No point asking the bees to be careful. Nothing to do but trust that the bees know best. I was itching to lift the roof and peer inside in search of queenie, but as warm as the sun might feel it would be unfair and foolhardy of me to risk the life of the colony by introducing great wafts of February chill into the cluster. Sit tight and keep watching and waiting.

Back on the plot, inspection of over-wintered crops continued – brussels looking like bog brushes, broccoli exhausted by weeks of freezing, thawing, freezing, thawing, winter lettuces stalled at a size that wouldn’t even feed an anorexic fairy.

There’s good news and bad news down in the fruit patch. The bad news is that the winter storms took no time at to deconstruct my carefully constructed network of bird scaring DVD danglers. They’re now tanglers rather than danglers, and I’m picking DVDs out of the grass and hedge. The good news (or perhaps, given the lack of scarers, that should be bad news) is that weeks of way below zero temperatures haven’t killed off the plants – the blueberries and blackcurrants have buds galore… for now.

Piercings!

Yesterday Dave was pierced by a bee stinger. This morning we pierced the pigs ears. Bad things come in threes. Who’s going to get pierced next? Maybe a nose ring for the puppy.

The bee sting was my fault. I lulled Dave into a false sense of security by telling him the bees were sleepy, but “accidentally” woke them up minutes before Dave approached the hive. Well they looked sleepy when I peered under the feeder, but maybe my shifting of the feeder sent the aroma of sweet sugar syrup dregs down into the hive. I’m all togged up in my beek suit, gloves and all, and Dave’s in jeans & jumper and gloveless. Off comes the hive roof. All’s well. Off comes the feeder. Yikes, angry bees! Whoopsy. I’ve never seen Dave move so fast in wellies. He has a lovely red swelling on the wrist to show for it. Meanwhile, back at bee central, small clusters of disturbed drowzy bees are clinging onto leaves of the sapling in front of the hive. They’re clearly not up to clearing the 5 inches between them and the hive entrance. I lend a helping hand by transporting them one by one by gloved finger from plant to door, but many are either too weak or too recalcitrant to get from plant to finger. It’s a lost cause. That’s a handful less bees for the winter cluster. Obviously this will prove a crucial mistake come March!

As for the pig piercings, the weather was, quite frankly, bloody miserable, perfect for a spot of trauma (ours) and blood (theirs) before breakfast. The mean looking piercing gadget was primed and ready.

The tub of disinfectant was on hand. The rain was coming in horizontally. Roused from slumber by the promise of a late breakfast, the girls stumbled out of the ark blissfully unaware of what was about to happen. Heads down in the trough, time for the dirty deed. Clunk! In it goes. Did Davina squeal? Did she even flinch? Nothing. No reaction. She just carried on eating. Not even the blood was a distraction. Unbelievable.

  

So with a distinct lack of any trauma whatsoever, the girls will for the remainder of their days - being precisely 21 hours and counting - be known as Pig Number 1 (Davina), Pig Number 2 (Ally), Pig Number 3 (Harriet) and Pig Number 4 (Alice).

My Big Society

Stuff the coalition, two fingers to Red Ed, come the next election I’m voting for the honeybees to take over the running of the country. Instead of Dave’s (as in Cameron not Pickworth) “Big Society” we’ll have “The Big Colony”. There’s a queen, the males are only good for one thing & collapse & die after that, the females do all the work … so far, so normal. OK, so there are some downsides, like the fact that most of us will only live for 30 days, but everyone will have a job and somewhere to live, and there’s a 24 hour all-you-can-eat honey buffet. Bees are great, that’s all there is to it.

As some of you know, last month I had a bee related disaster. My colony was on the brink of collapse. The likely cause was starvation. How guilty did that make me feel?! Thousands and thousands of little buzzy lives were relying on me, and I let them down, but who’d have thought that in two weeks of bad weather a whole colony could work its way through its honey stores, leaving themselves with nothing to feed themselves or their brood. The poor queen stopped laying. At the start of September much of the colony had died, there were no eggs or larvae and not a drop of honey or a speck of pollen left. Needless to say there were tears and much self-recrimination.

There was not a moment to lose, “feed, feed, feed”, advised the Bee Inspector. Twenty kilos of sugar and 8.5 litres of water later, and my amazing little colony has restored itself, winter brood is hatching and the foraging bees have been out and about collecting replacement nectar and pollen. Today we saw a bee staggering up to the hive entrance dragging along its bulging sacs of bright orange pollen, like a shopper heading home after the winter sales. A last minute flurry on a Michaelmas daisy perhaps?

So it’s time for final preparations before the bees settle down for their long winter sleep. The hive roof is insulated, the final feed is being guzzled and the mouse guard to ready to be screwed over the hive entrance. The key question is whether the bees now have stores of honey to last until March. They say that an experienced “beek” just has to heft the back of the hive to know instantly the precise weight of honey stores. It seems to me that hefting is a risky business. An overly hearty heft could launch the whole hive into the hedge. I hefted my hive with caution. As a beek of a mere 4 month’s experience my assessment of the weight of honey stores was “bloody heavy”. Lacking a “bloody heavy” to kilos conversion chart I’m thinking of using my own measuring system by estimating the hive weight based on equivalent number of Charlies, with each Charlie equating to 7 kilos. He’s a whole lot of cat!

Anyway, I shall leave you with an interesting fact picked up at last week’s meeting of my local Welsh Bee Keepers Association (a monthly mid-week autumn evening highlight on the Lampeter social calendar). During winter a shrew will climb into a hive, pick off individual sleepy bees from the edge of the colony cluster and precisely nibble just the bee’s furry thorax to snack on the energy packed muscles used by the bee as it beats it’s wings to regulate the hive temperature. The shrew equivalent to a Kellogg’s Special K yoghurt coated snack bar!

Death & Distraction

Death has been on my mind a lot recently. I worry about my bee colony - have they built up sufficient honey stores to make it through their first winter or did my accidental killing of a handful or two of bees hamper their efforts. I worry about Hera - will she ever lay another egg or do Dave’s dark mutterings about “pay her way”, “return on investment” and “casserole” mean an early demise for her. And as of yesterday I worry about the pigs – will I cope knowing that we’re counting down their final 56 days or will I break down at the last minute, denounce pork products and embrace the quorn burger.

Yes, the pigs have a date with destiny and their journey to the big wallow in the sky begins on 27th October. I’ve put many dates in my diary over the years, but I can confidently say that “slaughter day” is not one I’ve ever pencilled in before. It’s just as well that we’re now on the slippery slope towards the slaughterhouse as the bigger my porky girls get, the more difficult feeding them becomes. Distraction is key to a successful feeding time. Throwing in a handful or two of tasty grass & yummy chard leaves, gives me time to get to the feed bin, fill the feed bucket & get to the gate. It used to get me safely through the gate, but the girls are now wise to my tricks. These days I struggle to get in the gate without the pigs getting out, I fight to get to the trough without the pigs knocking me over or having my feet for breakfast, and I usually fail to get the feed in the trough before it disappears under a mass of heads, ears, snouts and trotters. This hasn’t stopped the girls from fattening up nicely though. Alice may think the back scratching and belly rubbing is purely for her enjoyment, when in reality what’s actually going through Dave’s mind is “how many chops”, “how many rashers” and “how big a ham”. Harsh but true. Repeat after me, pigs are not pets, pigs are not pets ….