Huddersfield and District Bee Keeping Association

(A beginners first year)

Like a lot of people the idea of bee keeping appeals, but I never had the right place to keep them. Not a very good excuse I know. In December 06 though I moved to a house with some spare land at the back.
Mick my bee-keeping accomplice came up and said “this is a good spot for bees” and we both agreed it was time to stop talking and get on with it. At that point we forgot all about it until June 07 when I was at Honley show, I got talking to Brian who was manning the HBKA stand with two others in a sweltering marquee.
I attended a couple of open hive meetings that year, which were enjoyable, especially the tea and homemade cakes. At one point I contemplated not bothering with the bees as the veil gets in the way of the cake!

I was advised that it was too late in the season to get a nucleus as it would not have time to build up to survive the winter. Mick and I concentrated on educating ourselves and getting the required tackle together for the following season. Sorry that’s not quite right, I read the books while Mick said things like “What’s this bit for? What do we do then?” etc etc.

A good book recommended by Brian is Ted Hooper’s, ‘Guide to bees and honey’, the bible for beekeepers. Though being the bible it can be a bit heavy going in places for a beginner. We were steered in the direction of Leeds beekeepers by Maureen for our 2 second-hand hives, which both scrubbed up well for the money.

The bees were a bit harder to come by but I came across a commercial beekeeper Phil Askham in Barnsley, who said he would set us up with 2 nuclei the following season. They would be pure Carnica bees with a Slovenian queen. “Docile bees, good for beginners but a bit on the swarmy side” he said. He was correct on both counts as I later discovered. In May 08 Phil rang to say the queen’s had arrived and all being well the nuc’s would be ready in a couple of weeks. At last I would be a beekeeper. Mick and I travelled to Hoyland one Sunday and spent a day with Phil looking at his hives, as he showed us around his various apiary sites. One thing I like about Phil and other beekeepers is how generous they are with their time especially in getting novices off on the right foot.

Finally in mid June we went to collect our bees and the real fun began. Mick’s apiary is on some land at the side of his house, we decided to off load his first. All the reading and watching other people must prepare you for getting your own bees, but that evening it felt like the blind leading the blind. Between us we fumbled the brood box onto the stand with a thud, not so docile bees everywhere. My nuc was sited on the land at the back of my house behind a dry stone wall I had newly constructed. My intention was to keep quiet about my new hobby, but my not so cunning plan unravelled even before the bees arrived. One of my neighbours said “That’s a strange place for a wall Ben, what are you hiding behind it?” I had to come clean. Touch wood none of the neighbours have been stung so they are happy enough about the bees, another advantage of the Carnica bee’s docile nature.

Last summer was very wet as everyone knows so I fed my bees gallons of syrup using my new rapid feeder. This is where the novice I me really started to show. I had the misguided the idea that more is better and even more is even better. Looking back this is where all the complications started. Interfering in nature too much instead of just letting the bee’s get on with it can and does backfire!

I shall explain, feeding the bees gave them energy to draw out the foundation but then they filled the cells with the unending supply of syrup. This was not helped by my trip to Canada for 3 weeks and not getting a ‘super’ on the hive soon enough, in short the bees ran out of space. The queen did not have enough brood space to lay eggs in and so the instinct to swarm was set in place or is it stone? Try as I might once those bees wanted to go none of my interfering was going to stop them. My hive was turbo charged it had doubled in size in little more than six weeks and had an unsettling number of drones way above the norm. In contrast Mick’s hive that hadn’t been fed nearly as much resembled something out of a textbook, good brood patterns, correct proportion of drones and making steady increase.

I arrived home from work one afternoon in mid August to be confronted by my neighbour David, in a slightly distressed state “ Ben I think your bees have swarmed” not what I had wanted to hear but no big surprise. He told me that at lunchtime thousands of bees had been flying around above his garden and then descended into the hedge. David and his wife had taken refuge indoors, my intention was not to terrorise them with my hobby! There was now no trace of the bees so fearing the worst I ran around to the hive to discover the queen wandering around on the ground beneath the hive with a few workers. I quickly got her into a jam jar and then panicked. Not knowing what to do I phoned Anne from the club who advised me to make up a three-frame nucleus with the queen in a separate brood box. On going into the hive I was surprised to see it was still full of bees, they had flown back to the hive, all was not lost. In the end I managed to reunite the two hives before winter, as the nuc never really got big enough to survive. Suffice to say the hive went into winter with plenty of bees, stores and the original queen.

September arrived which is the beekeepers favourite time of the year, honey harvest the reward for all that hard work and very exciting for a novice. I looked forward to spreading my own honey on hot buttered toast, all I can say is it’s a good job I like jam! Mick borrowed the clubs extractor and with Brian’s help got a very pleasing 14 lbs of honey, which tasted excellent. Myself on the other hand had a hive full of drones and no honey. Oh well Ce la vie.

The last thing to do before the hive closes down for winter is Varroa treatment. I chose Apiguard but was unsure whether it was put in the hive early enough as it is only effective above a certain temperature. So in December I made a rather ‘Heath Robinson’ oxalic acid vaporiser out of plumbing pipe, similar to the one Brian showed us but with the addition of a Perspex lid so I could view the bees choking.

Mick and I have had great fun in our first year as bee keepers and I for one think making mistakes is all part of learning, but it doesn’t get you the honey so next year I will be trying harder. Finally many thanks to everyone in the club who have offered advice and help because without it I would have probably never baked a Victoria cream sponge!