Mark Slater, eCommerce Manager, describes his journey to becoming a bee keeper
I was lucky enough to attend a school where one of the teachers was a bee keeper. In the days before health and safety he was able to install a hive in the school reception with a small hole in the window for the bees to get in and out.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the numerous gruesome stories he would tell the class - such as how a bee sting is barbed and will rip out the insides of the bee when it stings you, or how a bee sting, if pulled out your skin, will cause all the poison in the attached sack to be injected into your system, or even the time when a wild hive fell onto his head and he ended up in hospital with over a thousand stings on his face and head; I still remained fascinated by keeping bees.
My enthusiasm had obviously been noticed by my wife, who one day announced she had treated us both to a beekeeping course. We attended the initial lectures and learned far more about bees that we believed possible. It seemed to be a very complicated subject indeed. One of the main requirements of a beekeeper is to inspect the colony regularly to ensure the bees do not have any diseases or parasites or are not thinking about swarming. In the latter case the bees will take at least half the colony and much of the honey with them, usually never to be seen again!
We were warned that we would get stung and indeed on my first inspection of the association’s hives I carelessly folded my arms and trapped a bee between them. This taught me two important facts: firstly, bee suits do not prevent you from being stung if the material is close to your skin; secondly, I don’t have a bad reaction to bee stings.
So after passing the course and joining the local beekeepers association and attending many more lectures, I was finally ready to have my own hives. I decided to collect my own swarm rather than paying for a hive of bees which can be very expensive. I put my name down on the association’s swarm list, prepared my hives and waited. During the swarming season April to June people around the area will suddenly find they have a huge number of bees (about 20,000 or more) fly into their garden and settle somewhere inappropriate such as just above the door to your shed, in your compositing bin or, in the case of the swarm I had to collect, hanging from the bottom of a trampoline. Non-beekeepers will then phone the local association who in turn call the people on the swarm list until they find someone willing to come out and collect.
The bees will only have settled at a potential site during the day and send out lots of scouts to find the best place possible. So as a swarm collector we turn up with a cardboard box, a large white sheet and a soft brush. Through various methods the collector will try to encourage the bees into the box. In my case this entailed hitting the top of the trampoline hard, causing the bees to drop into the box then quickly closing the lid before they could take revenge. I turned the box upside down with a small gap left for the returning scouts. As dusk approached I closed the box and wrapped the sheet carefully round it. Still in our full suits and hoods we drove home carefully, hoping none of the bees would escape inside the car. Once back at the site of the hive, I unwrapped the sheet and positioned it to provide a ramp up to the entrance of the hive. I emptied the box in a similar way to the method used to collect it, by opening it and shaking it upside down until the bees drop onto the sheet. As the evening cooled the bees were keen to find somewhere to hide from the elements and keep warm. They quickly marched up the ramp, off the bright, white sheet towards the safety of dark opening of the hive.
It was a tense time for me and, as I watched closely, I saw the queen bee (she’s twice as long as the worker bees) walk up into the hive. You know if she goes in and stays the rest of the hive will too so once the rest went in I closed the hive for a few days. The bees will have brought their own honey with them so will not need to collect any for a while but to make their new home more attractive I left a solution of sugar and water in a special feeder in the top of the hive to ensure they were well provided for.
A week passed and it was time for the first inspection. Nervously my wife and I opened up the hive and sure enough many of the flat wax frames that I had put in the hive had been formed into beautiful white combs, a number of which had been capped with wax indicating there would be a baby bee inside. So started my journey as a beekeeper, a hobby that is often hard work, worrying, puzzling and also very rewarding.
