BEES

What can I say about bees.

Barry the bee man who has been a beekeeper all his life has few words about them. He is still learning and surprised and intrigued.

Barry used to bring us bee hives every spring for our apple orchard pollination. We would pay him to bring them for a few months and then he would take them back, actually take them somewhere warmer for winter as he reckons they don't do too well here over the cold wet months. A few years ago I thought it would be a good idea if they moved in here permanently.

So we now have a few hundred thousand bees.

We are just beginners and are trying to learn as much as we can about a society that is so extremely complex that the more we learn the more our minds boggle. I think the reality is that we can never really understand what is going on

We listen and read and learn. 

Here we are checking the hives, and putting a new box on top of each one with a queen excluder between so that we can hopefully share some of their honey toward the end of summer. 

Oh by the way as part of my helicopter hobby I've also got a GoPro camera recently, and am loving it. This was all shot on this tiny little camera that can go anywhere.

Do you love bees?

Do you love honey?

Do you love GoPos?

Cheers 

Farmer Bren.

Buzzy bees!

Animated gif maker

The blossom in our orchards is out, but the forecast for the next week's weather isn't great. It looks like today will be THE POLLINATION DAY.

Bees like still, warm weather.

Look at what a wonderful job that bee is doing. It is amazing that he be able to fly with all that pollen on his legs?

Go bees go! Pollinate the orchard, make lots of fruit for this season.

And thank you for the wondrous, important work that you do.

Honey

I've had that Abba song in my head for days now...

"Honey honey how you thrill me aha honey honey..."

A few weeks ago Bren and Andy carefully removed a couple of frames from each of our bee hives being careful to leave enough for the bees to eat over the cold winter months ahead.

When the frames are removed the honey is covered in wax.
As the bees finish filling each cell in the honey comb they cover them with wax, this is called capping. They do this to protect and preserve the honey.

The first part of extracting the honey is to remove the cappings.

Using a hot, sharp knife you scrape them off.

We were lucky enough to borrow some old and beautiful equipment from a bee loving friend of ours Bria. Thanks so much Bria. XX

Two frames at a time are lowered into the spinner.

And then the handle is turned and the honey is spun out of the frames.

It flicks onto the sides of the drum, dribbles down to fill up the bottom and then out the tap ready to fill up the jars and be eaten on toast, in our porridge, on crackers, from a spoon....mmm

As for you Anonymous with the correct answer from last post.

You'll have to out yourself to claim your prize.