JUNE 7
It's pretty horrible outside today now that the weather has turned after three days of absolutely stunning sunshine. In a way, though, it is quite nice as it means that the garden gets watered for you and also gives me a little bit of time to ponder things. With Sebastian put to bed I have a chance to reflect on what it is I have done this last week. There is one problem, however; I have no real memory of what it is exactly I have done with the bees.
Now this isn't as daft as it sounds because everything has happened so quickly. I know I went to get the bees exactly eight days ago and that I messed up pretty badly giving them the wrong sugar but aside from that I cannot remember exact details. This is why beekeepers always need to fill in what are called 'hive cards'. For people like me who have a memory like a sieve and cannot retain important information for more than an hour, these little cards are imperative.
I first saw a hive card on the course in the winter and within the hour had forgotten about them. I then saw them again during my practical sessions when I realised that they were actually quite important documents if you wanted to have any record of what was going on. It was dawning on me how important it was to document aspects of an inspection like whether you had seen the queen, how many frames the bees were on, whether you saw any eggs, was there any sign of disease; the list was endless and hence the need for a record. I had, of course, completely ignored their importance and just got on with it. Considering I had received the call last Sunday and then within the hour I had my bees, I was quite underprepared.
Today I downloaded a hive card and printed a few out and started to use them immediately. You can also get online hive cards that you fill in using your phone, which sounds pretty clever but to be honest, I am not sure of their practical application. I am also not sure what the bees would make of a beekeeper tapping away furiously into his phone in one hand while holding a frame of bees in the other. Can you imagine what would happen if any honey got on the keypad; it would take the term 'sticky keys' to a new level and rather than recording '1' queen I could end up with '111111111111' instead.
To my knowledge, despite my cock-ups with 'light brown' and 'golden' caster sugar at the start of the week, I think they have gone through at least 5.5 litres of sugar solution, which sounds quite a lot. However, I suppose, if you break it down it may not be so much. Let's assume I have approximately 5,000 bees now in the hive; that means they would each have taken about a millimetre of sugar solution each… Doesn't sound as much then, does it?
JUNE 9
What an interesting evening. Tonight I attended the 'Big Buzz' event hosted by the organic people at Abel and Cole, deemed an 'eccentric bunch' by the founder Keith Abel. Eccentric they may be but I have to say they pulled it off exceptionally well.
I approached the venue, in the shadow of the beautiful Battersea Power Station, and was met immediately with a choice of Prosecco, white wine or rosé. As I walked through with a nice chilled glass of Prosecco, I was struck by several factors. Firstly, the average age of the people in the room was easily twenty years younger than I was used to at beekeeping-related events, none of them looked remotely like a morris dancer and there was even a jazz band in the room. I have a feeling my association comrades would have fainted by now at the shock of it all as this was hardly the demographic of beekeeper or style of our local meetings and events. It just shows the difference between rural and urban beekeeping trends as well as the scope of interest that the hobby is receiving at the moment.
It felt slightly weird arriving on my own especially as the others around me seemed a pretty cool bunch – something I had not been expecting – but I was fortunate to bump into a Twitter friend of mine @helpsavebees, otherwise known as Damien, and his guru in the design world, Liz, otherwise known as @mizzlizzwhizz. Damien, in his free time, runs a charity to 'Help Save Bees' and is passionate about everything to do with their plight; he is concerned with all bees from honeybees to solitary bees and, a particular favourite of his, the bumblebee. He therefore raises money to help other charities like the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and generally raises the profile of the plight of the bees to others like myself.
Being passionate about the topic he really opened my eyes about the situation they all face with regard to the diseases, which are so often discussed at the moment. He also taught me a lot about the problems we are facing with pesticides and neonicotinoids in particular causing great problems with bee populations. There is a thought that neonicotinoids, which are chemical nerve agents used on our crops to control insects, have an indirect effect on bee populations. You could see that Damien was especially passionate about this topic telling me that the pesticides were working their way into the bee ecosystem by infiltrating the pollen and nectar of plants and as a result being taken back to the hive. It is said that neonicotinoids interfere with bees' ability to navigate, which is obviously catastrophic. It was so different hearing it first hand from people that deal with bees and beekeeping everyday compared to reading a book or newspaper article about the problems.