We talked further about bee-related things and then got down to the subject about what would be flowering at the moment. Apparently the heather isn't always a great harvest but thrives in wet summers – hence the last two years have been pretty good. This did mean that this year wasn't looking great as it has been so dry but the last two weeks of wet weather may have helped me out. He did state that the heather had been flowering for a little while and he only hoped there would be enough nectar left for the bees to utilise.
He pointed out another flower which I should look out for, which is apparently going great guns at the moment, rosebay willow herb – I have never heard of it but if it helps then I promise to plant it in my own garden next year.
We talked about heather honey for a bit. I knew it wasn't like any other honey but I hadn't really considered that you need to extract it differently. Usually, when you extract honey you have to spin it around at high speeds and it all shoots out of the frames easily. Heather honey is quite different and it simply won't do this. It will stay in the frames stubbornly refusing to move. Removing heather honey is a lot more labour intensive and involves pressing and squeezing it out of the frames. Great, just my luck, I thought – but then again I only need a jar of it.
The head warden then started talking about a mate of his, however, who had designed a contraption that was made out of an old tumbledryer drum and spun at some ridiculous speed; enough to defeat the reluctance of the heather honey and throw it out of the frames. I suggested that this guy sounded like some sort of engineer. 'You could say that,' was the reply. 'He designed the engine for Concorde!' I nearly dropped the phone. I have to meet up with this guy, I thought. What a fantastic way to extract my honey under the direction of a Concorde designer. I made it a personal goal to meet this guy if I was in time for the heather nectar flow. This would be a far more entertaining way of extracting the honey than manually squeezing it out of the frames.
Having taken all of this in, it just left a few moments to get things arranged and work out exactly where the head warden lived. Looking at the map, I thought I lived in the middle of nowhere but this guy took that to a whole new level.
Saturday it is then. I will be moving my hive like a commercial beekeeper in America. I will literally be chasing the honey. Morally I know this isn't great as travel puts stress on the bees but I am only talking about one hive and a forty-five-minute drive. This is hardly the 3,000-mile journey the American bees make on the back of huge lorries, which usually takes two or three days. No wonder they get stressed out.
AUGUST 20
My preparations began today and I wanted to take a look in the National hive and assess the state of play before the move so that I could plan ahead. I was also interested to see whether there was any more honey in the super, just in case I was being a bit premature in this honey chasing.
I lit the smoker as usual and took off the hive roof. There seemed to be a lot more bees than usual up in the super which I took to be a good sign. Taking out the best super I could see that only a little bit more honey had been collected since my last inspection. However, it was really nice to see that about five or six cells had been capped over, which means that the consistency of the honey was right. Five or six cells, though, is hardly enough, considering the other frames didn't really have anything on them at all. This just confirmed that I am doing the right thing.
Stupidly, I was rushing a bit today and so was putting the frames back into the super quite quickly. This soon backfired as one frame, ironically the better frame with some capped honey, fell out of my hands. It was similar to watching toast fall from your hands at the breakfast table, spinning around in slow motion on its way down to the floor where it annoyingly lands butter side down. The same happened here but this time there were quite a few bees on it as well. I couldn't believe it. What had I done?
On picking it up gently, I realised there was no damage done except a few displaced bees who were a bit perplexed, as moments ago they were on a lovely yellow smooth frame and now they were fighting with long green stems of grass. I replaced the frame a little bit more carefully this time, relieved that I hadn't lost what little honey had been collected.
I lifted off the super and started to look through the brood box but no sooner had I done this than I felt a sensation like a mosquito bite on my leg. I couldn't believe it, especially as I was midway through lifting out a frame of bees. I calmly put the bees back down into the hive and then as a precaution I swatted at my leg. Walking away from the hive, it dawned on me that it was highly likely to have been a bee sting, especially as I was standing on the ground exactly where I had dropped the frame earlier.