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 Rusty Wise, UK

A BEEKEEPER’S TALE

The second part

 

The first part

Mid July and everything is ready for the move to the heather moors. The supers are on, the hives strapped up tight and at 4.30 a.m a bleary eyed beekeeper stumbles out to the apiary to block up the hive entrances. The hives are loaded onto a trailer as quickly as possible and away we go, an anxious trip of twenty miles, through a sleepy little market town, onto a busy dual carriageway then off onto narrow country lanes and bumpy tracks till we reach the farm at the edge of the purple moor land. I unload, say goodbye to my precious bees, and pray for six weeks of good weather.

 

At I home I still have WBC hives, they are much harder and bulkier to move so I leave them to work the local flowers. I attend Farmers Markets, and indulge in my other passion Long Distance horse riding-30 kms almost every Sunday (More paracetmol!) and still the honey bottling goes on!

After a hopefully, good, hot six weeks of late summer sunshine the heather is over and the bees ready to be brought home. Another early start to get to the hives before the bees start flying so they can be shut in. There are always some already out working and if they don’t hitch a ride on the outside of the hive, (like wing walkers at an a air show) they get left behind cold, hungry and homeless. I really don’t like that!

My confused little bees find themselves back at home in their apiary and the whole cycle starts again as I start to treat the colonies with Bayvarol and prepare to feed them sugar syrup, making sure all is ready for coming winter.

The very sticky job of cutting out and pressing the honeycomb is the last extracting job. The hardest work of all, but the thick brown honey is worth it.

The years are not without accidents too, I got stung on the nose and looked like a monster from behind the moon for a week, and one day the honey bucket overflowed! I found myself in hospital with anaphylaxis, thanks to a bad hive, now re-queened, with a lovely little superbee, and I even (accidentally) got the bees drunk on fermented honey syrup!!.

Now the year is at it’s end the honey shed is clean and tidy, any sticky residue washed away and the supers and spare brood boxes blow torched and treated with preservative!

Winter is back again.

A time for beekeeper to write stories! (about bees of course).

Rusty Wise (nee Terzic) (Author of the Belinda Bee books)

rusty@rustywise.wanadoo.co.uk