If only

Weather forecasters. 16C in my dreams or should i say in their dreams. it was overcast and cold but the girls were still flying.  Off to check the out apiaries today, the farm and surfleet.  Early orders for this years nucs and colonies is going well, not as manic as last year but at a more manageable pace.

Had a look around the general area yesterday, several fields of oil seed rape within flying distance and the willow has just started to show the white tails of the catkins.

Life in the apiary

The weather has turned mild, really mild, 16C tomorrow is the forecast.  it is very early in the year but a quick peek in the hives will let me know what to expect in the coming season.

The wild willow is all set to flower, and this will signal the start of serious egg laying by my queens, it always has from the earliest i have recorded flowering 28 January, to the latest 25 March.  It is a huge early pollen producer in this area.

In the beginning

As I should start somewhere, it might as well be here.

I keep bees, I am a beekeeper.

The number of hives I keep varies between 10 and 25 depending on the time of year and how many I sell. All of my beekeeping equipment is British Standard National.  For those that are unsure exactly what this means I will pull up some photos and explain further.  All of my Queens are either imported artificially inseminated Buckfast x Carniolan or descendants of previous years imported Queens.  The colonies they produce have a lovely nature are hard working and productive.
At this time of year, with the kind of weather we are experiencing ( freezing ), the colonies are tucked up tight, in a kind of dormancy.  The normal lifespan of a worker honeybee is only 5 - 6 weeks, but the workers that hatched in late September will live through to early Spring.