Natural Beekeeping

In the last week of July we added what I expect to be our last box for the year, this time I got stung! A retreat was made to the house for peppermint spray to prevent further bee attention to my bare ankles (I was in my shorts again!|) and gather my full protective clothing.

The bees were certainly defensive, a lit bit more reading and I would have discovered this behaviour is normal as the hive prepares to extract the Drone bees.

I now enjoyed several weeks of tea breaks watching the bees behaviour identifying a continual flow of foraging bees, dancing bees, afternoon drone bee expeditions, evening fanning bees, its quiet addictive and you find yourself sitting quietly for longer and close than you might have expected with honey bees passing merrily and busily around you.

I have to say Melanie and I are very pleased to be using a Warre beehive, it feels right to not be pulling the bees hive / home apart each week to update a record card.

With this newfound confidence of being at home with the bees, our first additional box procedure was undertaken on a nice day in tea shirt and shorts, an operation that went well without a single bee lose, thanks to the help of a gentle feather and the action of sliding the boxes over each other. I really was feeling like a natural beekeeper.

We have added one box at a time, now totalling Five. The first time we added a Warre box was when the bees actually formed a beard at the hive entrance after just over two weeks of fine June weather demanding the need for additional space or else! They actually still had an empty box below them, we now add a box when the box above seems almost full.

If your hives are remote to your Monday to Friday residency you could set the hive up initially with three boxes, or add two boxes at the same time. We will also do this next summer to further reduce the number of hive interventions required.