I have a very old friend who lives in Scotland. He told me of an uncle of his who used to keep bees in his roof garden in Edinburgh. Unfortuately, his uncle died and the day of his dead uncle’s funeral, arrangements were made for a hearse to take his body to the local church. The story goes that the bees swarmed and followed the hearse down the road to the church. What a beautiful send-off from the bees!
Archive for September, 2007
The Edinburgh Beekeeper’s Funeral
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on September 24, 2007| 2 Comments »
Swarm Settles on a Horse!
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping on September 24, 2007| Leave a Comment »
When we moved into our new cottage, we soon met the neighbours. One neighbour told us of an old lady who has kept bees for over forty years who lives a bit further up the lane. One day her bees swarmed into the next door field and settled……….on a white horse – owned by our neighbour! The swarm then left the horse and finally settled in a tree. The old lady (a bit younger then) caught the swarm and put it back into one of her hives. Quite extraordinary! I have heard of swarms settling in many strange places – but never on a horse! When I finally met the old lady, she was not aware the bees had settled on the horse. Perhaps it is just a good story! Who knows?
The Wax Mistress’ Secret
Posted in Bee Present, Beekeeping on September 24, 2007| Leave a Comment »
At the weekend, our local beekeeping group held their annual honey show. I met a very interesting lady who was the “wax mistress” – with some beautiful exhibits made from beeswax. I was intrigued to know how to separate wax from honey and pollen – as I have a whole load of this mixture that I have collected over the past year from the hive and from the honey extracting process. She told me one of her tricks. She advised me to put the wax in a baker’s tin which has the bottom cut out – and to line the tin with lint (from the chemists), fuzzy side up. The lint is kept in place with a piece of string. The baker’s tray is then hung from the top rack of your oven with a wire coat hanger. Below is the collecting tray or bowl – which has a small amount of rainwater in the bottom to stop the wax from sticking. The oven is set at 50 degrees Centigrade and the wax should melt through the lint and into the collecting tray, floating on top of the rainwater. This all sounds quite obvious once you hear it – but would take ages of trial-and-error to come up with it from scratch.
The Magic of Drone Congregation Areas
Posted in Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on September 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »
One of the most intriguing things that I have learnt about bees is the unexplainable magic of drone congregation areas. Why magic? On lazy-hazy sunny days, year after year, genration after generation, drones will congregate in particular areas to wait for any passing queens that need mating. Yet how do the drones know where these areas are when when old drones are kicked out of the hives in Autumn and a new generation of drones only reappear the next year when the queen starts laying new drones in the Spring?
Drones being pushed out of the hive in Autumn
Geographic knowledge passed on from one generation of drones to the next without direct communication – as if by magic! Perhaps the same magic that birds use generation-after-generation to migrate from one part of the world to another?
Egg Laying Machine!
Posted in Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping on September 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »
A queen bee, the mother of all bees in the hive, will lay an average of 1500 eggs in a day!
The Appearance
Posted in Beetwixt & Beetween, Bylaugh on September 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »
The next second or two are a blank. Just as people in an accident can often remember some parts with extreme clarity and then blank-out, so I had a blank moment. I suppose it makes sense if you think about it. All these sensations and feelings piled up into a couple of seconds must mean that your brain has gone into overload. My brain must have done that. I didn’t run. I didn’t get a large adrenalin-rush and feel my heart race at double its normal pace. I just stood there and watched in awe. It was a bit like watching one of those old movies when the frames don’t quite mesh together and time jumps from one scene to the next leaving a bit out in the middle. That is what happened. One moment I was looking at the dark sun with the indescribable humming noise. The next thing I remember was looking at the railing on the fence about two metres in front of me to see a large black ball appear. It seemed to grow in front of me like a balloon which was being blown up – and it kept on getting larger and larger until eventually the buzzing got quieter, the sun returned to its normal brightness and the balloon became a large black blob about the size of a medicine ball with a moving skin.
113 Pounds of Honey!…..and How to Convert Crystallised Honey into Winter Stores
Posted in Bee Present, Beekeeping on September 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Well the kitchen has been full of the tools for the honey harvest over the past few weeks. With unpacking boxes and extracting and bottling the honey, our lives have been quite busy. We got 113 pounds off – quite a bit more than last year. Of the hives, Faith has come up trumps again, giving us about 5 supers. Hope is no more. The hive was taken over by wasps in August – due to negligence when the move was going on. And Charity seems to have a new lease of life in the past weeks and might survive winter, if only the queen can lay some new brood. A local very experienced beekeeper gave me a great tip about putting back on the hives the extracted supers. Several of the supers went solid. He told me to de-cap the comb and spray it with water. In fact, I left it out for two or three days to capture some moisture – which seemed to have the same effect – and then put them back on the hive on top of a queen excluder below an empty super. The bees think that the gap is not part of the hive and they draw-down the crystallised honey to make winter stores. He said you can also put one frame to allow the bees to climb up. A great way of feeding the bees for winter – though I am not sure if it will bring the queens on laying brood too late in the season. It has been a very mild September so far – so hopefully all will be well. Though Hope is gone, I will re-start her with a new colony next year. Never give up Hope!
Bee Lore 
