Bees
One of the first jobs of the year is to bring our bees back from the heather. We bring the honey harvest back in September, but at that point the Hive is packed with old bees and their honey/winter stores. Come March, hives contains less bees and less honey.
1. A hive on the quarry floor, secured for transport. The hive is sat on its roof to inspect for bee tightness. A leaky hive, with clouds of following bees, is not good practice!
2. Moving the bees from the moor and the heather where they've spent the winter.
3. Rolling home. The weather was unusually friendly that day! Talking of friendly.... we try to make our beekeeping as ecofriendly as possible, using human power where-ever possible.
After spending the winter on the moors feasting on heather, our bees come back to the Farm in the spring where they remain until late July. In a good year, the first honey crop may be as early as June. Honey used to be plentiful, with each hive producing 100lbs a year! Unfortunately, the honey bee population has massively declined in recent years, by as much as 50%. This is mostly from diseases spread as a result of mites and other parasites, as well as the spraying of crops with pesticides.
In Spring the bees are extremely busy, bringing in pollen in many different colours. The yellow load shown in the photo is probably willow pollen, although dandelion looks very similar!
Bees from the Farm bringing in pollen.
Famous Bees include Berry B. Benson from DreamWorks ‘A Bee Movie’ and Maya the Bee from Nickelodeon cartoon; and although not technically a Bee, there’s Bumblebee from Transformers.
