Tim Harberd, our trusty ‘bee man’ and his helper Ben visited the Farm yesterday to check up on our bees. The weather wasn’t nice in April, and for one of our hives it was almost disastrous.  As Tim said,  “I’ve never had to feed bees in late April before. When the weather is really bad you can do a lot of damage opening a hive, so we only managed one proper inspection in the whole of April!  Fortunately we caught the starving hive just in time. ” Phew!

 

 

“May has been much kinder so far. Today we removed the first Drone Trap frame. The blood sucking mite, varroa, prefers to feed on male bee grubs. So we give the hive a frame of male sized comb (the cells are bigger than in female comb). Once the comb has a fair number of drones (males), ready to hatch, we remove the comb and check for mites. The good news is, we failed to find any mites. It’s highly unlikely that there aren’t any mites, but it is good to know that the infestation level is low, and we don’t need to treat. ” 

You can read more  here about the deadly mite Varroa that has been so horrendous for bees worldwide and if you’re interested in bees, have a look at the British Beekeepers Association website.

On the 27th March Tim Harberd, our resident Bee Keeper, and Ben once again visited our Bee colony. They had some positive news with Tim explaining ‘Once again, the hive which apparently went into the winter as our weakest colony is now our strongest colony! We saw two out of three Queens, although the third is obviously in residence. We also saw plenty of brood.’

Brood is the name given to offspring of Bees in the embryo, lava and pupa stages of life, before becoming adults. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_(honey_bee)

In the picture Ben is inspecting a brood frame. The light brown colour in the centre of the frame is capped brood. This is the stage where Bee lava change to pupa and then become adults.

On a technical note the only brood boxes we use are National Standard ‘super’ (honey) boxes.

For more information on different types of Hives visit http://www.honeyshop.co.uk/hives.html

The Bees are Back!

Tim Harberd, our bee keeper extraordinaire has been up to the moors on his trusty tandem to bring the hives home to the Farm. I asked him why he chose to take the bees to the moors in particular; ‘ Apart from the fact that I like heather honey, taking the hives up to the moors gives us the opportunity to get any less friendly colonies off the Farm for the summer holidays!’ Sounds like a very sensible idea to me!

Sabotage

Unfortunately when Tim arrived it was obvious, even from a distance, that one of the hives had been interfered with. It’s hard to say what happened, but the roof was off and the boxes were knocked out of alignment. The damaged hide had a thick drift of composting bee bodies in front of it. There’s a slight chance that a remnant has survived inside, but it’s unlikely. Sadly, the culprits are likely to have been humans and the casualties, the bees. The only consolation is that it was quite an aggressive hive and they probably didn’t go quietly!

So this year we have three active colonies at the Farm. Fingers crossed they produce a lot of yummy heather honey for sale in our shop later this year!

If you are interesting in beekeeping, or bees in general you can find out a lot more information on the British Beekeepers Association website.

Spring!

The first signs of Spring are appearing at the Farm; suddenly new life is popping up all over the place as the Farm begins to make the transition to a new season. Daffodils and crocuses (or is it croci?) bloom all over the grass in front of the Epicentre and our pregnant ewes have been taken into our  dutch barn to make sure they’re warm and safe before they give birth. Ian our Farmer and his team are going to be working flat out as soon as the first lambs arrive. It’s always an exciting, but slightly nerve wracking time! If you’re lucky you may get to see a lamp being born!

The Garden Team are also hard at work getting the market garden up to scratch and preparing the amenity gardens for the Summer and more produce is starting to appear in our Farm Shop.

Toads and frogs are coming back to our ponds and will soon be making  a cacophony of noise as they start to mate! It’s surprising the amount of noise generated from such small creatures! Birds have been having a look at our nest box, sizing it up as a suitable home to rear a brood of chicks. We’ve got a webcam linked from the nest box to a screen in the Epicentre so you can see the action as it happens! More chicks are appearing by the day, as schools taking part in our incubator project bring back the newly hatched bundles of fluff.

We’ve got some exciting events coming up too, see our Events Page for details.

See you soon!

Check out BBC 2 tonight, Wednesday 22nd February, from 8pm for Bees, Butterflies & Blooms presented by Sarah Raven, followed by Winterwatch with Chris Packham, Kate Humble and Martin Hughes-Games.

Rock News-The Weekly Tweet

Exciting times for the Education Team at Farm this week-we’re going on a field trip to the Lake District! We’re visiting the Honister Slate Mine, http://www.honister.com/ in search of a giant lump of slate. Why, you may ask, would an Urban Farm be procuring several tons of slate rock? It’s part of a larger project to create a giant rock timeline in our Scothall Field. We run a variety of school’s projects at the Farm, one of which is ‘Rocks and Soil’ https://www.mvuf.org.uk/education/schools-projects/rocks-and-soil/ in which we introduce school children to basic geology. The rocks we look at are all hundreds of millions of years old, (try working out how many noughts there are in one hundred million!) and it’s hard to convey how old that actually is, especially related to how long humans, animals and even plants have been around for.

So we’ve had the bright idea of installing a giant rock timeline; pupils at the Farm have worked hard to clear four large squares of earth, which is then covered with substrate,(the crushed up parent rock) all ready for the giant rock to be put on  top of it. The timeline has been carefully measured out by two of our graduate volunteers, (thank you Caroline and Gemma) so that the rocks are put in order of age. Right at the end of our timeline will be human beings. The scale we’ve used is 40cm=1 million years. Guess what distance we take up? (Clue, it’s not very far and you’ll find the answer somewhere on our Facebook page). So visitors and pupils alike can come to the Farm, walk our timeline and touch the rocks that have been here far longer than any living creature. Amazing huh?

We’ll let you know how we get on, some of us are a bit claustrophobic and the weather forecast looks pretty chilly too, fingers crossed!

Latest From the Hidden Hide………

Our hidden bird hide is proving hugely popular with all manner of birds this Winter. We’ve got all of the tit family, a wren, a pair of bullfinches and even a tree creeper has been spotted! This could have something to do with the fact that we’ve recently made a couple of improvements to it; we’ve squirrel proofed our feeders and added to them so that now our lucky birds have a choice of six feeders to munch through! As I type this from our office I can hear a cacophony of noise as they squabble and jostle for position, (the robins are bravest and the male bullfinch is a big bully)!

But we need your help…………….

Did you know it’s the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend, 28th and 29th January? We’d really like people to come and do it here on the Farm! It’s a brilliant way of discovering which birds are around and monitoring bird numbers across the country. All the details are here, along with a sheet for you to record your results http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/ All you have to do is make a note of the highest number of each bird species seen on the ground (not flying over) at any one time over the course of an hour and then record your results on the website. Easy peasy! Oh and let us know what you find too!

Calling all budding wildlife photographers………..

There’s so much wildlife on the Farm; we’ve seen red kites, roe deer, owlets, water voles (Ratty!) and rare birds, but we’ve never been able to capture decent images, particularly of the birds. Our Farm camera is just not up to the task! If anyone wants to come to the Farm and take some images for us, we’d be hugely grateful. They would potentially be shared on our website and social media sites and we’d credit the photos if you’d like. If you’re interested please email us at education@mvuf.org.uk.