Update from the beehives: August 2014

the hives in various states of activity; L-R productive hive with 4 supers, merging two hives, another productive hive, new but stable colony.

After battling to ensure that all of our bee colonies have (and keep!) queens over the summer I think we have finally managed to get them stable but only two out of 6 have produced any significant honey. We finally gave up trying to get one colony to re-queen and are now combining it with another one that is small be appears perfectly healthy after a change of queen in July.

Luckily, the two hives with spare honey have been very productive and having spent the weekend harvesting the honey we find that we have almost 50 kilo-grammes! The other we will leave to build up their numbers and reserves before winter.

Here is our kitchen turned into a honey lab for the day and the resulting, deep dark rich autumn honey. Its the strongest tasting honey we have ever had; it really is amazing how it differs in flavour each year.

rosi24 August 2014Comment