A Beekeeper’s Journey – Part 3: You Will Get Stung!

A Beekeeper’s Journey – Part 3: You Will Get Stung!

So much has happened since the last blog. Kings Sutton Community Beekeeping (KSCB) are live and are now beekeeping. How did we get there so quickly:

- I was nominated as the Kings Sutton Community Bee Warden. I was officially sworn in by the Parish Council and recently presented on how the grant they provided has benefited the community.

Me in my beekeeper suit!

- During March we have built our two hives from flatpack. This includes roof, frames, 1 brood chamber, 2 supers with metal frame runners, crown board, queen excluder and floor.

- During March we built a hive base stand and positioned this on the field we have been given permission to place our Apiary.

Our new hive all set up and ready to go!

- Our bees (Nuc) were collected on April 12th and placed next to our Hive for the initial 3 hours to allow the bees to start their initiation flights. This allows the colony of bees to perform orientation flights before they start foraging and before they are positioned in their hive.

- The bees were then placed into the hive on the 12th of April.

- The bees were fed daily to help them develop the colony on sugar water. This is done via a feeder in the hive and in liquid format. This is normally done for 7 days but after 3 days are bees were foraging so well; we stopped feeding and removed the feeder frame.

- On the 18th April some of the group carried out our first detailed hive inspection, our first ever inspection inside a live hive. Very intimidating but a massive learning curve. The hive was healthy with both female and male eggs being produced and we managed to spot our queen. There was already a healthy amount of honey.

On the hunt for the queen bee!

- On the 27th of April we will carry out a non-intrusive hive inspection and then go to a regular weekly visual check.

- Some of the KSCB group have started our beekeeping training with the Oxfordshire Beekeeping Association (OBKA). This requires us to attend 4 theory sessions and 5 practical sessions.

- We are looking forward to extracting honey in July for the first time.

This quarters quiz question is:

Approximately how many eggs can a queen bee lay in her life?

The winner will be announced at the end of May and will get a jar of Oxfordshire honey. I will continue with a quarterly blog on progress and ‘I still have not yet been stung!’