I wonder how many of you are old enough to recall the tag line I used in the title. As a child I used to love Sugar Puffs - you can find an original clip of the advert

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Anyway, back to the point of the post - honey. Its been just over a year since I became a beekeeper, and as my mentors keep telling us, me and my fellow new beeks, couldn't have picked a more difficult year to get started. The textbooks went out the window as bees started swarming as early as March due to the unseasonably warm weather. May and June is their usual time for swarming.

Then instead of stopping feeding them as Spring progressed and the bees set off to forage on all the Spring flowers and blossom, the gloom set in. Weeks of endless grey and rain followed by more rain, and just in case we hadnt had enough of the irony that we also had water restrictions in place and a hose pipe ban, even more rain. I had to feed my bees most the summer.  I worried about whether they would survive.

Bees can't fly when it rains which means they were entirely dependant on me and solutions of Tate and Lyle's best granulated sugar and water.  I think my Ocado delivery man may well wonder what the hell I was doing with all that sugar. Normally a 1kg bag of granulated sugar will last us a whole year because we eat very little sugar, except for baking, when I use caster. Now we were having regular deliveries of 10kgs at a time!  The bees consumed it at an alarming rate.  So far my 3 colonies have pulled through although the 2 frames of honey you see in the photo is all I have been able to harvest from 3 hives. A pitiful amount, but I know from talking to my peers, everyone is in the same boat and honey harvests are severely reduced this year across the country.

At the beginning of the month, an article I had written some weeks earlier appeared in the Parish Magazine, 'Contact'.  I told people about my reasons for bee keeping, and asked if anyone would consider allowing me to re-site my bees on their land in the village as I wanted to be able to walk or cycle to them, as I am not always able to drive due to medication. To say I was overwhelmed by the response is an understatement. The first Sunday it was being delivered to homes by volunteers, I had 6 phone calls alone from kind souls offering me a place to set up an apiary.  The phone calls kept coming, and very soon I had more offers than I knew what to do with.  I decided the least I could do is visit every generous caller, and talk to them about the suitability of the spot they were offering me.

One of the major considerations for me was accessibility.  Could I walk or cycle there in a reasonably quick time, and was their vehicular access in close proximity for the times I had to use the car to transport heavy items to and from the apiary.  Since the surgery/radiotherapy and the onset of Lymphoedema my right arm has become a bit of a liability and I have to be very mindful of some activities. Carrying heavy weights is one of them. Bee-keeping involves carrying things, so I had to be sure I wasn't walking across fields to gain access to my bees.

I duly visited all the prospective sites, some were perfect, sheltered, great access, undisturbed, others were in small gardens next to the grandchild's climbing frame!  I thanked and encourage or discouraged people as best I could, and when I visited a site that would be good for bees, but not good for me because of my physical limitations, I suggested the person keep bees themselves. I pointed them at the classes I had taken, and told them I was willing to hold their hands whilst they got going and confident.  I think a couple might well become beeks too.

So now I have a few good sites scattered around the village, the nearest being a 2 minute walk and the furthest a 12 minute cycle. But you only have 3 hives you cry! Well yes, but no! I bought another complete colony and hive from a bee-keeper who was giving up due to ill health. Well complete all but a Queen Bee.  The colony had obviously been queenless a while, so I nicked some brood from my strongest hive, and snuck it in and added a new Buckfast Queen for good measure. I know this was a gamble as it was a bit late in the season to attempt this, but the colony was a very large docile and hard working colony, which despite being queen-less  had been very busy collecting pollen and nectar as the combs were stuffed with it. All I could see where a few drone cells, so I assumed that maybe one of the Worker bees had begun to lay. They will do this in the absence of a Queen.  Because they haven't mated the eggs and larva they do produce are useless to the Hive.  Time will tell whether I saved the colony or if it was an expensive mistake. I am hoping that with feeding through the Winter, they will survive.

So what to do with all these new apiary sites? Well, for a while now I have been thinking about becoming a beellionaire (awful pun I know). I really LOVE my bees, I get a huge sense of well being working with them and it just seemed like the natural thing to do. So, I am expanding! I am going to put 2 hives initially on each of the new sites to get the landowners used to the idea, and then depending on the spaces suitability, some will stay at 2 others could take many more, I will grow steadily over the years and become a pukka bee-keeper who collects enough honey to sell and makes a little income from it too.

This means come Spring, I will have 12 hives set up at various sites around the village I live in. It will force me to be less introverted as I am bound to be meeting and talking to people as I go about my duties. It will also hopefully make me fitter and leaner as I walk and cycle to each locations.  But mostly, it will give me a purpose that has been lacking from my life for several years now, a sense of identity as far as what I 'do' is. I used to be a Computer Analyst/Programmer, later I was a Project Manager. I then morphed into a Garden Designer and studied hard to become one. Then Cancer struck and I have been aimless for a few years, not sure what to do with myself now I had slipped into the unemployable category.  So now when people ask me, what do you do, I can tell them with confidence 'I am a Beekeeper!'.