It’s still reasonably mild and the girls are coming and going with lots of orange pollen. I’ve never seen them so calm.
We all wanted to turn the Air Con on during those near 40 degree days of 2022. The bees you can see on the landing board are using their wings to send cooler air into the hive for other inside to circulate keeping the temperature to around 35 degrees.
The easiest way to extract honey from the comb is to spin it. This is a good quality food grade stainless steel spinner.
You simply remove the wax cap from one side of the frame place it in the cage and switch on.
Centrifugal force does the rest meaning the honey hits the side of the tank and runs down to collect in the bottom. You then uncap the other side and do the same.
The honey is then drained into a settling bucket to allow the bubble to escape and then it‘s time to fill the jars.
This video is a little long but you don’t need to watch much to understand what the bees are up to.
There are hundreds of different types of bee and the most divers group are Solitary Bees. By the name you can guess that they don’t live in a hive or nest.
If you fancy having bees in your Garden, Courtyard or even on your Balcony that won’t cause you or your neighbours any issues, why not have a go.
You can buy bee hotels on line but you can make your own. All the solitary bee is looking for is a dry and warm hole in wood, brickwork or even cut lengths of hollow bamboo bundled together. You do need to fit it to a wall.
The bees come in many sizes so it’s good to make many different size holes. They should be about 80mm deep and clean from any splinters or sawdust. All you do now is fit the to a sun facing wall and wait.
It’s late in the season now but put it in place now so it will naturalise over the winter. There is a chance you will get some Ivy Bees now in August as the ivy is just coming into flower.
So what do the bees do in each hole?
If they like their new found accommodation they will first gather pollen and put it at the far end of the hole. They will then come out, turn around, reverse back in and lay an egg. They then fly off to collect mud or leaves to build a wall, sealing the egg inside. Then they start again with more pollen against that wall, another egg and another wall, repeating this until the hole is completely full with perhaps 10 or 12 eggs.
It’s great fun to watch and you’re helping the planet. No honey I’m afraid.
Today, the 15th of November 2022, rain against my bedroom window woke me but being my day off I just snuggled up and listened to it. I have some gardening tasks to complete which were out of the question.
When I eventually got up and while drinking my coffee I had a peek at my beecam to see if the girls were looking to see what the weather was up to. Occasionally a single bee came to the entrance, turned around in disgust and went back in.
About half an hour ago it stopped raining and the sun came onto the hive. As if this was a switch they burst into action.
Not looking into the hive to see if all is well is killing me but I am assured that I should not disturb until the spring.
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