Trish Stretton
Deeply Rooted
I bought myself a new years present in 2017- my very own bees to go in my very own hive.
At first, I thought I might be lucky enough to catch a swarm and waited...almost too long before I realised that it wasnt going to happen so I had better hurry up and buy some.
Its been an interesting couple of years managing to keep them alive sometime by the skin of our teeth due to lack of experience.
January is mid summer here and I have since been told that it is not a good time to get bees...no wonder I thought I had bought a lemon/dog. But, still they did survive and still are.
My end goal was to be a treatment free beek.
I have come to the conclusion that in order to do this successfully, you really do need to be an experienced beekeeper. I'm not there yet, so that goal is still way over there on the horizon....but I do have a master plan to get there. so far, in spite of hiccups, I think we are a couple of steps further along.
I imported some plastic small cell frames from Mann Lake ltd and started them on the road to getting down to small cell.
In autumn/winter I messed up and almost lost them. Thankfully the man who does my legal AFB check realised that I was making the same mistake he had in his second year and helped me turn things around, saving us to go on for another year.
So, While I have not been able to get them to the point I wanted to get them to, that being on all small cell frames that had the width of the frames shaved down from 34/5 mm to 32mm; I still have live bees going into another winter.
And they still had enough spare honey comb this year so I could have some too.
Blessed, both by them and this amazing learning curve.
At first, I thought I might be lucky enough to catch a swarm and waited...almost too long before I realised that it wasnt going to happen so I had better hurry up and buy some.
Its been an interesting couple of years managing to keep them alive sometime by the skin of our teeth due to lack of experience.
January is mid summer here and I have since been told that it is not a good time to get bees...no wonder I thought I had bought a lemon/dog. But, still they did survive and still are.
My end goal was to be a treatment free beek.
I have come to the conclusion that in order to do this successfully, you really do need to be an experienced beekeeper. I'm not there yet, so that goal is still way over there on the horizon....but I do have a master plan to get there. so far, in spite of hiccups, I think we are a couple of steps further along.
I imported some plastic small cell frames from Mann Lake ltd and started them on the road to getting down to small cell.
In autumn/winter I messed up and almost lost them. Thankfully the man who does my legal AFB check realised that I was making the same mistake he had in his second year and helped me turn things around, saving us to go on for another year.
So, While I have not been able to get them to the point I wanted to get them to, that being on all small cell frames that had the width of the frames shaved down from 34/5 mm to 32mm; I still have live bees going into another winter.
And they still had enough spare honey comb this year so I could have some too.
Blessed, both by them and this amazing learning curve.