Finally the weekend of the bee keeping had arrived. A group of interested souls turned up at the village hall, clutching their marigolds eagerly awaiting their introduction into the world of bee keeping.
Julia & Martin Hoggett of beeEd kicked off the 3 days on Friday evening with an talk
on 'Bee Friendly Gardening'. It gave a brief insight to what goes on in the garden and why bees & other pollinators are so important to the sustainability of our eco system.
Day 2 began bright and early starting with the basics & the life cycle of bees.
Then it was onto the nitty gritty of inspecting a hive, what you should look for to ensure the bees are happy & healthy, what do if they are not, a few golden rules & the dreaded sting.
We also got a chance to try on various suits & gloves to get a feel before the hive visit.
After a spot of lunch it was time to spilt into groups & make our way to the hive. Sue & James had kindly agreed to let us all take a look into their hive to get our initial feel for working with the real thing under Julia's expert guidance.
So smokers lit the first group adorned in the most stylish attire made their way across the village....just a few stares!
Each group got to run through the routine of a normal apiary check, were very hands on brandishing our hive tools & no one got stung!
The evening progressed into a fantastic Jacobs join meal with lots of fantastic food & drink, honey & mead tasting, lots of bee chatter & then a quiz to revisit some of the key points of the day....tired but buzzing everyone departed ready for day 2
Day 2 we ventured into the world of disease control, an unfortunate but very necessary part of being a beekeeper today. After learning yesterday what was normal it was time to understand what shouldn't be happening in the hive and some measures on how to prevent it.
After lunch we briefly visited the world of honey, sugar syrup, candle moulds & fondant icing.
Julia visited a few sites around the village suggesting the ideal spots for the hives to be located and we were done. Ready to go out into the world having the beginnings of the life of bees....
As a group we would all like to say a massive thank you to Julia & Martin who were great teachers, have been extremely generous with their time & advice.
So now we await for the arrival of the bees...watch this space
