Beekeeping At Quarr Abbey

I am very jealous as Gary has been for his beekeeping taster session at Quarr Abbey, before he starts the full course at the beggining of next year. Here are some of the photo's he took  whilst he was there.

Ok, I am no expert, but what I have learnt so far is that these are all worker bees (female) as the drones (males) have all been pushed out of the hive by this time of year as they have done the dirty deed with the queen and are now useless and just slob about the hive wanting to be fed by the girls!!! On this super (the wooden frame) you can see the comb, some of the cells have wax caps, which means there are either eggs, larvae or pupae in them and the others are filled with honey. These bees have just been smoked, which falsely leads them to think there is a fire and instead of fleeing they try to gather their golden treasure (honey) and because they gorg so much on it they become dopey and laid back. I must admit before I started reading about bees I always thought the smoke sent them to sleep!

Gary is not in the picture as he is taking it, but he was wearing a fetching bee suit as well and a pair of yellow marigolds. We were very excited on his return and went to The bee Garden to look at what equipment we were going to need. We are now the proud owners of a smoker, so there is no turning back!!!! With no Bees yet to smoke the boy's went round seeing if it would work on numerous insects including slugs!

Boy's and their toy's!! I feel a new craft coming on, candle making is going to be a must.

Thanks for stopping by

H