Originally posted on the BBKA forum on the 31-3-09
The beginners course is almost finished, just one more classroom session and a session in the teaching apiary, I expected to know a fair bit of what has been covered as I've done the course before but there's plenty that I didn't know or had forgotten. It's quite a lot of travelling to get to the course but its worth the effort.
last week my mentor (john) called to tell me that he was intending on opening his hives on Saturday weather permitting and invited me over to have a look, saturday came and it was a lovely sunny day with a biting cold wind so the inspections were cancelled , Never mind sunday turned out to be a lovely sunny day with no wind.
A phonecall later and I'm heading for the countryside with my beesuit and wellies today I'm going to see inside a hive for the first time .
we went through 4 healthy colonies, found the queen in 2 and eggs in all, I was amazed by the difference in temperments, one colony seemed so docile you could do whatever you wanted and they just sort of wandered around on the frames while the colony next to it was a little 'excitable' with the bees running all over the place.
I came away with a bag full of brace comb with freshly capped stores so when I got home I spent an hour making a mess in the kitchen extracting the honey, lovely
The beginners course is almost finished, just one more classroom session and a session in the teaching apiary, I expected to know a fair bit of what has been covered as I've done the course before but there's plenty that I didn't know or had forgotten. It's quite a lot of travelling to get to the course but its worth the effort.
last week my mentor (john) called to tell me that he was intending on opening his hives on Saturday weather permitting and invited me over to have a look, saturday came and it was a lovely sunny day with a biting cold wind so the inspections were cancelled , Never mind sunday turned out to be a lovely sunny day with no wind.
A phonecall later and I'm heading for the countryside with my beesuit and wellies today I'm going to see inside a hive for the first time .
we went through 4 healthy colonies, found the queen in 2 and eggs in all, I was amazed by the difference in temperments, one colony seemed so docile you could do whatever you wanted and they just sort of wandered around on the frames while the colony next to it was a little 'excitable' with the bees running all over the place.
I came away with a bag full of brace comb with freshly capped stores so when I got home I spent an hour making a mess in the kitchen extracting the honey, lovely
