Scary creatures in a tree

Buttercups chest height in a young apple tree

The week has been a little mixed. The weather has been warm with plenty of showers. The bees are doing well and I have suppers of honey that need to be extracted. In fact I need to move one of the swarms back to the orchard to take it place as my third hive. The grass is doing very well and is huge, some of the common butter cups are up to my chest. 

The orchard in terms of fruit is very very positive. I reckon some of the cherries will be ready to pick the coming weekend. The other pears are growing but not beautiful, but better than previous years. The plums are small but lots of them, they are normally a very good crop. The apples, which normally get nicked in the six weeks holiday are doing well. I'm hoping that this will continue, but lets see. I don't want to jinx it but it does look good. Still need to get the grass cut again. Hoping for good weather.  

Insects in the holes of a dead cherry tree

On a more interesting note I took a picture of a cherry tree that has died over the winter. Its now full of holes and if you zoom in on the small holes you can actual see small creatures in the holes. They look scary. 

You should be able to double click on the image and zoom in closer to see the insects.

Swarm Spotter and swarm collector

The Orchard this week

We are right in the middle of the year, almost the summer solstice and the bees must know it, they have swarmed and I have located them and collected them. It's strange when I immediately see a swarm, I still get scared. Your not sure how many bees are in the mass huddle, it could be 20/30,000n if its a prime swarm. I know that its unlikely for them to sting if your just passing by, but its still risky. You can see them, you are hear them and you can even get the faint hint of wax. Fresh wax is a great smell. I have been storing old wax in the garage and the recent warm spell means the whole garage smells like a bee hive, and I like it.

Cherries almost ripe

 The past week was warm, wet with good sunny periods, the ideal growing weather. The grass paths that I carved out have started to grow. They have been invigorated with the recent trim. It needs to be cut again, but with the wet weather it hasn't happened. On the trees themselves I can the cherries are almost fully grown they just need to ripen and plums still the size of plum stones. The pears are beginning to stretch and apples small but full of promise. I'm loving it.

Tracks carved by rabbits to the rabbit den

 The whole orchard is alive. You can feel the energy. Lots of young rabbits around the orchard, darting around when I arrive. Then while I'm in the orchard I don't see them, though, because of the long grass I see when they have created paths back to there warrens. So many insects around, strange wasps and beetles, caterpillars, butterflies and loads of different flies come and greet you at they land on leaves, hover past, some even landing on you. I haven't heard many grass hoppers this year and its only as a write this that it makes me want to get back to the orchard and listen out for them. I never hear them in the garden, as I did as a child, and I like the sound of they and watching them jumping around.

My daughter helping to collect a swarm

Swarm my daughter and I collected

 My daughter was stung by a bee last week, and I really don't want her to be scared of bee's so I got her to help me collect one of the swarms. So what we did was placed the swarms into a nuc and then leave them all day to be collected later the same evening. I have moved the nuc boxes with the bees to my parents, for a little while. I will return them back to the orchard soon. The reason for this is that bees generally return to the location they were previously. So if I moved the bees and it wasn't more than 5kms away they would return to the same location. I actually move them about 9pm so they don't come out of the hive till after dawn and then believe that the location of the hive is the new home location. If I collected the swarm and then immediately moved them to a new site 2 kms away they would return to the original location.

Ryton Gardens this week

 It was fathers day over the weekend and we decided to visit Ryton gardens, they have wonderful gardens and orchards and bee hives, even some woodland. My wife spotted a number of bees buzzing around and looked, as it normally means bees collecting pollen, its nice to see from which plants they like, and in most cases its bumble bees, not honey bees. However when I had a closer look it was a honey bee swarm. We notified the volunteers that work at the gardens and they cornered of that section. The swarm was huge, I kinda wish it was me that collect that swarm too. But I didn't have the kit with me at the time.

The orchard this week

 Even at Ryton gardens the flowers and plants and trees are enjoying the time of year and absorbing the suns energy. The wisteria looks great, the place was practically empty, which meant that my kids practically had the run of the place. We played hide and seek, then chased each other around. A fun day out.

Grass path ways cut and Bees sting

My son with a Teddy bear next to one of the hives

It was a warm weekend and I managed to get the lawn mower down into the orchard. I have cut out a path around the trees, the grass and weeds were as tall as my hip in some places. I have as left much of the grass and the flowers growing in place, which should still provide the animals with a good home. Its funny we have so many common buttercups in the orchard that the pollen covered the lawn mover, which a lovely yellow pollen that reminds me of watercolor paint block.

I checked on the bees and I believe that they may have swarmed as I didn't see any eggs in any of the hives. I could see loads of bees and a number of queen cells. This may have been because the space in the hive was getting limited and I have added an additional supper. The main things that I check when going through a hive include space, queen right colony (Queen Bee, adult bees and larvae and eggs), food, disease or illness. The lack of space and the very warm weather that we have had recently would have encouraged the bees to swarm, I can see lots of Queen cells so I can only hope that one of the queens emerges and then gets mated successfully and returns to the hive to starts laying eggs. Swarming is a natural phenomenon and something that modern bee keepers try and reduce. The plan is also to do a bailey comb change, but need to get some more brood wax in.

This weekend was the first the time that my son has also been into the hives with me. He also bought along his nursery teddy bear Boris. My son loved it, he has grown up with me being a beekeeper and is not really bothered by bees and knows when they are around you and you hear them buzzing you should stand perfectly still. When he was younger he would wonder right up to the entrance of a hive without fear at all. He was stung for the first time last year and is a little weary of them now, but not in a suit.

Normally when the bees in the orchard swarm, they are only a couple meters away or within the Orchard on one of the trees and I can easily collect them. On this occasion though I saw no sign of them. They may have swarm during the kids half term week, as I wasn't around.

Without a queen in the hive the bees can be a little more aggressive and this week both my wife and daughter got stung. This is what happen, my wife heard a bee it was in her hair, so she was trying to get it out. My daughter came to help not in a bee suit as did my son in his bee suit on. My son saw the bee and batted it directly away with a Frisbee straight into my daughters direction and the bee stung her on the side of her face. She looks like she has a black eye. I watched from the hive and as soon as I saw my son bat the bee away I knew what was about to happen. My wife yelled out and I had to run to them and somehow another bee had managed to get into may daughters ear, I used a match stick to keep the sting from stinging my daughter and then encourage him out.

Horse Rider in the orchard, after some of the grass was cut.

We also saw and spoke to a horse rider in the orchard who was enjoying a stroll through on his horse. Lucky him.