65 Checking on the split hives

Timothy the beekeeper was back. This time he came to check on the hives he split last week. This time he had done the Achill run the other way around. He had first gone to Bull’s Mouth and The Secret Garden. The back of his van was loaded with starter hives. Three of them had colonies in them that he had split from the split hives of last week. They all came from The Secret Garden. In Bull’s Mouth the hives are not doing as well. Maybe it is the wind that is forever changing there. The channel works like a trough. Timothy had brought his bee suit for special occasions with him for me to wear. It was a beautiful clean white suit without any patch up, rents or dirt. I felt privileged! I took a chair and settled at the side of the apiary where I had a good view of the proceedings. And I wanted to catch his face in the sketch. I’m getting used to work in a suit. Even with latex gloves on it doesn’t present any problems. To get the stage set he first had to prop up a fuchsia branch heavy with enormous red flowers that hung over one of the hives and blocked part of my view. I offered that he could cut it, but he said it was lovely and it wasn’t interfering with the bees. Timothy works very fast and I didn’t get much time to do anything else but register the bare essentials. Still I got two sketches done. On this sketch he is about to lift the top of the middle hive to check if this one has a queen, or at least has queen pods ready to produce a queen. Very important: that the colony is strong and growing in size to be able to produce honey for harvesting later on. (65 checking the split hives 04-06-16)

64 Old and New in Polranny

We go back two weeks to 15 May. Dutch photographer Con Mönnich was back in Polranny after 42 years. He did sme catching up with old memories. A lot had unrecognisably changed and it took a while for him to find back his bearings. One of the places he revisited was the farm of our neighbours the Masterson. Sadly 20 years before Pat Masterson had passed away. He was a great lover of bees. When he was home from constructing the motorways in England he often sat in front of the hives enjoying the rituals of the bees. His children left Polranny; his apiary was neglected. Grandchildren wanted to pick up beekeeping again, but they live up the country, have small children and busy careers. Beekeeping has to wait. In February 1974 Con photographed one of Pat’s homemade hives. I remember there were a great number standing together in a clearing of a mixed stand of spruce and apple trees well protected from the wind. When Con took the photo it was cold and there was no activity around the hive. On the picture you can see how lovingly the hive is constructed with a small balcony and overhang to protect the entrance to the hive. When Con came back to the house in Polranny the weather was beautiful: warm and sunny. The bees were enjoying the warmth and were busy gathering nectar and pollen. Timothy the beekeeper was inspecting the surviving hive. All was well. Some things never change. (64 old and new in Polranny CM 15-05-2016)

Dividing the hive

Timothy Stevens the beekeeper came around do a very special procedure. I was quick with the sketchbook. Afterwards he send me this report: 'Today I was looking after the beehives I have in achill both on the mainland and on the island. Peti Buchel drew some wonderful drawings of some of my activities today. I have a beehive located at her house. Since losses were so high this winter I have been doing a few splits. A split is where you break a hive into two or more pieces. In this case I broke the hive into 3 peices. 1/3 of the hive stayed at the apiary(bee yard) and the other 2 parts went to another apiary a few miles away. A hive of bees normaly only has one queen so when they are split like this 2 of the 3 parts will have no queen. These two parts will know they don't have a queen after only half an hour or so and will begin the preparations to produce a new queen. this means picking a few very young larvae(baby bees) and feeding them a very rich diet of royal jelly(food like a mothers milk), this will allow the young larvae to become queens instead of workers. I am using this to increase my number of hives that i have. each split is a full brood box(bottom box of a hive) and is strong enough in bees and brood to be able to produce a few quality queen cells. It is important when doing something like this that everything is very strong and you have ample bees to feed the young queens. If you don't have enough bees to do the feeding the queens will be very poor quality called scrub queens and are unlikely to be able to mate and take over the hive. When I got to the next apiary i repeated the process on the strong hives there and the splits made in this apiary came back to Peti Buchel garden. Hopefully the weather stays as good as it has been the last month or more and I will have a wonderful season.' The sketch is of the original hive divided in three.(dividing the hive 27-05-16)

Bees in Ancient Egypt: Divine nature

The people living on the shores of the Nile enjoyed the fertile shore and all that nature brought. But they were also sensitive to and reliant on the seasons: especially the rainfall in far-away central Africa where they had no power over nor knowledge of. And then there was the desert directly adjacent to the crops, where nothing could grow but harboured all kinds of scary things, both animal and human. No wonder that the religion of the Egyptians was nature fixated; not like our own religions that are human centred. Everything they had no power over the Egyptians considered sacred: possessed of divine powers, even the house cat. And the bees, which brought honey: the only sweetener the ancient Egyptians had. The picture was taken inside one of the many decorated tombs of ancient Egypt. A farmer is kneeling in front of his beehives. Again: thanks to Polranny Pirate Bert the Egyptologist

Labeling frames

I could witness the move of the nucleus of one hive to the other from close up thanks to the beekeeper suit I wore. Now I noticed that each of the frames had a sign written with a red marker pen. I asked Timothy the beekeeper what it meant. It was his system for marking the function of the different frames. F stood for Foundation, S for Store and DB for Drone Base. I wasn’t far advanced in the knowledge of the Apiculture in our Apiary to fully understand the meaning, but there is always room for improvement on my part. It was time to take off the beekeeper's suit and go surf the internet.