The varroa mite

Beekeeper Timothy Stevens has put a new entry on Facebook that I like to copy here. 'Here is a very lucky or even unlucky photo. It shows a bee foraging on bramble. On closer inspection you can see a varroa mite on her. It looks like a purple disk on her side. The mite has wedged it's self in between the plates on the bee. This is the real face of one of the major reasons honey bees are dying and why almost all wild hives are dead. Because of these little mites I have to treat my hives to kill the mites. I have never seen a mite on a bee outside the hive. On a brighter note the weather today has been very good and if this continues I should receive some honey in return for my years toil. I usually remove the excess honey on the 10th of August however with the weather being so cold it has held the blackberry back and put my schedule back as well.'

Ballycroy National Park

Yesterday I took Maureen and Monika, two friends from the OWLs who are staying in the Folly, for a visit to Ballycroy, the Ballycroy National Park and Visitors Center. There I asked the staff if they were thinking about getting bees. No, but they will have a talk the first half of August by a beekeeper from Westport. When we came back I saw that Timothy the beekeeper had put another storey on one of the hives. A sign that things are going well with the Polranny Pirate Bees! I asked Timothy and he answered this: ‘The bees seem to be growing well. They also have adequate stores which is encouraging as this time of the year is usually an issue. I think clover might be a bit early and sycamore which is all but finished certainly was late. The Visitor Centre is a nice spot. It’s probably Henry Horkan who’ll give the talk. Well worth a listen if you are interested he is quite knowledgeable.’

Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt

Apiculture was popular in the whole of Egypt but particular in the Delta region. Hives were made of mud or reeds covered with mud. Empty hives were also used as wall insulation of houses. The cylindrical hives were stacked horizontally, sometimes up to 500 together. The harvesting was done twice a year: in spring and autumn. Because of the climate there seem to have been no winter hibernation. The hives were transported to where the flowers were. They had to be moved again when the farmers were clearing the ground by fire after harvest or when the Nile water rose and it was necessary to bring the hives to higher ground. The moving could cause some logistic problems especially when there were many hives involved. It is all written down in queries, prayers and petitions and mercifully kept for prosperity. The drawing is of fields on the banks of the Nile and two huge statues near Luxor

Meanwhile back in Achill

Yesterday Timothy swung by accompanied by Jude a colleague from the Westport Beekeepers Association. They had been replacing an aggressive colony at Achill Secret Garden with a more docile one. The hive now gets a new residence in Glenhest far from the madding crowd. Timothy also had installed a starter hive at Sheila McHugh in BullsMouth (another colleague of mine from the Achill Writers Group). He has now four and possibly five addresses in Achill of which three on Achill. That means that we will get our own ‘run’ in the future. Now Timothy gets in later and later because he has so much to do before Achill. Yesterday it was nine at night. The bees were grumpy and the midges out in full force. Still, the second hive has a honey box now too. The stores were sufficient and things were generally going well. One of the bee’s favourite summer flower is in bloom: white clover. The picture shows the first ones but soon the garden was covered… till Mike Wilson came yesterday to cut the grass. But there are still plenty left. The most enthralling ode to white clover is in Soma Morgenstern’s ‘In einer anderen Zeit’. If you read German it is well worth the effort. I found it ‘unputdownable’.It's in the library of the Polranny Pirates.

The weather

Finally the weather turned and the bees and I are out and about in the garden, And if that isn’t enough the flowers have joined us too. Everywhere things are in bloom. Not the planted variety but the things that grow in the grass whether you like it or not. According to Timothy the beekeeper worker bees visit around a 100 flowers a day. It would seem that there is enough for everybody. But after the cold spring the bees are in a feeding frenzy. They do not tolerate anybody else around and least of all me. I used to put one of those easy to fold chairs out in front of the hives about ten meters away and watch the activity as I would watch the tv: but not anymore. A defending bee is send out and first starts to annoy me and if I stay put to attack me. Now they even come after me as I’m weeding my veggie patch, well out of sight and the way. This picture of the new additions to the hives I took just before I was stung in the eyebrow. And me writing a blog about the little feckers… No gratitude!