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.

Anaesthesizing the bees

The Styrofoam starter hive was placed on top of his neighbour to make room for the brand new wooden hive that will be the bees permanent home. Timothy the beekeeper gives every year a different colour to the hives he makes himself. This one should have been a bright pink as he assured me it was this year’s colour. But it had a brown tarnish: ‘Store bought,’ he said. What a pity. I love a bit of the old pink. The lid was off the Styrofoam box but before he was able to move the swarm from the one hive to the next Timothy had to give them a dose of the anaesthesizing smoke from the bellows.

Bees in Achill Secret Garden

As honey source is the ultimate condition for keeping bees Achill Secret Garden is the place to be. On the last day of April on their daughter’s thirties birthday Timothy the beekeeper installed no less than 4 starter hives in the seaside garden of Pirate’s friends Doutsje and Willem. The garden with all its flowering plants and shrubs is a haven for hungry honey bees. Doutsje and Willem improved and beautified an existing hundred year old seaside garden on the east coast of Achill Island. Since 1967 they have been working non-stop to make this garden the pride of the island. During the past winter they have cleared a section where wind damaged trees darkened the ground. Timothy chose this place for his beehives. It is far from the house and the visitor’s route through the garden.

The bellows

Before they left Timothy the beekeeper showed the workings of his smoke producing bellows. It was a beautiful gadget of unditerminable age made out of copper and was full of dents. It was obvious that it had seen a lot of action in its working life. A friend had given it to Thimothy. The leather on the bellows had badly deteriorated but after it was replaced by part of an inner tube it worked again. The smoke is supposed to have a calming effect on the bees and is produced by smoldering hay or straw. Amanda photographed it all on her smartphone. Notice that the wooden starter hive is not tied up to the hive stand nor weighted down by a stone. It would cause great drama the next day...

When bees do sting

Timothy installed the beehives on the hive stand he had put behind the screen. He wasn’t dressed in a beekeeper’s protective suit and hood. He did not even wear gloves. ‘The bees are still groggy from hibernating. At this stage they are very docile. It is only later in the year, around July and August when they are very busy that they are more liable to sting.’ Of course! As a child I had experienced many times that bees, contrary to wasps, were not sting-happy. They only stung when they felt threatened. Once they put the hook into the human skin, they could not get it out and would die. I remember looking on in horror how after I was stung and I had swiped the bee away in a panic I was left not only with a hook but also with the poison gland sticking out of my skin.

The starter hives

Timothy Stevens the beekeeper also took out of his van a nifty homemade folding bench that he calls a hive stand. It made an open and level platform about a foot off the ground for the two hives to sit on and be secure. Finally he took out the two hives. They were disappointingly small. One was made out of wood and looked the part somehow, but the other looked more like a Styrofoam cool box. ‘They are starter hives with small swarms in them. The swarms will grow in size over the summer,’ Timothy explained. ‘By July they will have reached full force and are ready to produce honey. By then more storeys will have been added to the wooden hive and the Styrofoam box will be replaced by a wooden hive. The population of bees will have grown to sixty thousand.’ I was impressed.