How are your bees – calm, defensive, aggressive? Is you colony really busy, or just, well, busy? How can you tell if you only have your bees as a reference point?
Now if you could visit someone else’s apiary and see their bees, you would have a comparator. That’s a key premise of the apiary visits we organise each year – you get to see another beekeeper’s apiary and bees so you can start to compare traits such as calmness.
And eat some cake.
The first apiary visit of this season was hosted by John and Judy Critchfield at their out-apiary in Souldern. Apart from experiencing other colonies there is almost always some work that needs doing for the hosts that the assembled beekeepers can help with. In John and Judy’s case the help that was wanted was to find the queens and mark and clip them.
Which they didn’t, as they couldn’t find the queens.
But John and Judy don’t feel so bad now in not having found the queens.
The day ended with tea. And cake (with special thanks to Caroline Pearce for the amazing fruit cake).
We currently have two more apiary visits planned, to Dave Kelleher’s apiary on 15th June, and to Graham Franklin’s out-apiary on 27th July. Members have been sent an email on how to register to attend.
Apparently there will be cake.