So, I promised to tell you about the day Adam the wasp man came over.
We’ve had so many wasps this year. A couple of weeks ago rather a lot of them were flying in and out of the eaves of the house. Cue, Adam the wasp man.
Adam arrived and thought that there was at least two foolish things about me. First, that I should site a duck egg blue bee hive directly outside the house, facing my front door and second, that my wasps were most probably actually apis mellifera! Wrong twice.
My duck egg blue bee hive had just been painted with my neighbours’ soluble kitchen paint and had been left to dry in the garden. No bees inside, only earwigs, and, if you read my first blog, earwig rearing is actually how I started out. I’m still waiting for my own bees!
How anyone can have an interest in keeping honey bees and then call out a wasp man to get rid of them is simply beyond me. Of course they were wasps and a danger to the girls in Jim’s hives at the end of the garden. Jim, as I have told you before, is the big smiley man who keeps his bees in my garden. Incidentally, he has recently climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, which is an enormous achievement given he is a size up from the great Chris Moyles himself. We are all very proud of him!
Anyway, guess what? Adam the wasp man is really a bee keeper and he knows just about everything about keeping bees. He gave me some great advice:-
1) If you are a wasp man and a bee keeper, make sure you don’t mix up your protective gloves. Oh dear, Adam did, opening up a number of hives with insecticide on his gloves and lost quite a few of his bees before he realized.
2) Don’t keep your mobile phone in your pocket whilst you are opening up a hive. Some bees don’t like the radiating signal and, anyway, you can’t answer it when you have a frame full of thousands of bees in your hands.
3) Beware of the fox, the deer, the woodpeckers, the wasps and the bears (what?) Adam, himself, had personally witnessed a fox lying in the middle of a knocked over super, casually helping himself to the honey whilst the bees buzzed around him furiously. Apparently the fur on a fox and a deer is too thick for the bees to sting effectively.
4) If you really want to know about beekeeping, spend a day with Melvyn. Who is he?…. you may well ask. Well, when I have spent a day with him, I will donate a whole blog to the experience!
That’s enough for now, just waiting for Jim to arrive so we can have a look at the girls, animal proof the hives and check for bears.
Wax
We’ve had so many wasps this year. A couple of weeks ago rather a lot of them were flying in and out of the eaves of the house. Cue, Adam the wasp man.
Adam arrived and thought that there was at least two foolish things about me. First, that I should site a duck egg blue bee hive directly outside the house, facing my front door and second, that my wasps were most probably actually apis mellifera! Wrong twice.
My duck egg blue bee hive had just been painted with my neighbours’ soluble kitchen paint and had been left to dry in the garden. No bees inside, only earwigs, and, if you read my first blog, earwig rearing is actually how I started out. I’m still waiting for my own bees!
How anyone can have an interest in keeping honey bees and then call out a wasp man to get rid of them is simply beyond me. Of course they were wasps and a danger to the girls in Jim’s hives at the end of the garden. Jim, as I have told you before, is the big smiley man who keeps his bees in my garden. Incidentally, he has recently climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, which is an enormous achievement given he is a size up from the great Chris Moyles himself. We are all very proud of him!
Anyway, guess what? Adam the wasp man is really a bee keeper and he knows just about everything about keeping bees. He gave me some great advice:-
1) If you are a wasp man and a bee keeper, make sure you don’t mix up your protective gloves. Oh dear, Adam did, opening up a number of hives with insecticide on his gloves and lost quite a few of his bees before he realized.
2) Don’t keep your mobile phone in your pocket whilst you are opening up a hive. Some bees don’t like the radiating signal and, anyway, you can’t answer it when you have a frame full of thousands of bees in your hands.
3) Beware of the fox, the deer, the woodpeckers, the wasps and the bears (what?) Adam, himself, had personally witnessed a fox lying in the middle of a knocked over super, casually helping himself to the honey whilst the bees buzzed around him furiously. Apparently the fur on a fox and a deer is too thick for the bees to sting effectively.
4) If you really want to know about beekeeping, spend a day with Melvyn. Who is he?…. you may well ask. Well, when I have spent a day with him, I will donate a whole blog to the experience!
That’s enough for now, just waiting for Jim to arrive so we can have a look at the girls, animal proof the hives and check for bears.
Wax
I have been too shy to join a club as yet, but your stories have given me the incentive that I need.
