gone and done it now.....

[ratcatcher]

I've just bought 7 acres of woodland, in "the garden of England" Kent, its still early days, but hope to get 2 or 3 hives set up in there next year, there's large amounts of trees and flowers that I'm sure the bees will be happy with.

 

[Vergilius]

Sounds great.

 

[NickB]

That's brilliant news.....Good luck!

 

[dpearce4]

was it expensive?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

What you want to do now is....

Chop down all the trees, give it a good spraying of weedkiller, plough it all up and plant loads of lovely OSR (coated in neo nicotinoids for optimum performance)

 

[richardbees]

7 empty acres ... don't post the map reference !

 

[ratcatcher]

was it expensive?

yup, £49k
but I don't like banks/building society's, so bought it so I have something to show for it, rather than waste it on more bikes and stuff
it comes with full sporting rights, so will be doing plenty weekend camping and cooking/eating what we shoot

 

[keith pierce]

yup, £49k
but I don't like banks/building society's, so bought it so I have something to show for it, rather than waste it on more bikes and stuff
it comes with full sporting rights, so will be doing plenty weekend camping and cooking/eating what we shoot

Sounds like we are going to have some fun weekends ahead. I catch im, and you can cook im.

 

[margob99]

Very envious! Congrats, Ratcatcher!

 

[ellypatt]

Nice, congrats! Exciting place to have.

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

Fantastic, does it have a stream with trout? and when can we all come camping?

 

[ratcatcher]

Fantastic, does it have a stream with trout? and when can we all come camping?

sadly no stream with trout, but discovered a pond just outside of my boundary is fed by a spring that flows through my woodland, so bees will have a water source, may even create my own pond area within, also should be able to syphon off the water through a sterilizing system, to make safe drinking water/tea/coffee

 

[keith pierce]

Any deer on it. I also believe that you now have wild boar in your county as well.

 

[ratcatcher]

Any deer on it. I also believe that you now have wild boar in your county as well.

yup, being a full time pest controller, and enjoying shooting, it was good to find out species within the whole wood

squirrel, rabbit, pigeon,munjac,red deer, wild boar

 

[adrian wilford]

thats cheap, going for about 10k per acre in the north, i would have more than 3 hives on it, suppose your going to fit a wood burner now if you havn't already done so! envious

 

[ratcatcher]

yup, hope to get a log burner sorted in january sometime, I'll add hives as we go along, more if they aint too much hassel, less if they are, as we want to do other stuff within the wood, zipwires, a bit of shooting,camping,woodwork etc

 

[BDCS]

Roughly where is it ? Its not this end of Kent - I' guess Tonbridge way

 

[ratcatcher]

Roughly where is it ? Its not this end of Kent - I' guess Tonbridge way

not far from there

 

[ratcatcher]

hi all, well as you'll see from the last date/time I posted, the wood took over our lives somewhat, I still had one national in the garden, but our assumption of visiting the wood once a fortnight went out the window, every weekend more like it, it's such a stress free place, lots of work getting it to a state that we could walk into it and camp, so the bees took a back seat, but last week I did an A/S and the bee keeping bug bit me again (excuse the pun)
I pulled the commercial hives out of the shed, fixed the bits that needed doing, and am just waiting on delivery of some extra frames and foundation, next weekend were going to start work clearing an area to place them, then see what happens

 

[Beauhawk]

not far from there

Happy to come to help 'n' play