Work Experience as a Bee Farmer (23 to 27 April)

[mbc]

Take your golf brollies, forecasts a bit grim !

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Take your golf brollies, forecasts a bit grim !

Weather hasn't been too bad so far glorious morning today although we had a little rain this evening.
Just moving hives to outer apiaries with the rain tomorrow. Pete D is keeping a diary and will start to feed out an account of the week after we all go home. I can assure you it will make interesting reading! Needless to say the seven stings to one index finger this afternoon is not bothering me in the slightest

 

[itma]

... Needless to say the seven stings to one index finger this afternoon is not bothering me in the slightest

Clearly not your typing finger then!

Sounds like a real busman's holiday - looking forward to hearing more. (And belatedly comprehending a previous Travelodge mention...)

 

[Hombre]

Zingo spotted

I hope that the rain wasn't too much of a problem and that the tea and company at Leicester was as good as always.

Looking forward to the various write up's of your week's experience and of course the curry on Thursday.

Here was me thinking that the Zingo was in the High Street. Notice my surprise when I opened my eyes driving past the Ladybird to see the sign just up the street. About 75 yards off my beaten track it would appear.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

bit wet and cold changing the land rover tyre before setting off but the rain abated for all the off loading and we had a glorious half hour watching the bees making the most of the sunshine before setting off back to base for fish chips and honey beer

 

[Bee-Key-Pur]

I hope that the rain wasn't too much of a problem and that the tea and company at Leicester was as good as always.

Looking forward to the various write up's of your week's experience and of course the curry on Thursday.

Here was me thinking that the Zingo was in the High Street. Notice my surprise when I opened my eyes driving past the Ladybird to see the sign just up the street. About 75 yards off my beaten track it would appear.

It helps that you can arrive on time, after all, we did and thats all I have to say on the matter... except...
the excuse about going to the Bingo hall instead doesn't wash....

 

[Bee-Key-Pur]

Thanks Chris, I had a great time, but can you work on the weather next time, cheers mate....

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Had a great time - hard work and good company, and we learnt a thing or two

 

[Pete D]

Commercial beekeeping work experience; Introduction

Well then here we go....
I thought I would give an account of what we did each day on our work experience. There may be a few comments and questions about each days activities so I will do each day as a new thread and post them over the next week.
As most of you will have read the 3 of us were first to get our names down for this when Chris B put the advert up on here in January.
Chris B is on the left, then me Pete (Pete D), Emyr (Jenkinsbrynmair) and Brian. (Bee key pur)
The 3 of us booked in at Bromsgrove travel lodge for the week, Sunday night to Friday morning for less than £100 each. Myself and Brian travelled across from Norfolk together and met Emyr at 18.00 Sunday evening. We then made our way the 30yds to the local pub to await Chris and have a pint and chat through what lay ahead over the next 5 days of commercial beekeeping and the inclement weather. I rang Chris to let him know we had arrived but his mobile rang forever so we just waited and drank more of the local beer. Several more phone calls had the same result. 4 pints later we tried Chris at home to find him waiting to hear from us.................turns out he lost his mobile 4 weeks ago........... anyway he turned up within 10 minutes and got the beers in !
After introductions he gave us a rough overview of the week.
We would be visiting approx 20 Apiaries and doing a range of beekeeping inspections and management through the week.
This would be swarm control, health checks, feeding, splitting, making Nuc's, reducing colony sizes, evening up colony sizes, making queen starter colonies, queen finisher colonies, uniting colonies, finding and clipping and marking queens that had recently been introduced, grafting larvae for queen rearing, moving colonies, adding supers, bottling honey.........oh and whatever else we had time for.
We ran through a few 'rules' of engagment such as the need to washing/changing gloves, washing hive tools, shutting gates, hours of work etc..... all sensible stuff.
On Monday and Tuesday Ian would be joining us (Hombre off the forum), Bill, Chris's father in law would be with us all week and Matt would be with us for a few hours on Monday.
We then drank some more beer and swapped yet more bee keeping tales before arranging a pick up at 08.15 in the morning ready for day 1
Chris had gleamed a bit from us about our experience and skill levels and probably left that evening wandering what he had let himself in for and how it was all going to work out.
I discovered that Emyr was into fishing and shooting and frequents very (and I mean very) expensive hotels, works on a boat and is in charge of rope.
Brian was also into boats and had spent 15 years in the Carribean chartering his own luxury catermerang out to the rich and shameless, grows animals he can eat and manages some very aggressive bees, oh and has a 100% bait hive sucess record......... his daughter rang on the way there to tell him a swarm had just gone into one of his bait hives.
What they discovered about me......dunno..perhaps they will share some thoughts !
Right the scene is set and tomorrow I will post day ones activities and some key learnings that I personally picked up.
Pete D

 

[Bee-Key-Pur]

I will chip in first and tell you what I learnt about Pete.
He used to play lots of rugby, likes drinking beer, buys lots of beekeeping equipment at ridiculously cheap prices off the internet, ( I have to say that in case his wife reads this) and seems to run on Duracell batteries, oh and likes to drink beer!

 

[VEG]

Really looking forward to the rest of this

 

[newportbuzz]

Really looking forward to the rest of this

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

What a motley crew!

 

[Erichalfbee]

Looking forward to the diary.
Brave souls!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I will chip in first and tell you what I learnt about Pete.
He used to play lots of rugby, likes drinking beer, buys lots of beekeeping equipment at ridiculously cheap prices off the internet, ( I have to say that in case his wife reads this) and seems to run on Duracell batteries, oh and likes to drink beer!

...and he works in a Branston pickle factory (but believe you me you don't want to learn too much of some of their production methods!! put you off ploughman's lunch for life) but still can't get cheap sugar
And he likes rugby and beer

Can't believe how little he pays for his hives - almost less than me

 

[Hombre]

Sssh, not a word about the Bingo. Eyes down and looking . . .

It was good to meet you all and now you know why I only work for two days each week, with Wednesday to uncrimp my body and learn to stand upright again. I'm certainly glad that Chris isn't into plywood hives and supers - shame that I can't say that about myself though.

 

[hedgerow pete]

so , how did you get on,

what did we learn, did chris do a supersonic hive inspection??

commercial beekeeping is just standard beekeeping but without any faff

 

[Pete D]

Commercial beekeeping work experience. Day 1

Chris picks us up from the lodge at 8.15 as arranged and takes us the 2 miles or so back to his place for a cuppa tea, meet the team and run through the days plan. The 'plan' was always loose and subject to change. Bill, Ian and Matt showed up and drank tea and then we were off. Weather was sunshine and showers.
I teamed up with Bill in the pick up and we went to a lock up to collect spare equipment, floors, broods, supers and roofs. We then met up with the others at the first Apiary.
Here my eyes rested on 90 poly langstroffs in various colours in a nice spot beside a pond. This was one of Chris's over wintering sites and the previous week there had been over 120 here.
First job was to go through 30 colonies that were destined for out apiaries in Leicester 65 miles away. These colonies were to be reduced down in size to a 5 frame nuc, 3 brood and 2 stores. The queen had to be found and clipped and marked, the hives then strapped for ready for transfer later in the week. The reason for reducing them down was to make them easier to manage over the coming weeks whilst they were so far away from base.
Our check was to be a complete one, checking brood and stores for amount, checking for health, queen right and clip and mark, reduce them down to size, add a super (so they had 2) and strap them.
The frames that were removed, brood, stores and empty all including bees were put into a spare brood and collated in stacks at the end of the apiary.
These bees, brood and stores were destined to be combined at the home apiary into 6 queen raising colonies of huge proportions.
We set about the task and pretty soon there were bees everywhere at about 11 degrees in the morning sunshine, the showers kept at bay.
You wouldnt want to go out with Emyr for a lads night as his skill at finding the ladies was very rusty, finding about 1 in 4 queens.
We worked quite efficently and pretty soon had them all done, quick look at the phone and it had been a couple of hours. We now had to combine the stack of spare frames and bees for transit, amongst all the chaos and confusion of bees everywhere we just slipped the frames into half the amount of boxes on a floor, gave them a roof, strapped them and inserted foam in the entrances, loaded the pick up and set off for home apiary.
I had no stings during this first apiary visit but a couple of the team had 1 or 2 for there troubles.
Back at base and we were to combine our cargo into 6 queen rearing hives already in situ. This entailed newspaper on the original top super (of 2) and stick 4 or 5 brood boxes on top, huge stack of bees. If the stack was gonna be to high then the last couple of boxes were shook in, but making sure all brood had gone in and just empty or stores frames remained in the boxes now devoid of bees. Again bees everywhere !
Lunch was next after a quick tidy up of equipment.
Off to the 2nd apiary of the day and we were just 6 now as Matt had gone off to work.
This apiary had 12 nationals and was subject to a full brood check and again clip and mark the queens. These queens like the previous ones and many subsequent ones were part of a 100 batch recently introduced.
By now it was light drizzle, I took my first couple of finger stings through my marigolds as did most others, Ian particularly had a few whilst searching for the queen in the end hive. 1 of these 12 hives had swarmed but there was no sign of it and fingers crossed the virgin would mate ok.
The 3rd apiary of the day had 30 hives, all poly langs and the routine was the same, full check and clip and mark the queen. 20 of these were then strapped for transit later in the week. One of these had swarmed too. One was a drone layer and was emptied out just before we left.
We returned to base, the drizzle had been on and off, sun in and out and temps at best 13 - 14 all day. Ian and Bill left us as the time was 17.30 and Chris took us 3 YTS lads to his honey house to try some of his honey beer and reflect on the day.
Key learnings for me on day one were;
Spreading bees and brood to other colonies to boost them and to make queen rearing colonies.
Bees will mix without too much fighting when there is chaos and confusion everywhere, they all find a home.
Its a numbers game, 2 swarmed and 1 drone layer would be devasting to me with 9 colonies but was less than 3% to Chris on the day.
Apiary hygiene is paramount, bucket of soda with spare hive tools in, rubber gloves, hand and equipment washing. Common sense but easily missed at home.
Reducing the size of colonies for easier maintenance when they are some distance away, whilst boosting those that are closer and can be kept an eye on easier. The crop may suffer but it could also be swings and roundabout as the boosted ones were close to OSR if it ever flows.
adding a super to a small colony can be done (poly probably helps)
The equipment needed and stock is mind blowing to those of us with a few hives
A gentle shake of the frames on a second pass when looking for the queen will often find her hanging on when most of her workers had gone.
Honey beer is good.
I did approx 25 - 30 hives today which to me is equivelent to a months bee keeping at home, some of these in not great weather and received 2 stings for my trouble, same hive same finger.
Back to the lodge for 7 and in the pub by 7.30 to talk it all over again with a pint or 2 and some grub.
View attachment 6281

View attachment 6282

 

[Tom Bick]

Very interesting thanks for the write up Pete it’s a great insight into a commercial set up.

 

[VEG]

keep them coming really enjoying it good write up and pics too.