Rhyddings Bees 2021

You may have noticed a small fenced area at the back of the garden, well if you take a closer look you’ll see some strange boxes. And if you look closer you’ll see bees flying out and bees flying in.

The bees leaving are heading out into the surrounding countryside in search of nectar and pollen. They take in the nectar and carry the pollen on their back legs.

Once loaded, they head back to the hive and if you pay close attention to the returning bees you may see the brightly coloured pollen stuck on their legs - it varies in colour depending on the plants on which they have been foraging. But inside the hive there is also a lot of activity. 

The queen, and there is only one, lays eggs - up to 2,000 every day. These eggs mostly hatch into worker bees and they can number up to 60,000 inside the hive.

Before the workers are ready to take on foraging duties they are put to work inside the hive, cleaning and preparing cells, removing debris and some tend to the queen.

At this time of year, it’s all systems go - the workers prepare cells for the queen to lay eggs as fast as possible. Foraging bees work from sunrise to sunset bringing back nectar and pollen.

The bees produce tiny plates of wax that are used to make the honeycomb into which everything is stored.

Eggs are laid in the cells and workers provide enough food before capping the cell and three weeks later the newly hatched bees emerge.

The cells are also used to store food.

Incoming bees pass their stores to other bees who pack the pollen into empty cells, and the nectar is processed into honey which is stored in cells that when full is sealed with a wax lid.

All of this is so that the queen and all her brood can survive the winter during which they seldom leave the hive, huddled together and living off the honey stores created during the long hot days of summer.

You might ask where are the boy bees? 

Well that’s a story for another day.

Andrew, The Bee Keeper @ Rhyddings

Update regarding the bees at Rhyddings

The topbar hive is empty, so the remaining bees left – one hopes they may have tried to join one of the other hives – at least there were no dead bees in the box so they finished what they had stored and left.

The good news is that we can use the comb they produced to show on the 18th October at the Bee event and there are some deposits of pollen that we can investigate.

  The poly hive is very strong and the entire honey super is full, so we can remove a couple of frames for the 18th.

The jars are doing okay and we’ll remove some of those for the 18th so that people can get an up close and personal look!!

The white box is not doing so well and they have not managed to lay down any food stores in the super, so they will need to be fed over winter, but otherwise there are plenty of bees and the brood box appeared to have quite a bit of honey.

It just goes to show that there are many factors that impact colonies and many are out of our control.

Unlike ‘domesticated’ animals that are farmed by people, that have adapted to suit our needs, bees have not and if conditions are not to their liking there is nothing you can do – they remain wild and all we can do is try to provide what they need.

Well, the year is almost over so the main task now is to ready them for winter and wait until the warmer weather arrives – what ever honey is left them we will harvest, but for now it is their winter store and they have worked hard to gather it !! 

Andrew, The Bee Keeper

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