Spring Inspection

Today we carried out our spring inspection of our one remaining hive, as well as cleaning out some of the dead hives.

Looking through dead hives is always upsetting, especially as we worked so hard last year and we've lost a couple of decent bloodlines. But equally it was a relief - no signs of starvation, which would have made me feel very guilty indeed. In fact two of the three hives we looked at died in the cluster. Bees had died just hanging off the frames or digging into food, of which there was plenty. It looks like they just froze to death - no sign of any brood (the queen wouldn't have been laying if it was too cold - another good sign) and they were weak hives anyway. So it looked like it was just too cold of them. Of course we probably should have insulated them with a tarp or similar, but equally the winter was one of the harshest for the last 30 years or something. So it's nice to know that they didn't die just because of our own stupidity.

The other dead hive that we cleared out had only a very small volume of bees that were completely un-clustered. No brood. It seems the queen must have died, again maybe becuase of the cold (too cold to lay eggs > no new bees > population death > no bees to warm the queen up > no queen to lay new eggs).

However, our one remaining hive (the one we took from the barn wall last year - see the video blog) is doing absolutely splendidly! plenty of adult bees and 5 sides of brood - eggs, larvae and capped, and beautiful healthy brood it is too. They're bringing in loads of pollen and nectar, and they have stores left over too, mostly a mixture of sugar and honey unfortunately, but they still appear to be working hard. They're literally 2 feet from a 5 acre field of oil seed rape this year too, which has yet to flower, so hopefully they'll be able to build up their numbers even more to make the most of the harvest. They have plenty of room and were REALLY DOCILE - came as a bit of a shock after extracting them from the wall (they were rather angry - Dad got stung nearly 50 times on the same finger and it swelled up to the size of a golf ball just below the knuckle) but they were beautiful bees - absolutely unfussed and uninterested by the humans cooing over them adoringly!

So, after a rather large setback of massive losses, it looks like we've got off to the best start we could have expected. And fingers crossed for lots of big swarms this May!

The veggies we planted last week are up already! I'd better get preparing a space for them...

The ducks lay every day during all but the very deepest winter days. But at the moment the chickens are laying regularly too - an unexpected pleasure, as usually we spend half our lives trying to stop them being broody and attacking anything that moves in a fit of maternal rage. But despite the meat-and-dairy eaters of the house eating a lot of omelettes, we still ended up with a glut of eggs. So this week Pabi Bach made her wonderful Mexican chocolate cake (wonderfully moist every time she makes it, with spices to bring out the flavour of the chocolate. My favourite cake of all time) as well as over 40 meringues. But despite all this we still had loads of eggs to use up, so we decided to make some lemon curd. We used Delia Smith's recipe (too sweet but a good basic - next time we'll add more lemon) and ended up with 7 jars of lemon curd, some of which we've been giving away. It's incredible stuff, best eaten straight from the jar with a spoon!

However only 2 days since the great curd cooking session, the eggs are piling up again already. So I'll have to think of something else we can make this time. Any ideas leave a comment!