A busy time for bees on the farm!

20.6.2018

Our bee volunteers are busy too

The Whirlow bees fared very well over a difficult winter and dreadful spring. They have been enjoying the recent good weather as much as we have and are building their numbers up nicely.  Look out for the bees busily pollinating the raspberries, which are a good source of nectar for them. The volunteer beekeepers have been making sure they have plenty of room in their hives for more bees and - hopefully - for honey.  Sometimes this involves splitting a colony into two, so we end up with more hives at the end of summer than we started with! We have only had one swarm, which settled in an apple tree in the orchard and was gently persuaded to return to the apiary.

Joy, a member of the 'bee' volunteer team, recently gave some really interesting sessions on beekeeping to our alternative provision children. They loved doing the waggle dance and learning about the drones, worker bees and honey bees. You can see from the photos how much they enjoyed it and learned lots too!

Want to find out more yourself? The bee team love to tell our visitors about the bees - there's always a queue to see the observation hive at the Farm Fayre that will be on July 8th this year - so this week the beekeepers will be choosing a smaller colony to put in this special hive, and making sure the queen has a spot of paint on her back so they can point her out easily. See you there!