Yep. We’re the B(ee) team
While it has been said that market gardening can be a rather solitary exploit, what with those long days spent pouring your heart out to ears of corn and heads of lettuce, you’ll be pleased to know that we’re never lonely. We have several thousand Italian bees to keep us company, in a hive we started this time two years ago.
Our rather casual approach to market gardening (read: an inability to pull out self-sown plants) extends somewhat to beekeeping, in that we consider extracting honey a bonus - we’re mainly satisfied to know that we’ve got tonnes of pollinators around.
However, the success of our casual keeping style, which usually involves only looking in the hive every few months to ensure the girls have room to move and keep stocking up their honey for winter, was tested this week, when we noticed bees teeming from the hive, filling the sky above the patch. (There was something a little Hitchcockian about it!)
It took us a moment to realise… DISASTER! THE HIVE WAS SWARMING!
Swarming occurs when a colony of bees grows too large for its space. A new queen in born, and she leaves the hive with 40 percent of the colony (which has loaded up on honey from the original hive, in preparation for its departure) in search of a new place to start afresh. Experienced beekeepers (:|) will avert a swarm by preventing queen bee cells from coming to maturity, and adding extra space if required. Clearly, we’d failed on that front.
But when life gives you bee swarms, make a new hive!
The swarm settled on the trunk of a nearby tree and the proverbial clock started ticking - scout bees take anywhere from a few hours to a day to find a new hive location! Never have these knobbly white legs pedalled as fast, as we raced home with vegies, cleaned and packed veg boxes, sped around town to deliver the boxes (sorry if Chris' delivery seemed rushed or curt thus week), and pedalled back to the farm with a new bee box (borrowed from a neighbour in an uncanny stroke of luck) to see if our swarm was still there.
They were! The beauties hung, in an almost liquid formation, from the trunk and branches of the tree. We suited up, sat the bee box under the biggest branch and, shaking gently, the bees dropped straight into the box. A few gentle sweeps of the trunk with a soft brush and we had the bulk of them in the box.
We lidded it, crossed our fingers and pedalled home…
As of Sunday morning, the new colony seems to have taken a liking to their new digs, and are busy unpacking the furniture and redecorating the place. They're still there! (Phew!)
