Buzzy Buzzy Busy

Well I have neglected my blog haven't I??
I am so sorry but it has been a little hectic to say the least!! My etsy shop is now doing well and I have lots of quotes and sales coming in, so I shouldn't complain.
I have also had a full page feature included in the North Wales Wedding guide which I am totally thrilled about, and hopefully this will bring in a few local sales.
http://www.northwalespublishing.co.uk/wedding-guide/

 

It seems funny that I can send all over the world USA, Canada, Sweden and Australia and many parts of England but get very few sales in my own local area. With a bit of publicity now and some contacts made this should be rectified soon. You wouldn't believe I work in marketing would you?

Anyway back to the bees which is not such good news!
Like many UK beekeepers who have reported losses in bees and the honey production down almost 50%,we have had a few disasters too. The awful summer we have experienced this year has had a disastrous effect on us we have lost 4 hives due to the new queens being unable to get out and mate resulting in the colonies dying out.

The other 8 hives are doing Ok and we managed to take a fair crop of honey from them, but had to leave enough to sustain them through the winter so the price at the gate has now gone up in order for me to reserve honey for the wedding favours.

We inspected the hives this weekend and have now supplemented their honey with syrup to ensure they make it through the winter but it looks like they have closed the hive down earlier this year so it is a bit hit and miss if they take the syrup down or not. Another inspection next week should let us know how they are fairing before we to stop activity until the Spring.

Spring Honey

Apologies first!! been a bit lapse with my postings lately but I hope to rectify this.

Well, my photographic skills did not win me any prizes in the competion I entered, I have to say looking at the winners I was completely out of my depth, so no surprise there!

The Spring has been a complete wash out, the nice weather in March had us hoping for a large Spring crop of honey although we will manage to get some there wont be as much as initially thought, after all the bees do need to feed themselves first.

We now have honey supers on 5 hives and 8 hives are on brood and a half and building up very nicely but if we dont get the nice weather who knows how much honey we will get this summer. So much is out of our control so all we can do is keep the regular inspections going to check all is well and swarm control when needed.

I hope you all enjoyed your pancakes tonight drizzled with a little honey!!

I  have been really busy lately coming up with new ideas for our Wedding Favours, with the Spring wedding season almost upon us I am hoping for a busy time.

Here are a few of the new ones the others can be found on the favours page and can be bought in my etsy shop. I do hope you like them!! If you would like them customised in any way please contact me.

Valentine's Day

Wishing you all a Happy Valentine's Day!

A day for love and planning a future together, I wonder how many proposals there will be made to day?

On that note I am very excited, it has made me think of some new adornments for my wedding favours, I just need to try and source them from somewhere out there!

But I can tell you they will be themed!!

A Welsh Theme to go with Welsh Honey!!

Cappings turned into candles

My beeswax cappings have now been turned into small pure beeswax candles and I can say I am delighted with the results.

Some facts
Unlike most of the manufactured paraffin candles, beeswax is hypo-allergenic, great for people with allergies or other sensitivities and for those of us who want a safe, clean burning candle in our homes.

The candles have no perfume or anything else added but have a slight aroma of honey and will burn for approx 3 hours much longer than a parafin wax equivalent. When burned in a draft free environment with a wick trimmed to 1/4" a beeswax candle will burn bright and clean without smoke or soot

General safety and burning tips for beeswax candles
•Never leave a burning candle unattended.
•Keep candles away from children and pets.
•Keep candles away from flammable materials or overly crowded settings.
•Burn candles only in a draft-free environment away from fans, open windows, air ducts, etc. This will help to prevent any dripping or smoking.
•Light the wick from the base of the wick, where the wick comes out of the candle, to allow the beeswax to absorb into the wick.
If you would like to buy please go to Honey and Honey Gifts tab for more information or visit my etsy shop.
 

its arrived

It has arrived, at last!!

Over the weekend, It seems to have been all steam ahead, the label was completed by son Tom and I must say he did a fantastic job and didn't lose his patience with me despite the numerous changes he had to make, font sizes, positioning of text moving graphics etc etc

I hope you all like it as we are thrilled with our new Brand.

Once the label was sorted it was time to jar up the honey!

The Jars we have chosen are the hexagonal ones, they hold 12oz, 340g in weight

The selling price is £5 a jar.

The honey is a light colour and looks like it will set in time. It is a mild tasting honey and delicious on toast or drizzled on your cereal.

If you would like to buy a jar please contact me by email melys@maelgwyn.co.uk or visit my shop at etsy.com

Beeswax from the cappings

I have read a few articles about using the capping's that were left behind after harvesting the honey, all agreed that you needed to make sure you get the last drop of honey out of them which we did,

 and the yield was 10lb, can you believe that?

Next they tell you to let the bees clean the capping's, so we put them out on a tray and in a bowlon the patio to see what would happen! It was like a swarm, the bees came from nowhere, the smell of the honey obviously was so strong that they came and found it. It took them just 2 days to take away every last drop of honey leaving me with what looked like shavings (the wax).

As I have never dealt with beeswax before I decided to have a go last night whilst Mel was out, the last thing I needed was his opinion or to be told I was doing it wrong!! I like to make mistakes on my own lol

With a large saucepan of water on the stove, and another pan to act as a double boiler on top I placed some of the shavings into the pan, slowly and surely they started to melt but instead of a nice clear wax that I should be getting, I had a lot of debris and some sludge in the mix,

 time to read about it again!! what was I doing wrong?

I soon realised that I should have washed the capping's first, to late now! so I continued on but added a mug full of water to the pan, apparently the wax separates easily in the water.

The liquid then needed straining to remove all the bits/sludge so I found an old jelly bag from my preserving days and strung it up so I could empty the hot liquid into it, placing a silicone tray below I pored it in slowly to avoid any splashes of wax.

Soon the wax/water mix started to drip out the bottom of the bag, leaving the gunk behind and as it cooled the wax hardened and the water separated. I was onto a winner!!! or so I thought.

I finished that whole batch and then took a look at my wax, it was clean no debris, so that had worked but something was still wrong, the wax was pliable not brittle so back to the text book I went.

I cold smell honey in the wax and that should all have been washed out, so I decided to re melt it all again in the double boiler and add more water in the hope that it would separate.

This time the colour of the wax was a lovely pale shade of yellow and the water that was left behind had the distinct honey smell I think it is now OK.

This morning I had another look at my handiwork and I am quite pleased the wax is hard and brittle and looks like it should with no smell of honey.

Next time though I will definitely wash it first, it would have made the process so much more easier and quicker. You live and learn don't you!!

Now, what to do with that lovely wax, candles, tea lights or polish??  any of them would make great Christmas presents, but what to choose....

Labels to Be(e) or not to Be(e) -pardon the pun

The honey is delicious and is sitting at the moment in the settling tank awaiting bottling. We are not quite ready to bottle up yet, so you will have to wait a little longer to find the weight of the honey. I hopefully will let you know in the next week or so.

In the meantime we have a big problem!!

Labels, who would think it would be so hard to decide on a label for the Honey jars.

Do we want to buy one from the beekeeping suppliers like everyone else, no I don't think so! Everyone and his dog seem to be using these, and if we are going to create a brand we need something a little better.

After hours and hours of trawling through the Internet looking for alternatives that were a bit more upmarket and reasonably priced, we still haven't decided on any, they are either far to expensive for the small amount that we want this year or they look terrible, all cottagy and flowery.

So we have now decided to make our own, how foolish this may turn out to be remains to be seen as we rarely agree on things of this nature and end up falling out.

We were supposed to sit down today and design  a label, but Mel had to go to his choir and it was such a lovely afternoon I went fishing but I can tell you it was well worth it two very nice 3lb trout were caught by me and my son was a little disappointed that I caught the first one on the very first cast.

Ha Ha

Disaster had struck when we got home, the beef Madras I had put in the oven for supper before leaving was so burnt it was inedible, I had the oven on to high instead of a slow cooking so we all had to make do with a pie out of the freezer.

Maybe I should have designed that label after all!!

The deed is done- golden nectar extracted

The rain didnt stop all this morning and heavy showers were forecasted for the afternoon

Do we do it or dont we?

Yes of course we did, we couldnt help ourselves it was so exciting!!

Mel and Gary went to check the hives and see how many supers we had, whilst I prepared the utility room for the extraction process. I had been warned it could be messy job.

If you have never extracted honey before then be warned it creates a wholly sticky mess everywhere, despite how careful and prepared you are!

I had all the work surfaces scrubbed clean, all the utensils and buckets sterilised and the extractor thouroughly cleaned, the floor was covered in cardboard and newspapers, plenty of cloths and hot water at the ready.

 All set to go!

The supers were brought in and stacked ready, the first frame was picked out ready to be uncapped to allow the honey to flow freely when placed in the extractor.

You need a steady hand and a jug of hot water to dip the knife in and a board over a container to place the frame on whilst you cut away the cappings. Tilt the fram forward so the cappings drop into the container as you cut them away. Normally this can be done in one sheet if the comb is evenly drawn out, if not it will take several goes to do it. Remove as much of the cappings as you can, but try not cut to far into the honeycomb. Have more than one container at the ready as we ended up needing three.

As the cappings are removed hand them to a helper to place them into the extractor, repaeat until the extractor is full.

Now slowly start it up and watch the honey start to spin out, hitting the sides and flowing down into a golden pool at the bottom.

Watch the bottom of the extractor as the honey slides down, dont let the honey pool in the bottom to much before opening the gate and filling your bucket.

 Dont forget to place the strainers on first though!

Next close the gate on the extractor and carry on with the rest of the frames until all done, meanwhile the bucket of collected honey now needs to go through a very fine mesh strainer to catch any missed or remaining tiny bits of pollen before being left in a settling tank to let all the bubbles rise to the top.

The extracting process is quite long depending on how much honey there is to extract but dont try and rush it or cut corners, instead give yourself plenty of time and have few cups of tea in between as you stop and admire the golden nectar flowing into the buckets.

We filled to buckets then ran out of containers to store it in so had to improvise and put it in saucepans, thank god for stockpans and preserve pans dont underestimate how much honey you may get and get caught out like us.

Next there were the cappings to deal with lots of honey in the bottom of the basins there too!! and the wax is to valuable to waste but thats another story.

The biggest job was the clean up after, but we managed in the end. Now it's time for a well earned glass of wine whilst I admire our very own honey

How much honey did we extract??

Would you like a jar?

Guess the amount correctly and I will send the person who guesses the nearest,

wins a jar of Melys Honey.

Link a blog

The grandchildren have been up to spend a weekend just recently and were fascinated by our bees, especially after watching the brilliant Bee Movie. I was in and out of the room whilst it was playing and found myself going back in to see what was happening!!

I know it is a movie for kids, but at the end of the day, what a brilliant way to get the youngsters interested in bees and their parents to the plight of the honey bee.

Anything that highlights the problems that the bee is facing globally is OK with me.

Well worth watching!!

I had a few spare moments today to search out other beekeepers blogs and was surprised at what I found, the quality of them was  really so good, it has made me stop and think about this one. So I have now come up with lots of new ideas to add to mine, so watch this space!!

If any beekeepers out there would like to have a link to and from my blog to yours, please contact me with your details.

Royal Welsh Show 2011

We had a great day at the Royal Welsh Show, in Builth Wells yesterday, it is a few years since we have been and it has changed so much. The show is just growing and growing in size and stature, apparently it is one of the best shows in Europe.

I had gone down primarily to show my rabbits, but I also had another agenda! I wanted to have a look at the Honey classes and the competition that I will have next year if I get my way!

Honey Exhibits at the Royal Welsh Show 2011

Whilst looking at the fabulous honey, mead, candle and polish exhibits we also watched a demonstration of how to make your own beeswax polish. I will be trying this my self in the near future if I can get hold of any turpentine.

More exhibits - Well done all !

There was also an exhibition hive for the general public to see the insides of a working hive, this is a great way to see what goes on inside with the eggs laid, brood at all stages and the honey and pollen coming in. I am not sure if everyone understands the complexity of the honey bee but even for beekeepers it is great to watch.

Winner of a frame of Honey, doesn't it look good- Well Done

Well done and congratulations to everyone who entered the show and especially to the winners of each class, as I know only to well how hard it is to get a red card at the Royal Welsh.
From my experience it takes months of planning and weeks of preparation just to enter a show and I am talking about livestock

Tonight we opened up a few hives to see how they are getting along, and we were nicely surprised.

Hive #2 last week, was thought to be queen less, now although we haven't seen the queen nor was there any eggs we now believe her to be there but just not mated. The reason for this is the frame of brood that was placed in the hive last week, should have had an emergency queen cell built on it if there was no queen there, and it didn't.

We have made a decision tonight to move the hives from this apiary as there seems to be a problem with the queens mating there for some unknown reason. So they will be moved the the field apiary as soon as we can do it/

Hive # 4 was also checked and I am pleased to say it was the same result as #2.

In the field apiary we checked #12 the latest acquisition, this was the last swarm collected, with a virgin queen and already she has eggs and capped brood in her hive and is doing well.

New Wedding Favours

These wedding favours are very simply decorated but will still look elegant on your wedding tables.

Cream Ribbon and Honey Bee Charm

Peach Ribbon and LOVE Charm

They can be customised to suit your requirements and the ribbons can be changed to match your theme.

 Please visit my Etsy Shop, link on the left of page

Honey Granola

I forgot to add this to my last post, well worth a try!!

I also read a very short book on my Kindle whilst lying in bed on Saturday morning. " Family Honey" this was about a family of beekeepers in USA, going back through the generations. The topic that ran through this book was about the plight of the honey bee, which is very alarming!! we will discuss this at a later stage. There was also a section on Honey recipes where I found a lovely recipe for Granola, a homemade breakfast cereal made from honey and oats, it was delicious and so easy to make.

3 cups porridge oats

1 cup honey

1/4 cup oil

Mix together and bake in a moderate oven, turning every 10 minutes until golden, do not walk away and forget about it or they will burn! Store in an airtight container and serve with fruit and nuts of your choice and cold milk for breakfast, yummy!

Learning on the Go!

As with all hobbies, there is so much to learn and with beekeeping I am learning all the time.This weekend I have been reading  the Beekeepers Bible by Collins.

There is everything in it that a novice beekeeper could possibly need, from the history of the bee to basic skills and honey recipes.

Well worth the cost!

Saturday afternoon, time once again to inspect the hives, we were only going to check numbers 1-5 today as we were a little worried about the activity in numbers 2 and 4 and of course we needed to know what was happening in number 1.

We opened hive #1 first,  I am so glad to say it is now queen right, laying queen, brood found at all stages, this has now been saved and looking good.

Hive # 2 we had our doubts last week when we opened this, if there was a queen or not. This hive is working extremely well, bringing in the honey, but there was no new eggs or brood seen.

 Gary checked it over and explained that the behaviour of the bees, led him to believe it was queen less. As they have no eggs, they cannot produce a queen cell, so we had to take evasive action.

We removed a frame of brood from # 5 and placed this in this hive. Now we have to check this in 2-3 days, there will be either queen cells produced on this frame proving there is no queen or if there are no cells it will be queen right and we will just have to wait for her to lay.

Hive # 3 we checked this to see if it needed another super for honey, plenty coming in so it will do in a few days time, Mel better get making some more frames quickly!

Hive # 4 this was another concern, as we thought this was were  # 12  swarm had come from and again we weren't sure if it was queen less or not. We followed the same procedure as above, taking a frame of brood this time from hive #3 . We will need to check again in 2-3 days to see what has happened. Again this activity has not effected the honey flow so we are hoping for some lovely nectar soon.

Hive #5 is queen right with a bought queen from the Buckfast strain and she is laying very well. This hive is getting stronger by the day, but we have had to take a frame of brood out to save hive #2. We are sure they will recover from this loss very quickly. We are not expecting any honey from this hive this year, we just need it to build up strong enough to get through the winter.

The weather today is atrocious not even a bee would go out in this!! bring back the Sun

Inspection

Talk about learning as you go along! there is nothing quite like hands on experience, now dont get me wrong I am all for reading about the subject of bees but nothing quite makes sense until you actually experience it.

My bedtime reading at the moment is bees, bees and more bees and if it isnt a book, it is the Beecraft magazine which has lots of useful information for all beekeepers including the novice like me.

Normally we inspect the hives at the weekend but when I got home last night Mel was eager to have a look at the ones that were queenless, to see what was happening in them. So before dinner we donned our suits and went to the apiary on the mountain. I am happy to report that all hives were doing well except for one, the Nuc!



12 frame National Bee hive



5 frame Nuc Box



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nuc, if you remember is the hive that we swapped from a full hive last weekend into a Nuc box as we thought it had so few bees and no queen, I can confirm this is definitely the case, I will update on this later.

The two other hives that were queen less on the last inspection have now got new virgin queens, in fact one emerged right in front of us.  It was fascinating to watch her pull her self out of the cell, a lovely black queen. In fact I couldnt quite beleive what I was seeing as Mel had taken out this particular queen cell to check if it was dead inside, and there she was in his hand!! they dont tell you to do that in a text book.

In the other hive we didn't actually spot the new queen but we are pretty sure she is there albeit a vigin (hence no eggs) as the remaining queen cells were all dead. I hadnt quite understood that the new queen or shall I say the first queen to emerge runs around the hive looking for queen cells in order to kill them. She wants to rule! so she kills each of them by inserting her sting into the cell before they hatch.

Another little snippet I learnt last night was the queen has multiple stings, unlike a worker bee who only has one and then dies when it has been used, she can sting lots of times and obviously lives to carry on.

The main hives from last year are now well and truly in a honey flow and bringing in the nectar. The 2 strongest hives  have almost filled a super it just needs to be capped so we we have put a new supers on each of them ready for them to fill them as well.

Fingers crossed for a bumper 2 months

Hive Number 11 another swarm

Yes that's right Hive number 11 another swarm caught tonight in Conwy,

This time it was in a swarm box so very easy to collect and to handle. The box had been placed in a dark corner of a garden by a friend of ours Cyril. He phoned us up today to say that there was a lot of activity around it, so after dinner we set out to collect it, taking with us a gift of a jar of Melys Honey as a

 thank you.

Back home we were lucky to be able to hive it straight into a brand new hive that Mel had spent all last night putting together, just in case! Lucky for the bees he had, guess what he will be doing

 tomorrow night!!

All the bees were tucked up nicely in their new home before dark.

Queen Disaster

We checked over the hives today, after re queening 4 hives last week, we thought we would have had a positive response but like the book says it is very difficult to re queen native Bee's they don't like accepting just any queen.

3 out of 4 hives had got rid!! and at £30 each its not very funny. One colony accepted and has already started laying her eggs so that one will be fine.

Now the other 3, well 2 of them had drawn emergency queen cells so we have left them with them and will allow them to hatch, but what we will do is relocate the hive to Llanrwst to give them a better chance of mating and they will be close to the honey flow that is just starting to happen there.

The blackberry and balsam is just coming into flower and both hives have a strong colony of workers so should bring in the honey.

The 3rd hive is a disaster, they had no brood so are slowly dying out, a lot less bees in there compared to last week. We have taken them out of the hive and moved it into the field which is going to be our new apiary, (more sun, less shade, protected from the wind) we replaced the hive with a Nuc box and will try and save whats left with a queen and some brood out of one of the other hives.

The good news is that we have had 2 more swarms so we are now up to 10 hives (including the disaster) also the strong hives are definitely starting to find the nectar and pollen so we should get a bit of honey this year but as they say don't count your chickens...

A new beekeeper is made

I have been assisting with the bees now for many months and although reluctantly at first I will  confess, now I cant get enough of them.

It all happened quite by chance really, my hubby had wanted to keep bees for many years and decided to go on a beekeeping course to find out the pros and cons. Armed with this knowledge and having read every book he could get his hands on he bought his first hive.

 Gary a good friend of ours also started mentoring him and his confidence grew and grew. He also helped when there was a swarm caught last year and this can be seen on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyuBtNfTHGk

At the beginning of the year a half suit was bought for me so I could watch from a safe distance behind a wall, I didn't like the thought of all that buzzing around my head. Over the first few weeks I was encouraged to watch every time they made an inspection, then one weekend a neighbour knocked on our door and told me that there was a swarm of bees in the hedge near by.

 Hubby was out for the night, Gary couldn't be contacted, what to do!!

I knew that my hubby would be gutted if he missed catching a swarm, so I decided I would have a go. Luckily the neighbour also kept a hive in his garden so offered to assist me. I found the full suit, gloves and a box to put them in while I waited for him to come back suited and booted and hopefully know what to do next.

Two of my grown up sons thought it was hilarious, that I was going to attempt to catch a swarm, but I did.

I have to say it was one of the most thrilling things I have ever done, buzzing, what buzzing I was in awe of those little flying bees I didn't even notice the sound or even worry about the hundreds that where flying around my head.

The bees had collected on an old branch in a hedge that surrounds our field, it looked like a rugby ball. First job was to place the box directly beneath them, then with tree loppers the branch was cut and the majority of bees landed in the box. As there was still many bees flying around and another clump on the floor we waited half an hour for them to decide that the queen was in the box. Having realised were she was they all then decided to enter the box too. within 20 minutes they were all in. Box was sealed and taken to the apiary. If you watch the youtube footage you will see how a swarm then marches into a hive, fascinating!!

That day changed my outlook on bees and took away any fears I had, I cant wait to get in amongst them and find out what is happening each week.

I am happy to say I have assisted in catching another swarm very recently, this time it was 3 miles away on a housing estate, in a ladies garden and I took the lead on capturing this. Its funny now every time I go for a walk I am looking in trees hedges and in peoples gardens just in case there is a swarm of bees I can take home.

Melys Honey - The begining

Welcome to my new blog, this is all about my honey bees and the honey products that I will be selling under the brand name "Melys Honey". Ranging from Edible Wedding Favours that are suitable for men, women and children, they are unique, unusual and can be completely personalised. New ranges that will launch in the Autumn will be gifts for Christmas, so come back and grab yourself some.

I aim to update the blog regularly throughout the season for anyone interested in beekeeping (from a novices point of view) and I hopefully will share the happenings of the hive and any new things that I learn along the way.

My camera will be out and about so I can share some images too. If you have any questions please leave a comment and I will try and answer the best I can.