Episode 52: One Year On

Today I’m celebrating my podcast’s first birthday! Fifty Two podcasts recorded and published.

I’ve covered quite a varied number of beekeeping topics over the past year and also attempted a few interviews which have been a little nerve wracking! I’m not a journalist or professional presenter, just a beekeeper looking to share my knowledge and views with other interested listeners. Hopefully I’ll be able to try out a few more interviews in the coming year.

You may be aware that I am sending out a fortnightly beekeeping newsletter with the same name as the podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet, it’s early days at the moment and I’m trying to keep it light and image rich, so no massive pages of text to trawl through just a few interesting pictures with hopefully some useful links. I’ll be promoting various events and offers through the newsletter too, so do sign up, it’s quick and easy, just go to my website and leave your details when the sign up pop up appears.

Websites I referred to in the podcast:
www.norfolk-honey.co.uk
www.beetradeex.co.uk
www.scientificbeekeeping.com

Talking of events, we are fast approaching the Spring Sales events here in the UK, The first major event on Saturday 9th March is called BeeTradex, billed as The Biggest Beekeeping Show in 2019 it is a one day trade show with various lectures and talks being given. It’s held at the agricultural show grounds at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire. It’s also a chance to pick up a bargain from one of the beekeeping equipment manufacturers or suppliers as they usually have discounts available. One of the nicest things about BeeTradex is that it gives me the chance to catch up with friends within the industry and also chat with fellow beekeepers who I would not normally have a chance to get together with. If you’re going along please do stop me and say hello. I’ll pop the Beetradex website link in the show notes.

With the temperatures on the rise, the bees have certainly been getting out and about, clusters have been breaking up, not that we’ve had many very cold days but the nights have been chilly falling to below freezing. I was out putting some fondant on some colonies a few days ago and was happy to see so many colonies with large numbers of bees, I would say an average of six seams of bees but some were around 9 seams which is excellent. That can obviously lead to a food shortage, particularly if the colony gets quite active in the warmer weather but fails to find any early food source. We’ve had lots of snowdrops in flower locally and now the crocus is exploding into flower with this milder weather. A vital source of food and we’re very lucky to have so many crocus plants flowering near our apiaries. It seems to be the number one Spring flowering plant of choice for our Norwich City council who appear to have planted millions of bulbs over the last few years all around our fine City.

That said, it is still February and the weather can as easily turn cold and wintery again so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. I spoke to a beekeeper a couple of days ago who said if the weather stays warm he was going to inspect at the weekend, I think this is a little too soon, I’m certainly not going to be inspecting my colonies although there are a couple I’m keeping a close eye on.

The first colony is the nuc I have in my allotment apiary, that’s the one with the Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus, I popped some fondant on them last week, they’re still alive although the entrance was badly clogged up with dead bees so I think they are still suffering. I’d like to get into them as early as possible and see what’s going on.

The other colony is at one of my out apiaries, I was out treating with the Oxalic Acid trickle method a while back and as I finished treating this particular hive and was putting the roof back on a larger than normal bees flew across my eye line. The more experienced beekeepers out there will