It’s been a long time. A lot has happened. I’ve moved house. I’ve sold my bees, caught a swarm, given that away, nearly given up on bees completely, and then started going to meetings at my local association apiary, about twenty minutes drive away in mid-Cornwall.
Back in my suit!
I miss my bees and it’s been fantastic watching the bees being inspected. Two weeks ago I spotted a new queen and one of the tutors marked her in this year’s colour, red. I’ve now been asked to become a tutor myself and show complete beginners inside a hive, taking them through the basics of the differences between worker, drone and queen, the parts of the hive, and how the colony works.
The apiary sessions remind me of the lovely Ealing apiary, with its friendly bunch of beeks and plentiful supply of cake. Yesterday we had both Victoria sponge and lemon drizzle, plus tea. The association has a good system where anyone who wants tea brings their own mug and then takes it home with them, avoiding one person getting stuck doing all the washing up afterwards!
Newbee friends of mine
I’ve also been trying to make my new back garden more bee and wildlife friendly. I’ve let parts of the grass grow long, and been rewarded by the sight of butterflies dancing over it. The butterflies seem particularly fond of some long grass I have in my similarly sized front garden. After just six months of not cutting it, wild strawberries, plantains, foxgloves and yellow rattle are growing there.
Back garden – now
Old back garden – last autumn
I took the bottom photo in September last year – nearly a year later, many things have almost doubled in size!
I bought some plants from Rosy Bee, a UK company who specialise in plants for pollinators. I have a bare but sunny bit at the top of my front garden which has really poor soil, so I thought I might as well try some wild flowers out there. I got the beautiful sea Holly, Lambs ear (a fave from my old house) and Ox eye daisy as it’s known for being a tough plant that’s good at filling space. I also found out one of my neighbours is a gardener who sells plants, and she has supplied me with rosemary, Michaelmas daisies and sage.
The front garden already had a large patch of mallow flowers, which both honey bees and bumbles have been enjoying. It leaves them with a dusting of white pollen on their backs.
Honey bee on mallow flower
After a stressful couple of years, I am starting to get the buzz back for this special hobby 🙂
Adventuresinbeeland's Blog 
Hallelujah
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Your garden has undergone a transformation! It is lovely that you have found an association. We have several beekeeping friends and find it essential to talk “bee” with them in our unintelligible bee language. Now the sunflowers are in full bloom and the bees are very busy. Our harvest time approaches but it will be a lot of work this year as we have a couple more colonies. Amelia
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Thanks Amelia. Nothing like talking “bee”. Those sunflowers must be stunning right now.
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Welcome back! You’ve done a great job with that back garden. Enjoy your bees, David
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Thanks David. Good to see that your blog is still buzzing along 🙂
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It’s lovely to see you back. It is an infectious hobby which is really difficult to put down.
Thank you for writing again. Have always enjoyed your blogs.
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Thanks so much Simon, that’s really kind of you.
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Nice to see you get your buzz back!! I run our local beekeeping course this year, and it was fun to be on the other side of teaching. Enjoy!
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Great thing to do! Thanks Erik 🙂
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Glad to hear you’re bee-ing again, even if indirectly.
Also glad you’re back to some sort of normal and settling in.
Oddly, this year bees are already pouncing on my hummingbird feeders (and there are fewer hummers around). I don’t normally see that until early September. It makes me wonder if they’re struggling to find enough food foraging because of the nearly two months of little to no rain.
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Thanks Emilio. The little rain will have caused nectar shortages for sure, so thank you for helping the bees! And sorry for the delayed comment – WordPress has been playing up on my iPad.
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No problem, and yes, now that we’ve had some rain, very few bees stop by the feeders.
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Yay! You’re back in the bee suit again! I missed your blogs!
Hope to hear more of your adventures in Cornwall!
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He he thanks! Was meant to go beekeeping last weekend, but it was rained off!
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Hallo Emily, This was a nice surprise Emily. I’m glad that your Bee-ing with bees has caught op with you again. I hope your new start in your new home brings you contentment. Life van be hard sometimes and makes us take all kinds of twists and turns just to be able to keep our balance. We have quite a few Rhamnus trees in our garden and they always make me think of you and your drawing of their nectaries.
We have a nephew who lives in Cornwall, I don’t think he’s terribly happy in England but his 9 year old son lives there and there is no chance ever…. of our nephew being able to take his son to The Netherlands for any kind of visit. The family on the boy’s mothers side wouldn’t want that. They, the parents are no longer together.
Anyway enough of that.
We have built a house in the last couple of years on a very large, 2,5 acres, piece of neglected garden with a burned out house. That arsonist home owners had tried to diddle their insurers by burning their house but they were found out very quickly. The bank foreclosed their mortgage and Ruurd and I bought it at a bancrupty auction.
So our bee hives are now on our own property instead of in a nature reserve. I follow the natural beekeeping methods of no interuptions and no varroa treatments. I also do not take away the bees hard earned honey supplies and substitute my theft with sugar water.
I know conventional beeks think people like me are risks to their bees but we live quite isolated from other bee ‘keepers’. My nearest bee keeping neighbour also follws this same Natural Beekeeping methode so we only support each other.
We caught three swarms in June, two secondary ones on the same day, and four days after that a huge prime swarm.
Then my husband started saying he would like to have a hive of bees in another part of the garden than my 5 hives. They are what is known as golden hives and can each house two colonies.
On Thursday, June 22nd I made a split for my husbands hive to be. Because any swarm that might arrive after the end of June might be risky. I have never done that before and I was quite worried about interfering in the colony. I did choose the colony that had lived uninterrupted in the garden since 2018.
My husband and my son moved the hive to its new location and it remained closed until Saturday morning. Those bees are still doing very well, I haven’t seen them bringing in pollen yet but they are certainly very, very busy with nectar and propolis gathering and building of comb. I expect to see pollen going in in the 3rd week in July.
I’m trying to educate my husband now about all this bee stuff that for us innoculated with bee vaccins in the normal way is just a joy to learn but somhow I don’t think anything is going to stick. He is 70 and I will become 70 in november. I’m just happy to share my hobby with him in this way. His primary hobby was always chess and he was more of an indoors type of man. So I’m fine with this new development.
I hope to hear from you again, keep well, Kindest regards, Lindy van der Meulen
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Thanks for your lovely long comment Lindy. Sorry for the delay in replying, WordPress has been playing up for me. Your garden and hives sound enthralling, a little piece of heaven. I am glad you liked my nectaries drawing 🙂
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Nice to see you back with bees again, Emily. Great to hear that you are getting involved in beekeeping education. Some of my blog posts might be helpful with that. There are a few on beekeeping education and mentoring. Best wishes, Ann.
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Lovely to hear about this new chapter Emily x
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It’s lovely to hear about this new chapter Emily x
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So pleased to see you back, I have missed your bee blogging! best wishes Philip
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We are late to the party welcoming you back but no less sincere in doing so. Once accustomed to having bees in one’s care lacking them never feels right.
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Will you catch another swarm do you think? Good to see that tea and cake still feature heavily!
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