The Village Voice June July 2018

We at Sylvan Apiaries, run 170 honey
production colonies across three counties,
Hants, Wilts and Dorset. April was a very busy
time for us on the bee farm, checking how
many colonies made it through the winter. We
always have very low numbers of losses, mainly
because we insure our colonies have enough
stores of honey and pollen to get them through
a long winter, such as the one we have had this
year. In the Autumn we only ever take the
surplus honey to sell.
The Oil seed rape is now in full flower and the
colonies are in overdrive. The queens are laying
at almost full speed. The newly hatched worker
bees are on house cleaning duties, and the
older bees are hard at work foraging, bringing
back loads of pollen to feed the brood and
nectar to feed the adult bees. Some bees will be
collecting water. Most people don`t realise
water is very important for the survival of bee
colonies & we have water feeders at all our
sites for this reason.
Bee colonies are very well structured, with
specific jobs to do within the colony . These are
determined by their age- for example, cleaning
and feeding brood, foraging and guard
duty. Each of these jobs will be undertaken in
turn by the adult bees during their brief life,
which could be as little as six weeks.
We run mostly static sites for our bees, this
means we don`t have to keep moving colonies
about after specific crops to pollenate. Much
better for the bees and for our backs!
Our main job at this time of year is to undertake
weekly inspection , looking for sign of swarming
and keep ahead of the bees. We add honey
boxes to insure they have sufficient room for
expanding brood nests and storage space for
the incoming nectar. If we don’t do this, the
BEHIND HIVE DOORS
THE LIFE OF A LOCAL BEE KEEPER
bees will run out of space and swarm, taking the
Queen, half of the bees and honey with them.
This is something we try our best to avoid. Once
the nectar is collected and stored in the wax
combs, the bees have to evaporate it to reduce
the water content before they seal it in with a
wax coat for use at a later date. It can now be
called honey.
Once the rape honey is 3/4 capped, (covered
over with wax by the bees), it is ready to
extract. We have to be quick as rape honey
crystallises very quickly. Leave it for too long
and it will have to be melted out of the comb,
resulting in the loss of the wax comb, which is
one of our most valuable assets. We collect the
full combs from the hives and take them to our
extraction room , where we uncap the honey
frames with a revolving brush or a hot knife.
The uncapped frames are placed into one of our
two centrifuge spinners where the honey is
spun out. It is then drained through a course
sieve to take out any lumps of wax or any
impurities. It is then stored in 15kg buckets.
Nothing is added, it is then either sold in bulk to
a honey packer or jarred and sold to local
outlets. The emptied wax combs are returned
to the hives to be cleaned and filled again by
the bees.
Bees and other pollinators are under pressure
from loss of suitable forage in today`s world.
Gardens are smaller than they use to be,
hedgerows have been grubbed out and
replaced by fences. This combined with the use
of pesticide on a large scale is having an adverse
effect on them all.
Without bees, our food supply would be very
much reduced. You can help support the bees
by planting bee friendly plants and buying local
honey, within 25 miles radius of the producer
would be ideal.
Chris & Jayne,
Sylvan Apiaries,
Hordle
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