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One Sunday morning our neighbour came to alert us of her discovery, our bees in her 15metre tall pine tree![one_half]

 

Then I looked up and the sky was full of bees following their queen in search of a new home… luckily Antonio likes to climb trees, so made his way up the pine tree and caught the swarm in a soft cotton bag and made a pulley system to lower them down the tree where I caught them at the bottom and we took them to a new hive with some honey to make them feel at home.[/one_half] [one_half_last]Pine tree[/one_half_last]

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The bees coming home after a great day of foraging…

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For love or honey?

Beehaving ©Antonio Pagano

Photo-Antonio Pagano

I say it must bee love! As the hive fills up over the summer with not only honey, but triple the population!  Then there is only one way to go- up! This is when the beehive becomes a bee-highrise as ‘supers’  are added on top give the bees more space and new frames to work on and fill with honey nectar.

Bees are amazing workers and their motto is surely ‘making honey while the sun shines’ which they then store up for the winter.  Although a common practise in the UK and colder climates is feeding sugar to bees as all their honey store is taken, we always leave the bees a store of honey to keep them going through the winter, so our bees are happy and healthy!

Amanda

Queen bee