A Hive Of Activity

6/27/2016 04:23:00 pm 0 Comments

The Honeydale bees have been busy! Paul and Chris Wells carried out an inspection today and discovered that the ‘special measures’ hive has reacted well to the new queen, introduced earlier this month. She is healthy, laying lots of eggs and with plenty of brood present...


...so she’s been marked (white for 2016)...


and had her wings clipped.



All is looking very good and a mass of beautifully coloured pollen has been collected.


Some of the bees have deformed wing virus.


This is not unusual, but is an indicator that some varroa is present. The bottom board of the hive was checked and varroa was found, along with wax moth grubs, so this will be kept under supervision and may have to be treated for varroa.

Hive 1 (to which we added several additional supers) has now produced an impressive 30kg of honey so far [see pic], with some perfect honey-filled frames.



No queen, eggs or brood were visible though, but the calm temperament within the hive suggests the queen is not too far away and is still active. The colony have polished a lot of cells which usually means they are preparing for the queen to lay eggs. Another inspection will be carried out at the end of the week to see if she can be found.

The swarm box is still confusing us. It has a healthy number of bees but no brood or eggs. However the bees are displaying a healthy temperament so it’ll be left for another week and inspected again. It may be necessary to introduce eggs into this hive to stimulate the bees to create a new queen and it may then be possible to develop a new colony from this swarm we’ll have to watch this space.


The Honeydale bees already have company, as Chris Wells has now brought some of his bees up to the farm. There are currently four nucleus boxes there, with more to follow.


Once the bees have acclimatised they will be transferred to some more permanent national hives at the end of the week. Having seen the honey production from our hives, Chris is very enthusiastic about having his hives at Honeydale and looking forward to lots of honey.

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Crimper Roller Experiment - Rain Stops Play!

6/22/2016 04:31:00 pm 0 Comments

Our crimper roller experiment has been hampered by the heavy rain this week. It’s just been too wet for us to get out into the field without risking damage to the soil and crops. We’re hoping it will dry up soon so that we can resume.


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Let It Bee!

6/09/2016 11:17:00 am 0 Comments



The two hives at Honeydale have been under close supervision for the past couple of weeks and today we performed another inspection on hive 1, the hive which is not under special measures. We did not find a queen but an empty queen cup was discovered, having been vacated by an emerging queen. The rest of the hive was also displaying behaviour which indicated that a queen has recently been produced and will soon be laying eggs. Polished brood cells were found which indicates that she is probably off mating and will soon return to the hive, when it will be business as usual. Once she is back we will find her and mark her with a coloured spot.

During the inspection, bee mentor Chris Wells removed a sealed queen cup with a virgin queen inside which was set aside. Other sealed queen cups were found but the queens inside had been killed by the emerged queen.

The second super is now also full, so we have added another super and another lift, meaning this hive now has three supers on it and around 20kg of honey so far.

We also performed an inspection of hive 2 - the one in special measures. Bee numbers were vastly reduced and many emerged queen cups were found, though no sign of the actual queen, suggesting this hive has swarmed, or at least has tried to. It is possible that one of the the swarms found last week was from this hive. We left a sealed queen cup in situ to allow a new queen to be produced and the hive can continue to develop as normal. As an insurance policy, should the queen cup fail to successfully hatch a queen, we introduced the virgin queen from hive 1 into hive 2. This hive will be inspected again in a week or so to see what happens next.


We then turned our attention to the swarns. The main swarm box, in which we placed a brood frame from hive 1, has lost some bees but there are still a healthy number remaining. We were unable to find a queen but the the temper of the colony and 'fanning' behaviour of the bees suggested there was one present somewhere. We are leaving it alone for now, to see if the colony develops and if a queen is apparent next time we inspect. The best case scenario is that we end up with another colony and therefore can start another hive, although it’s quite unlikely this colony will survive if there is no queen. We’ll inspect again next week and see if we can find the elusive queen.

The other box was empty so this swarm has been lost and similarly the swarm left in the tree has moved on.

But there will definitely be more bees arriving at Honeydale this week. The Sainfoin has just begun to flower and and the bees are flocking to it like...well, like bees round a honeypot! Sainfoin is such a popular plant for bees and produces some of the best honey, so Chris has been eagerly waiting for it to bloom and now that it has, he will be installing five of his own hives in our apiary.

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Crimper Roller Take Three

6/08/2016 02:42:00 pm , 0 Comments


In the third stage of our No Till Crimper Roller experiment, we continue to hunt for that 'Goldilocks Moment' - when is the perfect time to crimp our rye/vetch crop?

This week we attached a seed drill onto the back of the roller as an experiment. When the crop is successfully flattened the next stage will be to incorporate the next seeds through the sward and into the soil, either by drilling or broadcasting.

As you’ll see, the drill proved problematic, which could have been due to the wet weather, or the crop’s lack of maturity, or just because the particular drill we used was not suitable.

We’ll be having another go next week when we will also be rolling again in our continuing quest to find out whether it’s going to be possible to use this innovative technique across fields in the UK.

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Mob Grazing Update

6/03/2016 02:38:00 pm , 0 Comments


In another experiment at the farm, Sam ‘Macca’ McPherson from the Cotswold Seeds’ warehouse was keen to broaden his experience at the farm. He owns a small flock of rare Texels sheep and his father is a stockman at the Sezincote Estate, so he’s putting this background to good use. Here Ian and Macca chat about the mob grazing system at Honeydale Farm, which is just coming to the end of its first 'cycle' on the Cotswold Seeds Herbal Ley.

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Bee-Ware!

6/01/2016 03:59:00 pm 0 Comments

When Paul arrived at Honeydale Farm to check the bees this weekend he found thousands of them swarming all over the apiary and immediately contacted beekeeping mentor Chris Wells for advice.

Swarming is natural and common at this time of year. In fact Chris said that it had been ‘a very swarmy day.’ In a normal year, this behaviour is managed by regular monitoring, and an artificial swarm can be carried out if necessary. What’s complicated the situation at Honeydale is that the bees have been behaving unpredictably all Spring due to the mild winter, cool March/April and erratic weather ever since, so monitoring them has been tricky and swarming difficult to predict.



Two swarms were found hanging from branches in the trees behind the hives, the largest one 3m high. One of the hives is being left alone while a new queen is created, so Paul’s first task was to perform an inspection of the other hive. He destroyed the incomplete queen cups but left the fully formed ones in situ as they will be needed if this hive proves to be the one that has swarmed and thereby lost its queen. Paul didn’t find the queen in the hive, but the good news is that there were still plenty of bees.

Paul then needed to gather the swarms. He took a brood frame from the strongest hive and put this into an empty nuc box - the containers in which nucleuses of bees first arrived at Honeydale, which Paul had fortuitously kept. Chris Wells had told him that any cardboard box would suffice, effectively mimicking the traditional bee skep, domed baskets which were used by beekeepers for centuries.


Paul had to climb on the top of the pick up truck to reach the main swarm which he shook off the tree into the nuc box. He placed this upside down on the ground at the base of the tree before he repeated the procedure with the other smaller swarm.

He left the boxes to settle and noticed a third swarm in another tree. This has been left alone until Chris visits with Paul early next week to decide what best to do next.

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