THE BEEKEEPER'S LOG

A mown strip, an uncut patch.

In summer we leave half the ground uncut. Cricket, grasshopper, frog, slow worm and grass snake all live here undisturbed. It stays that way until late autumn.

The honey cleans itself.

We extract into the large settling tank. A few days later every crumb of wax has floated to the top. We spoon it off. Straining is by then almost only aesthetics: the pollen, too, all goes into the jar.

When it does not drip.

We turn the frame face down and lift it sharply upward. Twice. If it drips, there is more waiting to do. The black locust honey is ripe.

A swarm on the maple branch. Holding on with both hands.

Three kilos. Roughly 30,000 bees. While they hang like this, the scouts are looking for new lodgings. We do not wait for them; they go into an empty hive.

The sour cherry in flower, the Japanese and corkscrew willow to the left.

Blackthorn → cherry plum → sweet cherry → sour cherry → pear → apple → hawthorn. The menu, from 20 March to 10 May. In April the pollen simply pours into the hives. This is what sets off the swarming fever.

Catkins on the tree row in front of the hives.

The common alder is slowly coming to the end of its flowering. Nectar it does not give, but pollen it does. In March that matters more: this is what the brood comes from.

Smoke over the row of hives.

We give the extracted frames back to the bees to clean out. Strictly at sunset. By day, the smell of the honey left in freshly extracted comb would provoke the apiary into robbing.

Small hives under the old maple.

The mating nucs stand on their own site, kept apart from the production colonies. Goldenrod embraces the shaded clearing. Only one path leads here. Nothing passes through, nothing disturbs them.

19 mating nucs in the cellar, standing on a pallet.

Once stocked, the little mating nucs have to stay in the cellar for exactly that long, so the bees settle together and accept their young queen. The faint hum coming out of the dark means all is well in there. We do not disturb them.

Mating nucs lined up, before stocking.

19 mating nucs need 2 kg of young bees. We fill the boxes with food and set a caged queen beside every opening. The bees are shaken into a swarm box and thoroughly misted with water. Into each one we measure a heaped ladleful, add the queen, then close it quickly. It goes like clockwork.

Queen cells on the breeding bar, covered with bees.

The young nurse bees are feeding the larvae. They are drawing comb at the same time: the mood is good. There is enough nectar, pollen and young bee. Those three ingredients are what it takes for well-developed queens to emerge.

Bees covering the front wall of the hive.

If the queen is lost during swarming — taken by a bird, or injured — the swarm has no choice but to give up the journey. Sometimes it takes hours before they withdraw from the front wall back into the hive. As soon as a new queen emerges from the swarm cells, they try again.

A blue butterfly on a fresh foundation frame.

Other nectar-loving insects often settle on the frames we set out beside the hive. Perhaps the scent of beeswax still carries something of the flowers?

Purple loosestrife in front, yellow goldenrod behind.

By late summer the range of flowers narrows, but these two are still out. It is not only the bees that visit them; the other pollinators are fond of them too. There are not many, so we look after every stem.

On the hive roof, every line is a date and a mark.

Every apiary has its own system of marks. Two requirements, no more: it must be quick to note down, and unambiguous to the beekeeper. We used to keep a notebook, but the hive roof works better. If the winter brings rain enough, the next season starts on a blank page.

Thirty empty hives. Waiting for bees.

The willow row is four hundred stems. From the west it takes the wind and shades the sun. By afternoon it already burns. The honey and the pollen are only a bonus.

A tree frog on the gutter.

The little pond at the far end of the apiary, home to frogs and grass snakes. One year so many small toads covered the apiary that we had to move about very carefully, so as not to tread on them. That spring we even suspended the mowing, to protect the frogs.

Maple in flower above the little pond.

The first of our trees to flower is the early maple. It starts by the middle of the month, and the whole tree glows red. Below it the pond, the drooping branches almost touching the water.