Interview with our keeper
Can you tell us how you got into beekeeping, how did you learn?
I’d been interested in it for years but made excuses why I couldn’t start. Finally I ran out of excuses and started with a couple of hives in the garden. My local BKA had a course that ran over six weekends then I was on my own with a mentor helping via email. Much of what I’ve learned has been from direct experience, research and reading. Beekeeping forums have been invaluable.
Placing the first ever hive in the bee garden
What do you love most about keeping bees and is there anything you dislike?
I love seeing them in my neighbourhood, on the hedgerows and peoples plants. I dislike when bees are niggly. It could be down to lack of forage, climate conditions, pests or a clumsy beekeeper. They can tell a mood of a keeper so I can’t go in with my own concerns. I have to be able to set things aside and focus completely on the bees and the task in hand. I’ve learned to take things steady and never rush but also to be very careful what deodorant I wear as this could irritate them.
Do you engage with bees on a daily basis?
With the home hives I’ll go out and have a watch from the outside but only ever go in once a week to check for swarm prep, see if the queen is laying ok, look for diseases, and whether they have enough space. Occasionally I’ll need to take honey frames out.
Are honey bees endangered? Do we need to save the bees?
No, it’s a bit of a misconception that honey bees are endangered, they are actually classified as domesticated insects with their being around 25,000 keepers in the country. It’s the other pollinators that are endangered like solitary bees, bumble bees, butterflies and certain moths. You can find honey bees in the wild but it’s not as common as it once was. Lack of forage and the varroa mite as well as other diseases reduce the viability of wild hives. There are some out there and they need to be treasured as they are likely to be resistant to these problems.
Are honey and wax harvesting harmful to bees?
It can be, but being considerate to the bees reduces the impact. Every time you enter the hive it alters the environment within which takes time for the bees to correct. We should never take more than the excess honey. Wax is less problematic as you recycle frames after a period of time to keep the wax fresh. By using natural methods to control varroa mite, having minimal interference where possible, and only taking excess honey bees are treated with care and respect.
Can you tell if your bees are happy?
Yes, they make a humming sound and you can certainly tell when they’re not happy. Bees in a nectar flow are very orientated to their work and will pay you very little attention but if there’s no opportunity to forage or the weather is bad then they can be a bit cross but that’s not always the case.
Can you tell us something interesting about honey bees that most people don’t know?
Everyone thinks it’s just the queen that can lay eggs but worker bees can lay too. However, they are not fertilised. Every hive has a certain number of laying workers and if they are long-term queen less then there could be large numbers.
Is your honey raw and organic?
It’s impossible to say that honey is organic unless the apiary is in the middle of an organic farm and the bees are unable to travel outside of that farm. Living in the New Forest we are lucky that there isn’t much intensive agriculture and plenty of natural forage. Raw honey is a funny term, most local beekeepers sell what could be called raw honey in that it’s unheated and minimally filtered (you have to filter it to a certain degree to remove wax particles, etc) Our honey is unpasteurised and coarsely filtered.
Is there a difference between local honey direct from the beekeeper and store-bought honey?
Huge. Many of the store-bought honeys are from blended honey, much of which is from outside the EU. It’s pasteurised, hard to tell food provenance, lightly filtered, and in some cases testing of honey has resulted in question marks over its authenticity.
