Supermarket to house bees in Gloucester

A supermarket chain is claiming a UK first by announcing plans for several hundred bees in land around its new eco-store.

Pick up this news story ! Is it just publicist stunt and who are going to look after the bees, and where are they coming from? Also eight hives and only "hundreds" of bees, seems very little research done for the story.

Link to the story below, seems to pose more questions than it answers.

Supermarket's eco-store will be first to house bees

Cleaning floors after hard winter

Here is an image of the entrance to the hive at my home apiary in Tintern after I took the entrance box out. As you can see there is a whole layer of dead bees which went all the way over the mesh floor. So yesterday which was a lovely sunny day, was spent with one person lifting the hive whist the over clean the floor. Very important activity as this will stop disease festering and save the bees a lot of work. The bees would normal clean this all this away but I think it be so cold they have not been their normal clean selves.

All 6 hives where flying well, so fingers crossed for the next three weeks as I would argue they are the most important of the year for the bees.

putting electric into shed

Some images below of today's work putting in elec to the shed. Also done was a lots of rubbish movings and cleaning.

bees taking fondant - quick update

Today I had the pleasure of checking the bees fondant food. It has been the first day that it has been a pleasure as the sun was out and it was not too cold, although too cold for the bees to fly.

It was really just a quick check of the bees to see they were still alive, which happily they all are and to make sure they all had food and were not too far away from it. A couple of Crown boards were quickly turned so the food was nearer the bees. Apart from Hive 9 which looks a little too weak to survive all were doing okay. Hive 15 will need close eye on as they are a little light and eaten most of their food. Oh for a warm day so we can see what they are really doing!

And to cap of an excellent day, after having dinner in the pub, this evening we had an interesting talk on bee keeping in Mexico,, and of all things stingless bees... can we have some please!