Surprise, surprise

Posted by Jon on Sep 6, 2010 in Beekeeping | 4 comments

….as Cilla Black used to say in my youth. Just as we’ve finished bottling our honey for the year, we went out in the car and found two huge fields of sunflowers only a short bee flight from the hives! On closer inspection, it turns out that these are a special sunflower hybrid called Alterna from Pioneer seeds (part of Du Pont) that help farmers gain more cash from their fields by adding in an extra crop every 2 years. By getting three crops through their fields every two years, the farmers obviously gain, but I have to wonder at what cost to the soil and the local environment?

Sunflower season and pollen baskets

Posted by Jon on Jul 26, 2010 in Bee behaviour | 3 comments

Living in the heart of the Poitou-Charentes in France, we are surrounded by sunflower fields at this time of year. We can see our bees heading off to our nearest field a few hundred yards away and coming back laden with bright yellow pollen.

For the first time we have seen the front entrance of our hives turning yellow with the volume of pollen coming back to the hive – this is not something that we have seen before so I am very hopeful that this is a sign of a healthy colony bringing home a good harvest!

Bee Activity – June 24th

Posted by Jon on Jun 25, 2010 in Bee behaviour, Beekeeping | 2 comments

Finally, the summer seems to have started here so I took some time yesterday to watch the hives in action and check up on the bees entering and leaving. As we don’t treat our bees in any way and try to interfere as little as possible, watching the activity in and out is a crucial indicator of the health of the hive.