I knew the person whose bees they were and sadly he has had to give up bee keeping. I had looked after the bees when he was on holiday.
I also had met the owners of the Manor and I decided to give it a go.
One of the reasons for volunteering is that the gardens at The Manor are stunningly beautiful.
Have a look at their web site here and you will see what I mean. If I was a bee I would want to live nearby.
Another reason is that a year or so ago after I collected a swarm from a house near the Manor, Kathy and her husband with some friends shared homemade cakes and tea in the garden which was lovely.
You can't have too much home made cake and tea.
There have been three colonies at the Manor but one of them died off and the hive became infested with wax moth. I will do a blog about cleaning up the hive later.
The other two hives looked very healthy and were taking in large amounts of yellow pollen.
I went back a few days ago and took the cleaned up wax moth hive back and set it up for next year.
I hope to populate it next year with either a swarm or by splitting one of the two existing hives..
The bees are in a paddock next to the Manor gardens and a bit of gardening needed to be done to cut back the bushes behind the hives and to cut the grass in front of them.
I started the autumn feed by giving them two pints of syrup each [each hive, not each bee].
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