Welcome once again to my weekly podcast, That week seemed to fly by. I’ve been busy again at the workshop and when this podcast comes out to you on Friday I’ll be gearing up to head out to carry out first inspections on the remaining colonies I’ve not yet checked up on.Please do check out my support page where you can listen to the very latest podcasts and watch all of my exclusive beekeeping videos. Click on the link below.The Norfolk Honey Co.

I’m hoping the queen failures I encountered last week are the last of any immediate issues with our colonies. That will make a total of three failed colonies over Winter which is pretty good really in the big scheme of things.

Before I talk more about the colonies and my plans for the coming month I thought I’d update you on the progress out at the workshop.

Well, I seemed to have filled most of the available space pretty quickly. It’s starting to get a little cramped and I need to get a bit more organised. My main reason for taking so much equipment over there was to get it out of the rain. I need to make some repairs to a fair bit of very old equipment, mostly stuff I acquired when I first got started and is now starting to show it’s age. I have some old Langstroth floors that i bought as part of a job lot of Commercial beehive parts, what the beekeeper had done is screwed a piece of timber to the outside long edge on both sides and converted it to a square footprint to allow commercial and national brood boxes to sit on top. They work fine just like that but they are a little on the old side now and some of the wood had started to rot because water seeps in between the added pieces of wood and the main floor. It hasn’t helped with them being sat outside through the wetter months, although this Winter hasn’t been particularly wet or cold, even so, to sort them out I need them to dry out, hence I’ve moved them to the workshop where they are now sat prior to being repaired. There’s no point throwing them away only to have to buy new floors for my expansion plans.

I’m beginning to cultivate that “make do and mend” attitude lots of my fellow bee farmers have and I now understand why with the prices of beekeeping equipment seemingly increasing year on year. Even with price rises we could probably all do with a change in attitude regarding our throw away society, don’t repair it, just dump it and get a new one. We seem to have lost some of the skills in taking a broken thing and repairing it. Not everyone of course, Pete was telling me about an electric drill he managed to salvage because the battery had died and it’s previous owner just dumped it. Pete, for those of you who don’t know, has just started beekeeping and I’m mentoring in exchange for some help around the apiaries and at the workshop. It helps that he can bring hot coffee across the road to the workshop on his way to work but together we’ve made up a heap of kit recently and I’m excited to help him learn more beekeeping skills as the new season progresses.

If you’ve not got a mentor and you’ve only just begun beekeeping have a chat with members of your local association and see if you can go along to help out with a more experienced beekeeper some time. Stand, watch and listen, don’t be in too much of a rush to get your hands on frames, it’s amazing what you can learn from a more experienced beekeeper by watching how they handle their bees.

Anyway, back to Pete and the Drill, Pete managed to buy a replacement battery and the drill works just fine and it’s a decent brand too, so well done Pete for your “Make do and Mend” attitude.

It’s going to come in handy as I have a number of boxes that need mending too.

The workshop is about 10m by 12m so it’s nice size, some of you might have seen the recent videos shot in the workshop. I think