This sunny and warm weather means our bees have been really active gathering nectar for honey.
It also means our hives have quite a lot of boxes stacked on them to keep up with their production! You can see one set of these in our field closest to our car park, getting higher and higher as the season progresses.
Did you know you can modify the behaviour of bees? We had an ‘angry colony’ which isn’t ideal as this meant a few stings when harvesting. So our beekeeper Sem brought in a new queen to fix this. She is a calmer, more genteel lady and so the new brood are much more even-tempered. You can just about see her in the photo with the blue dot on her back.
We have also had a visit from some mice who have helped themselves to some of the contents of the hive – hence the hole in our honeycomb, which the bees will just work around so not a problem at all. Bees are amazing and we’re so proud to be helping these wonderful creatures thrive here at Babylon.
In Sem’s words, “it’s been a freakishly good year for honey” so we’re hopeful for a bumper crop to sell later this year. We’ll keep you updated.