The Secret Bee Garden
Part Two
There are many different ways to keep bees, and many different reasons to do so. As a pest controller I first got into beekeeping as a way of saving them; honey production was last on my list, but bees always produce way too much honey, so it made sense to start removing some.
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Any money raised gets put back into the hobby by buying more hives, equipment and feed, so rarely are we actually getting richer!
Flow frames
These are Flow frames. They go at the top of a hive and bees store their honey in them. Once the honey is capped it's ready to eat, and with the turn of a tap honey flows from the bottom of the frame into jars.
Ross Rounds
cut comb is another way to eat honey, in simple form a frame of capped honey comb is removed from a hive and cut into blocks, you then eat it whole, honey and wax together, some people prefer honey this way, as they can be sure it's 100% untouched by human hands, ross rounds is another system to produce cut comb, and it is then packaged in the box that the bees built the comb in
About Me.
I currently live in Romford and have many hobbies, beekeeping being just one of them. It's surprising how relaxed bees make you feel, either just watching them or working on the hive. As our bees are being killed off by the pesticides that get sprayed on fields for crops, I'm all for keeping bees in towns, in gardens, on roof tops and of course, in secret bee gardens! The foraging area of a bee is around 3 miles, collecting pollen from parks, gardens, wild hedgerows, etc.UPDATE, I've now moved to the Isle of Sheppey, and so have the bees, we now have the secret bee garden part two
Langstroth hives
These hives are what are used in conjunction with flow frames. They have a large brood box for the queen and worker bees. I will be using a double-brood box system before adding the flow frames, allowing the bees to build up numbers into a sizable colony - approx 80,000 bees per hive.
National Hybrid
A national hybrid hive is possibly the cheapest complete hive. Everything is included in the price of £99 from a company called Mann Lake. It includes plastic foundation which the bees build their honey comb onto.