Our History

Our interest in bees had started when we moved to Edmondsham back in 2013  that summer we had a couple of swarms land in our garden to which we phoned a beekeeper to take them away,. The beekeeper would come very calmly look for several minutes, then picked up one put it in a kind of clip and stuck it in a large cardboard box he had brought with him. Almost instantly the bees changed their tune or Buzz and all strolled into the box.. Gobsmacked we were and amazed at how intune with one another the bees seemed to be.. ( We later learned he had taken the queen bee and all the other bees followed her).

Well every year we would get more swarms and a beekeeper would come and remove them free of charge.. One year we saw them arrive! There was a massive buzz whilst hosting a garden party and thousands apon thousands of bees were in the air above us whats more they seemed to be coming from our chimney!! We phoned a beekeeper and said what do we do theres 1000s of bees we are having a garden party and they are everywhere! Carmly he was like dont worry, they have no wish to attack or sting anyone give it 20 minutes they will settle somewhere and he was available in a few hours to collect, they did in the lid of our compost bin! But sure enough didn’t bother anyone and a few hours later the beekepper came boxed them and said he would come back after dark when all the bees were in there as some were still flying..

Anyway back to 2020 and we were keen to findout who owns the old beehives –  after a bit of investigation it turns out a very elderly neighbour was once a keen beekeeper having at peak over 50 hives but due to ill health had not been able to get down and inspect the bees, but in honesty he said his hive parts supplier had gone backrupt years earlier and not being one to use the internet had nowhere to get parts, his health now so bad that he could barely walk down to visit them, When talking about them we could see the joy they brought him..

Later that day we went back, and asked if he would mind if we got involved, could we take on the patch? he was delighted that some one would and chatted for hours about his hay day in beekeeping. We were involved and wanted to save his remaining bees.
We went back to the apiary and pulled up all the old hives leaving just the 2 that seemed to show some activity, there was maybe 15 hives in total but the majority were battered but from the mess we managed to recover enough to make 2 decent hives, we got to work cleaning and sanding back the hives then coating the outters in Pure tung oil something the old beekeeper recommended and had pulled from his shed..

2 HIves

Now with 2 relatively up together hives some new frames and wax foundation we had what was needed to sort out the broken hives short of courage and expertise, we researched what we could got some suits and gloves and became beekeepers. It was baking hot we gowned the suits and got to work.. on opening the hive it was nothing like what we expected or had seen online,, the hive had broken frames in and the bees had got to work creating there own wild hive cross-combed and amazing, but incredibly hard to transfer to the new hives. we grabbed elastic bands and a knife and started chopping up the comb in the hive, elastic banding the comb into our new frames then placing in the hive after several hours, lots of sweat we had completed it, what was more we hadnt been stung and the bees were incredibly placid the whole time.. Maybe they knew we only had their best intrests at heart!

We had become beekeepers, not very good ones! but beekeepers none the less over the next 2 years we did many inspections, learning and reading more as we came across new problems we would look online and try and solve them!

We are now in 2024 and consider ourselfs intermediate beekeepers at the end of 2023 we had 10 hives going into winter and although we have taken a few losses this year currently managing 7 beehives on the site.