Author Topic: BEES  (Read 1400 times)

BACONBUTTY

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BEES
« on: July 08, 2005, 01:15:34 »
Do any allotment holders out-there keep bees, any advice for a disabled person. also get help from wife with lifting.
Wanting to keep some chickens and grow our own veg.
Allotment overgrown.

jennym

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Re: BEES
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2005, 02:01:42 »
Don't keep bees I'm afraid (but I understand there is a good video called An Introduction to Bee-keeping by a chap called Paul Metcalf) nor am I disabled... but do try to make life easy for myself. I tend not to dig too much, and grow things in plenty of muck and compost in raised beds. Not made out of wood or anything, just mounds of soil. This also helps as my allotment is heavy clay and prone to flooding in the winter. I got portions around 4 ft square clear when I first started, and planted on those. A little bit at a time soon built up. Also, one of the most important things is that I cover up the soil in winter so the weeds don't get a chance to grow, also around fruit bushes etc. I do use a sharp hoe an awful lot, it's not heavy work and keeps the weeds down. Also in the beginning I used a weedkiller containing Glyphosate, which is contained in a product you can buy called Roundup. If you have a large area its best to buy the concentrate and dilute it youself, but for small areas they sell a handy ready diluted spray gun. This weedkiller doesn't persist in the soil, so is one of the better ones for the environment. I don't need to use it now, it was only during the first year. Hope this helps.

Robert_Brenchley

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Re: BEES
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2005, 08:55:06 »
Beekeeping involves some very heavy lifting, so you'd probably need to team up with someone able-bodied. If the wife's willing to be involved with the bees, that might solve it. You need to contact your local Beekeepers' Association, which can put you on the right track; if you PM me with your location I should be able to get you a phone humber. Any queries, send me a PM. You need to get cracking if you want to get started this year, or you could spend the time reading up and aim to get your bees next June. If you're lucky, there may be a beginner's course somewhere near you. If you do decide to wait a year, then the best place to get hives is probably Thorne's winter sale (they come flat-packed so you need to knock them up) unless you can find a bargain locally. Stuff like woodenware (hives) is revoltingly pricy in the UK unless you can find it cheap, but once you've got it, you've got it. Bees can be quite expensive, or they can be free; I feel myself that a fair price for a nuc (nucleus - a weak hive which will build up over the summer) is about £60-70 if it has a good queen. the two things to avoid are bad temper and swarminess; my first bees were really nasty, and produced nothing but swarms. All bees will swarm, it's vital to their survival as it's colony reproduction, but some do it more than others! If you want a good book, you can't do much better than Ted Hooper's 'Bees and Honey' which is well down the page here: https://secure.thorne.co.uk/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/millhouse/thorne/shop/shania?ACTION=thispage&THISPAGE=page53.html&ORDER_ID=781880218

Good beekeeping websites are:

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/irishbeekeeping/

http://www.beesource.com/

You can't read too much, but you need to be critical; if you have two beekeepers together, you'll probably find at least three opinions, and one of them will be nonsense!

 

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