Thursday 24 May 2018

2018 is a very busy time for us.

Busy as the bees


Sunday 20 May – Another of our popular one day courses An Introduction to Natural Beekeeping with a chance to “meet the bees” in the afternoon

Saturday 26 May - Launch to the public of the new bee garden at Chester Zoo with a little help from Bee Friendly Collective Todmorden

Saturday 16 June – We’ll be pitching our gazebo as usual at the Todmorden Show at Cliviger.

Saturday 7 July Todmorden Country Fair in Centre Vale Park Todmorden

Sunday 22 July – The second of our An Introduction to Natural Beekeeping courses – spread the word to anyone you think might be interested.


And of course making sure our bees are healthy, catching swarms, mending and cleaning hives and having picnics in the sunshine 

Monday 11 May 2015

first beefriendly training day of 2015

Blessed with sunshine, after an introduction to bees and natural beekeeping - held inside the OddFellows Hall, Todmorden -  the group went to meet the bees at out allotment apiary.
Kitted out in bee suits, attendees met the bees in one of our warre hives and one of our top bar hives.
An enjoyable day for all, and  and least one new group member.

Our next meet the bees and training day is on Sunday 31st May.








Sunday 10 August 2014

Rehousing bees

We have recently rehoused two colonies from Warré hives into Top-Bar hives. The first account is by Helmut:

yesterday john, michael n myself moved our bees from warre into the new build top bar. the operation went smooth, only very few cuts had to be made.

the colony was very well equipped with storage (we nicked a bit of honey)
and had good brood. there was some evidence of varoa (deformed bees - but not more than to be expected nowadays).

once again, i found handling / operating in the enclosed space of a warre very difficult, the very small bars offer too little space for the bees to attach comb.
even when you are very cautious cutting the combs loose and lifting with great care the combs like to break when they are full with honey and very heavy.
then bees are trapped in honey.... here were casualties = more than i would have liked.

considering it was quite a big operation the bees were friendly.  although we used the smoker / there was hardly any need for it. 

all in all it took us an hour / from 4 to 5 by 6 all bees were back in the new hive

let's hope they like it!!!!   


The second account is by Michael:

This afternoon at 14-00 hours Alan, John, Philippa and myself met to transfer the bees from the existing hive to the newly built top bar. The existing hive was a top bar with two warrie boxes above each other at one end, the remaining section being completed with top bars.  

The top section of the new hive is the same dimension as a "standard" top bar hive but the sides do not taper they are vertical to accept warrie comb without it having to be cut to fit. The top bars have been designed to screw individually onto the warrie bars enabling easy removal from the warrie to the top bar.

After a discussion to form a method statement and action plan plus the health and safety statement we removed the top warrie box and placed it on a hard surface with a cover on the top to contain the bees. A cover was then placed over the bottom box again to contain the bees. The bottom box was then raised so the comb built below it into the top bar could be inspected, it was found only to be comb so it was removed with a cheese wire.

Both warrie boxes then went through the following procedure

The box was tipped on its side to separate the comb from the side of the box.
The individual rails containing the comb were separated from each other and lifted slightly to free them from the warrie castellations whilst a cloth covered the rest of the rails keeping the bees calm below. Some smoke was used but the bees didn't get to angry with us so we used very little except when we thought a major provocation would cause distress.
The new pre drilled top bars with screws in the two holes were then placed centrally over the warrie top bars and individually screwed into place using an electric screw driver. The completed rail assembly was then lifted and transferred to the new top bar hive, this went well and only one comb broke below the top bar because of the weight of honey in the comb. 
The colony was large possibly 50,000 and although they have built new comb they seem to have been utilising the space vacated by the two earlier swarms. Having said that there were many combs full of brood and stores of honey so the colony is thriving at present. Inevitably there were some bee losses but they were kept to a minimum by the care taken in the method of transfer.
The new top bar hive was closed up after as many bees as possible were "shaken in" and then placed into the existing hive position. The remaining bees then slowly entered the hive after clustering round the access holes. 

The afternoon was concluded with a welcome cup of tea and cake in the shade



Sunday 22 June 2014

An introduction to natural beekeeping


An opportunity to learn about the philosophy and practice of natural beekeeping – plus a chance to “meet the bees”.    Cost:  £20.00, £10.00 concessions

Places are still available for this one-day course but there's a lot of interest in it so we advise you to contact us (at bee.credible.bees@gmail.com) as soon as you can if you're interested.

Bee Friendly Collective at the Tod Show




We had a brilliant day at the Todmorden show on Saturday 21st June - very different to our outing two years ago when we the show was under water and we shared a tent with the ferret show.  This year we we in with the Halifax Bee Keepers Association - thanks to Colin Taylor for organising that and his kind words at the end of the day.  There was a steady succession of interested visitors with quite a few of them signing up for our forthcoming training day.  But how we missed those ferrets! 

Sunday 30 March 2014

spring bees, march on the first day of summertime


it's a while since we last posted. facebook taking over blogging.

but in light of a lovely day out to see the bees and swap the crystallised sugar and fondant for light syrup, thought i'd blog a bit.

spring pollen is coming in - has been for a while. bright yellow reflecting the flora around and about
and the weather is mild. a pleasing 15 degrees today - though hazy


the good news is 3 of our colonies are looking healthy and active. along with the pollen, there's new comb too




an extra box has been added to the garden warre. all boxes full and bees beginning to build in the fondant bag 



sadly, 2 colonies don't look to be doing quite so well. the (once nasty) now placid and all but empty national, and the top warre - but they went into winter a small colony. they both have honey store, and now syrup. doesn't look like there's much we can do other than wait...