March: One day spectacular

One of the best bits of beekeeping advice is "make a plan for the season".  So in the spirit of encouraging beekeepers to get their season off to a flying start we decided to hold a "one day Spectacular" sale, giving everyone the opportunity to think about renewing boxes and frames.

It did mean we placed a monster order which had to be delivered in possibly the biggest truck to ever try to gain access to our apiary...

The pallets simply kept coming off the back of the truck...

But with a bit of teamwork, and some expert pallet truck driving, everything was unloaded and brought in....

Then came the grand sorting out,  what a lot everyone ordered!

So Saturday morning arrived and we were amazed ot find the first customers waiting for us at 10:15 when we arrived...

We were busy all morning as people called in to collect their orders...

There was much talk of optimism for the season ahead, and a fair amount of tea was drunk as the tables gradually emptied...

And finally one very happy shop manager (he's happy honest!)

Hope we'll all be happy after a very successful season, same time, same place next year?

March: Work Gets Underway.....

We've been struggling for space for a while at the Apiary shop and have spent quite some time working out what needed to be kept and where and trying to rearrange everything ...but somehow we hadn't quite managed to "crack" exactly what was needed.

Then we struck on a plan for a storage cabin....it would mean re arranging some hives a bit but we  could tackle some ground works improvements at the same time...

Work needed to get underway before the weather improves and the bees really get out flyin, this net isn't going to distract the girls from this direction for very long...

so here's a shot of our new path....

 

and from the other side with its "don't walk here I'm to dry yet protective" bin and ladder...

Our cabin base and improved paths...

As the new path was still drying out the candidates for this morning's BBKA module exams got to be the first people to use the new approach..

What a good job the apiary classroom doesn't look this intimidating all the time...

Here's hoping all the candidates will have got on as well as our builders!