Bee Keeping - Day One

The first day of the bee keeping course was absolutely brilliant. The course is being given by Paul Peacock, who has been keeping bees for over fifteen years. He also writes books on sustainable living and is a regular on Gardener's Question Time.

He is also a thoroughly nice chap!

After learning about the life cycle of the bee and about the hive, we suited up and went to investigate our first hive.

Claremont Farm has four hives and in the morning Paul inspected two hives while we watched. Interestingly, even though they were side by side, the temperaments in the two hives could not have been more different.

The first hive was made up of placid bees who seemed unbothered by the inspection of their work. The bees in the second hive however were much more aggressive and Paul got stung several times (although that was through gloves so thankfully it was not the full effect!).

After a lovely lunch we suited up again and were allowed to inspect the two remaining hives ourselves.

Being so close to the bees was amazing and I did not feel threatened in any way by them. Unfortunately it was then that the rain set in and we did not want to get inside the hive wet so we put everything back and left the bees to it.

Altogether it was a lovely day and I can't wait for day two now in June.

I have also signed up for Paul's cheese making course!