Busy busy bees!

14 Dec

At The Grain Store, we are constantly striving to encourage nature into the garden. We are proud of our eco-ethos, and sustainability is always at the forefront of our minds. Our garden is becoming a haven for wildlife, by considerate planting of trees and flowers, never using harmful pesticides, and deliberately leaving areas of the garden wild.

We are extremely privileged to have bees at The Grain Store. They live harmoniously alongside our guests, sometimes with guests not even realising that they are there! Our beekeeper Maneek recalls how he got into beekeeping, and how he cares for a our striped friends.

Maneek Dubash on beekeeping at The Grain Store: I'm a beekeeper, perhaps I've always been one but didn't know it.

I first became fascinated by bees when I went out with my first serious girlfriend. Her dad kept bees. I tucked that away as something I'd love to do at some point in my life.

When resources and available time intersected to make it possible arrived in 2015, and action was prompted by a conversation about a discarded beehive in The Grain Store - when it was a redundant old grain store, and before it was converted into the luxury accommodation as it is now.

I researched and took a course, made lots of mistakes (still making plenty!) and joined a local group, which was the best thing I ever did. I always look forward to caring for my thousands of tiny charges: they're amazing creatures and the intricacies of their biology and behaviour, honed by millions of years of evolution, is endlessly fascinating. I'm still learning...

Even when days are short and getting chilly, whilst guests are all wrapped up and on one of the glorious walks directly on the doorstep of The Grain Store or perhaps having a warming lunch in the historic town of Lewes, just a few minutes drive from The Grain Store, nature in the garden at is hard at work.

There are two beehives tucked away close to The Grain Store Lewes, you’d never notice them unless you were told they were there.

For now, the bees are tucked up for winter. In autumn and winter, when the days are short and cold, the bees will cluster tightly together. They won’t use much energy in this condition and little more needs to be done until early spring.

However, given the warm autumn, we were experiencing, the bees have received extra feed in the form of fondant – near-pure sugar – to compensate for the amount of energy they have exerted flying around looking for nectar, pollen and water.

November has come and gone, arriving when it was still warm for the time of year with the bees still flying, and ending with a distinct chill in the air. Much more seasonal.

Bees don’t hibernate but form a thick mantle around the queen and most of the colony, inside which the temperature is generally kept at a minimum of 20 degrees, but can be up to 35 degrees if there’s still some brood, even if it’s freezing outside.

I would expect there still to be some brood for the next couple of weeks but the queen has probably already stopped laying, and won’t restart until the days start to lengthen noticeably.

Not flying is healthy for the bees too. They won’t use too much energy and so chew their way through too much of their stored food, risking running out before the nectar-giving flowers start to emerge in early spring. Instead, they shiver their wing muscles to generate heat; honey bees are effectively warm-blooded creatures.

My job as a beekeeper is to keep an eye on the food levels to avoid starvation. To do that, I shan’t be opening up the hive any more than I can help. I have a transparent cover board under the sturdy roof and insulation which allows me to see what’s going on without disturbing them in any way, or letting out the heat they work so hard to create.

And later in December, probably near Christmas, I’ll be applying some treatment to keep the varroa mite numbers down. Not doing so seriously risks losing the entire colony to the mites’ depredations and the viruses they carry. We know all about that, don’t we?