Bees and honey

The garden is humming with bees, bumbles of many different species, and of course our honeybees, gathering pollen for their brood and nectar to make into honey. Sunny June suited them well, and I had high hopes for a good honey harvest, but with the washout of July, my expectations are no longer great. Any day now I will take off some combs, perhaps tomorrow if it's fine so lots of bees are flying - the fewer in the hives to defend against my burglary, the better.

I prefer to err on the side of generosity as a beekeeper, leaving them plenty of their own stores for the winter, and mixing 10% honey back into the sugar syrup that I feed to replace the stolen booty. I also add a few drops of chamomile tea, a biodynamic technique, to aid their digestion of the refined white sugar (they cannot metabolise brown). This year for the first time the chamomile is homegrown, so I trust the tea will suit them especially well - and my family too, to soothe indigestion or calm troubled nerves.

Wildlife in the veg garden

The vegetable garden is in full production, the beds that held garlic, onions and shallots in the first half of the year now contain many varieties of salad leaves and roots that should feed us through next winter.

I've replanted the banks between the two veg terraces with herbs and bee-friendly flowers, and now they are in full flower and alive with flying insects and butterflies. I fear however that they are also harbouring my deadliest enemies, the slugs and snails, as once again a wet summer has ensured they are in plague proportions. Where are the frogs and toads I've tried so hard to attract, with a pond, plenty of cover and choice hibernation sites for overwintering? Next year I plan to raise an aquarium of tadpoles that I'll nurture right up to adulthood, only then releasing them into the garden - we'll see if that helps.

Winter honeysuckle, honeybees and queen bumbles

A warm, mild day at last, and Lonicera fragrant-issima fills the air with a sweet honeysuckle fragrance, drawing in queen bumblebees to sup from nectaries in the base of the tubular flowers. I have exploited the five foot, arching shrub’s tough nature by planting it against a north-facing wall, in a raised bed above the porch. It flowers reliably through December and January, a wonderful source of energy for insects when indigenous plants are at their least generous.

I put mine in eight or so years ago, and with a simple hard prune after flowering and occasional compost mulch, it has thrived and required little maintenance. Since planting it, however, I’ve discovered the shrub in other gardens, growing in full sun, and, to my disgust, with twice the number of blooms. Therefore, for whatever position, so long as your soil is rich and well-drained, winter honeysuckle is a treasure I'd recommend to all.

If temperatures rise high enough in the middle of the day, honeybees are also tempted out of their hive. Not a true hibernation, they spend the winter in a tight cluster, clinging onto wax frames around the queen. They shiver their wings to generate heat, and by taking turns at the chilly exterior of the ball, a colony endures the colder months. But when sunshine hits the hive entrance, they seize the opportunity, emerging for short flights, to empty their bowels. And if they find the air sufficiently balmy, they will even consider a forage, bringing them over the lane to the honeysuckle in the garden (see image above).