Saturday 24 September 2011

Buzzing with Excitement!

Norwich Community Bees is officially up and running - we have our first hive of bees! Erik managed to track down a full colony and yesterday morning, Colin brought it over to the Norwich Farmshare site at Postwick.

Colin thought it might upset the bees to move the frames from his hives to ours, and since the bees think it's late in the year, and upsetting them is best avoided, so he put his hive where ours was. We agreed that in spring we would put the bees in our hive and give Colin back his.

It was a proud moment when he and Erik moved the hive into place, and our bees were liberated form their locked quarters while in transit.

Unfortunately we were all a bit to close at that moment and Colin had to suddenly provide a rapid teaching session on how to comb bees out of exposed long hair. Poor Elena was stung under her eye, and had to go off to work with a rescue remedy splashed on liberally! But Colin did teach us to be relaxed about them - we will all get stung sooner or later.

Erik & the colony

Colin explains the setup

Elena and Bee with Colin

A bee in Bee's hair!

A glimpse of our bees
It's been a long journey from initial idea to finally getting the bees on site, but I'm so excited that we're now really a community beekeeping scheme at last! And it has really been a community effort, so a big thank you to everyone who's joined in the planning and doing, contributed their ideas, enthusiasm and skills. This is only just the beginning!

If you would like to know more about Norwich Community Bees, visit http://www.norwichcommunitybees.blogspot.com/.
Pics: Bee and Tierney

1 comment:

  1. Dear Norwich Community Bees - Looks like you could do with some bee suits there! All the best for your new colony, Charlotte (Bungay Commmunity Bees)

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