Over recent months, the children have been using the wax we harvested after our shook swarm to make 'bees wax wraps' We hope to make enough wraps, so that every child can use a wrap for sandwiches, hopefully reducing the amount of cling film and plastic we use in school. 

Beeswax wraps are great! With the warmth of your hands, they self seal over sandwiches, bowls, cheese, leftovers... almost anything, (not raw meat)  They can last up to a year if washed in mild soap cold water and dried... they are naturally anti-bacterial and of course, 100% recyclable...Environmentally friendly! 

So, if you are thinking of having a go, here is our recipe & method!

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We use an old slow cooker to melt down the wax we harvested after the Shook swarm in April, the slow cooker, (or 'slop cooker' as my rude children call it) holds around a kilo of wax. 

After MUCH experimentation with just wax...wax with jojoba oil...then with pine resin added... 
The mix needs it all! The pine resin certainly is the key ingredient making the resulting wraps pliable & adding extra antibacterial properties. 

ROUGHLY, two tablespoons of jojoba oil and  pine resin powder added to the melted wax, stirred with a wooden skewer (we then use to light the smokers!)  Stir and wait until all melted.  

 We then use a paintbrush to QUICKLY paint the wax over the material... using grease proof paper as a background.  It hardens really quickly, they are then put in a warm oven, on a baking tray, 100 degrees, only for a minute until 'wet looking'.   Once brought out, they are picked up & held until the wax hardens and they can be placed on another piece of grease proof paper to cool. 
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Beeswax wraps make super presents, so we hope to have lots made in time for Christmas!
Great fun to make yourselves, but make sure you put some paper on your kitchen floor, as the wax seems to 'travel' considerable distances! Enjoy! 

The Bee Team in school are dedicated to their bees and lots of the children volunteer in the summer holidays to come to school, not just to look after the bees, but help teach other groups about bees and beekeeping.  (It is the only downside of beekeeping in school, that the busiest time of the beekeeping year, coincides with the 6 week summer break!) 

This week, children from y4-y6 +our leavers, who will start their new schools in Y7, spent a enjoyable afternoon with the ladies from Allithwaite & Grange WI.   

The children went through 'who's who in the hive?' and showed the ladies their observation hive. We were honoured to be joined by our new Mayor of Kendal, Mr Alvin Finch, who also dropped in to learn more and see the children in action. 

 The children taught them the life cycle dates of the various bees in the hive: vital knowledge for beekeepers so we can understand and plan for when Queens emerge for instance... Other children demonstrated how they would mark our Queens, and the colours we use each year and why. We could have done a weeks course, the ladies were so interested and had so many brilliant questions!

It was a super afternoon, rounded off with tea and cake in and around the bee shed! 
Well done to our young people, who once again were perfect ambassadors for beekeeping and Heron Hill!

Some members of the Bee Team were lucky enough to meet Amy Turner, a research graduate who is studying Varroa Destructor mite DNA...with a view to finding more solutions to controlling this terrible parasite of honey bees. Amy is using 5 Varroa mites from 35 apiaries around the UK and we are delighted to be one of them!  Normally beekeepers send their samples in the post, but Amy kindly came to us, to teach the children about her work and let them do some hands on sample taking! 

The children used forceps to collect the Varroa mites which had fallen through the open mesh floor of the hives, they were difficult to spot amongst all the normal hive debris of wax and dropped pollen!

Amy taught the children all about DNA and what she hopes to find from our 5 varroa mites, Jeremy our local Community Police Officer also popped into the Bee Shed to learn! 
Amy will keep us up to date with her study, maybe our Varroa mites contribute to finding the next big step towards eradicating this terrible parasite! 

Well, I have to say how proud we are of our children's beekeeping this season! Their skills & experience continues to grow with them now doing some fairly advanced beekeeping techniques. 
They were keen to 'have a go' at using the 'Apidea' ( a mini hive usually used as a mating nuc for Queen bees) They can be a bit tricky, as worker bees need to be introduced to 'draw out' sufficient comb for a queen to lay in.  We started our apidea off early this year, and in early July, the children, you may remember introduced one of their home bred queens into it... 
Much excitement yesterday, as we found she had successfully mated, returned to the apidea, and laid up all 3 of the mini frames!

We have 7 colonies in the school apiary and the children were keen to spot during one of our inspections, that the brood pattern on 'C' colony ( a green queen new this year) was patchy, with large areas of drone brood...there were also lots of drones in the colony. Although there was worker brood too, the queen was obviously struggling to lay all worker eggs... looking back at our records, her 'mating flight' coincided with a few weeks of poor weather, probably the reason, although young, she had been poorly mated. 
So, we have to manage our colonies, giving them the best chance of getting through the winter. If we left this Queen in place, sadly the colony would dwindle out as not enough worker bees were being produced to ensure its survival... this is a vital time of year for the bees... bees born now don't live for the usual 6 weeks, they are our WINTER bees, taking the colony through the winter and living up to 6 months, so ensuring the colonies are bursting with healthy well fed bees is our priority. 

So, we decided to Re-Queen this colony with the 'Apidea' queen to give it the best chance of building up some more before the end of the season. 
Queens can't just be put into hives, they have to be carefully introduced as the existing queen and workers would kill the new queen. The pictures below show how the children have 'dispatched' the old queen and introduced the new queen and some of her workers from the apidea.  
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Preparing the 'Butler Cage' where the new Queen will be put to keep her safe in the new colony until the bees have accepted her as their own. Fondant is placed over the entrance, by the time the bees have eaten their way through, her pheromones will be through the colony and fingers crossed they accept her!  
The difficult task of 'dispatching' the old Queen, the children did this quickly and sensibly. We then left the colony for an hour and a half, allowing the bees to realise they were 'Queenless' which hopefully helps them in accepting a new one. 

The children then used an empty super frame to tie the three 'mini' frames of brood to from the Apidea, their nurse bees were with them, keeping them warm. It looks a bit 'Heath Robinson' but they were full of precious worker brood! 

 Next, the new Queen in her cage to protect her, was attached to a frame of brood and the frames, bees and cage were all dusted with icing sugar, the mini frames of brood and worker bees from the apidea were placed in the hive after a liberal dusting too!  The icing sugar not only masks the smell of the 'strange' new bees & queen... The bees are so busy cleaning each other up, they seem to accept the new arrivals without fighting or fuss!

As with most things in beekeeping... there are AT LEAST 20 different ways of doing things, but we have had a go...and fingers crossed, the bees will accept our new Monarch and all will be well. They were all settled and happy as we left them, so I think we have a good chance of success. The colony will now be left alone for 6 days for the Queen to emerge from her cage and hopefully start laying. As always, we will keep you up to date with the news! But well done Bee Team, a brilliant days work! 

Last year was our first year participating in the CEH honey monitoring scheme, our results gave us such fascinating information on how and where our bees forage, we were excited to sign up again to see if this year's results show a different pattern. 

Several members of our advanced bee team help care for the bees during the summer holidays, so they took the two samples necessary for the study.   The samples come from newly capped honey comb and are sent off to the laboratory for analysis. Results take a long time to come back, as each pollen source is DNA identified.   Super opportunity for the children to be involved in 'live' science, we will let you know the results as soon as we have them. 

As you know, we keep a careful eye on our colonies, especially the 'nucs' (nucleus hives, small colonies, new this year, usually made from 'splits' or artificial swarms' if too small, they may find it difficult to defend the colony from wasp attack) We have two 'out apiaries' where we have some colonies, including one at 'my house' for Nucs, which we use as a mating apiary.   

The two colonies here have been bombarded with wasps over recent days, managing to fend them off, but it obviously takes it out of the bees, at the very least, making them defensive and quite frankly fed up!!   After a careful bit of cutting by Dr Pigott our Bee Inspector, we used recycled plastic doors to cover the entrances, leaving a 'bee space' around the edges for the bees to get in and out. 

A great result...! The bees, helped by others fanning their Nasonov glands, which releases a pheromone signal to all bees, that 'yes, here is home, all is well'  Bees found their way in no problem, while wasps were left frustrated outside, the guard bees then finished them off... 
Final score tonight... Bees 10... wasp invaders...0! 

  No wasps... then LOADS of wasps!
Being a responsible beekeeper has many elements, one is observing the colonies at times when they may be under threat from pests such as wasps!  Summer can be a difficult time for colonies, especially small or nuc colonies, who lack the numbers to fend off attack from wasps.
  A little knowledge of the life cycle of the humble wasp is needed to know why these amazing creatures can cause havoc, not only with your carefully planned picnic, but with our bees.
Although wasps get 'bad press' they are vital to the healthy eco-system of our gardens and countryside...eating 'pests' throughout the year, which help us as gardeners & are vital to the bigger picture in the food chain. 

 Wasps are carnivorous, they feed their larvae meat, (in most cases aphids, spiders etc) making 'protein pellets' to feed to their hungry larvae. Towards the end of the summer, when there are fewer larvae to feed, the wasps start to CRAVE sugar... this is because the wasp larvae convert their protein-rich diet into carbohydrates that they secrete as a sugary droplet to feed the adults. With no larvae, all those adult wasps must find other sources of sugar - hence why they are so attracted to our honey filled hives, (and your sugary drinks & fruit on your trees!)

The Heron Hill hives are all strong vigorous colonies, but we have a few nucleus colonies, new this year, who need careful watching to ensure they can fend off any attacks!  
As beekeepers we reduce the size of the entrances, this helps the guard bees in their defending, we can also put a plastic wasp door on the front of the hives, allowing the bees entrance, but 'out witting' the wasps.   In severe cases of 'robbing' wasps can decimate a colony in a matter of days...  Those colonies would have to moved out of harms way to make sure they survive. 

So far so good, our 'guarding girls' are doing a fine job, but we will be watching them carefully to make sure it stays that way!  

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What a weekend of examinations we have had at Heron Hill Apiary!

We have a well set up apiary at Heron Hill (with lovely bees!) and a super 'bee shed' to share with other beekeepers and groups. Over the past two years, we have hosted the BBKA exams for the area, and this year was no exception, with 7 candidates from the Kendal Beekeepers and beekeepers from further afield using our facilities to be examined for the 'Bee Health' examination and Basic Assessments in Apiculture.  
Among the candidates were Mrs Harper and I...!!  continuing our education, studying hard and (fingers crossed!) continuing our Bee Qualification CV's!   Although it was quite stressful making sure all our revision had paid off, it was  a super to spend the weekend with other beekeepers, especially to meet and talk to Mr George Eames, the assessor, who was very patient and kind, but also taught us so much over the weekend. 
We have almost 6 weeks to wait for our results... but whatever the outcome, through our revision and experience over the weekend, both Mrs Harper and I have learnt a lot, so all good! 

Four of our founding Bee Team members travelled to London this week to be presented with the 'Bees' Needs Champions Award' 
What an experience for four of our founding Bee Team children! Over the last 3 years they have worked weekends and holidays to care for our bees...even visited other schools to teach them about bees & beekeeping, so it was only fitting that these children represented school to collect our 'Bees' Needs Champions Award' for their contribution to beekeeping and encouraging pollinators in school. 

It was a long but wonderful day, leaving Kendal at 6.20 am to get to 'Carna'bee' Street in London to receive our award from Lord Gardiner the Under Secretary of State for the Environment & George McGavin, TV entomologist & environmental champion.  The children then had opportunity to work with The University of Reading, investigating how much of our food is pollinated by bees... They made seed bombs to bring back to school and gave their expert opinion in a honey tasting session!  
  It was then off to the Houses of Parliament to meet with Tim Farron, where we passed on a petition about Climate Change and spoke to him about plastic waste. The children presented him with some of their 'beeswax wraps' made with our bee's wax, part of a project they are running in school to reduce plastic waste with the help of our bees!  We had tea on the terrace and Mr Farron even sneaked us into watch a live debate in the House of Commons!  It was amazing!

It was a super day, the children were wonderful ambassadors for school and for beekeeping, we were so very proud of them all and incredibly thankful to Kendal Beekeepers and James from Virgin Trains for their support in making it all happen!  Thank you everyone! 

Our 'buzzy' bee week continued today, with the last 'Advanced bee team' session of this year... and a special 'birth' in Year 4!
Year 4 were amazed to watch a Queen cell 'hatch' in front of their eyes in class! The Queen cells had been cut out of a hive in our 'out apiary' & brought in for the children to see... While the children were asking questions about the cells... one Queen began to emerge! To say we were a little bit excited, is an understatement!    This new Queen has now been placed in an Apidea, a mini hive containing nurse bees to look after her every need!  Hopefully her new mini 'family' will expand to be a full sized colony next year. 

The advanced team used their fabulous queen spotting skills to find an elusive new queen in a nucleus hive, quickly spotted by Poppy, then expertly marked by Mason!  Although this was the last advanced bee team session of the year, these dedicated beekeepers will be back during the summer holidays to care for our bees. 
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