Ex-Tulip.

Spent a few hours teaching the noble art of beekeeping to my two protégés this afternoon; they have about six weeks to learn everything there is to know for the exam. The requirement for the practical part is a bit like the advanced driving test in that they have to go through all the manoeuvres while explaining what they are doing and seeing. Then they will have the theory test when they will be asked about everything from the legal requirements for text fonts on the honey jar labels to the colour the queen should be painted this year (seriously).

Today was a first for me, having boasted for many years that I can't find the queen and so never bother to look for her, I spotted her strolling across one of the combs, in front of witnesses too; perhaps there's hope for me yet. One of the things that really worries novices is that they think they must find the queen as that is what most books tell them; in practice, most beekeepers can't do it reliably even though many of them are very good at their craft.

After that excitement,  we had a long session discussing swarm prevention and control. There are three ways of dealing with preventing your bees from upsetting the neighbours, they are:
Swarm prevention (stopping them from doing it),
Swarm control (making them do it, but on your terms) and
Letting them get on with it.

The last is practised by a friend of mine; he has a couple of bait hives in his apiary and he knows when his bees are going to swarm. When they do, he's there waiting for them and they either form a cluster on a convenient post (convenient for the beekeeper - he put it there for the purpose) in which case he collects the bees and puts them into a hive, or they fly straight into one of his bait hives saving him the bother and he just walks around with a smug grin for a few days. He is the best beekeeper I know.

Today's emergency blip is a tulip I smuggled out of a jar a few days before Herself binned the rest. I played around with solarization and put the result as an extra.