Another day, another swarm.

I bought bee frames yesterday so I could make sure the existing hives were well supplied with room for expansion.  What happened?  Our strongest hive swarmed this morning despite my having replaced brood frames a couple of weeks ago to reduce the risk of swarming.  Probably 25-30,000 bees.

Luckily, they formed a cluster within 10 metres of the old hive (thank heavens for woody weeds) and were much easier to catch than Sunday's lot.

They're settling in.

Problem is, I have run out of boxes and frames.  That's why the full depth box in this picture has gaffer tape on it.  I was about to throw the box out because part of the wood is rotten but it has been pressed back into service and the gaps are taped up until I can get another.
Less than a month ago we only had 4 hives, now we have expanded to 8: all healthy, and 7 are very strong.

Ginger Beer Recipe

Here is the recipe I use for ginger beer.
500 ml of water in a wide mouth glass jar.
Add 3 tsp of sugar, 3 tsp of powdered ginger and 2 tsp of yeast.  I have used bread yeast and beer yeast, but find that champagne yeast gives a crisper finish.
Cover with a clean cloth, held tightly with an elastic band, to keep bugs out.
Each day for the next 7 days, add 3 tsp of sugar and powdered ginger.
On the eighth day, strain through cloth into a clean bucket.
Add 7.5 l of warm water.
Add 1.5kg of sugar (or 2 kg of honey) and stir until dissolved.
Add 2 tsp of yeast.
Cover with a cloth and place in a warm place for one or two days.

After a couple of days, pour into a demijohn or small kive, with an airlock, and leave in a warm place for another 7 or 8 days.
Decant into clean PET soft drink bottles.  I prefer these to glass bottles as it is easy to tell if pressure is building too strongly.  A squeeze of the bottle will indicate if the bottles are building pressure.  If the base of the bottles bulges, you need to release some pressure: carefully!  Glass bottles can easily explode under these sorts of pressures, so should be avoided.
The fermentation process can be stopped at any stage after bottling  by simply putting the bottles in the refrigerator.  This is an effective way of controlling the alcohol level.
Open very slowly in order to avoid needing to wash the ceiling.
I usually ease the lid off a half turn but keep my hand on the lid and re-tighten it as the fizz begins to rise.  If a lot of fermentation has gone on, it can take several minutes to open a bottle.

Variations:  Play around with this if you want.  You can add a few dozen sultanas to aid fermentation, but it's not really necessary.  I accidentally added 3 tsp of cinnamon one day when feeding the whort and the result was surprisingly pleasant.
Chilli is a great additive!  Just don't overdo it.  Some dried chilli added to the demijohn stage really gives the brew a kick.
Enjoy!

More of bees

As mentioned in the previous post, I checked my top-bar hive a while ago and cleaned out some large chunks of comb containing honey but with a large proportion of nectar, so I decided, as the nectar was likely to ferment anyway, to use it instead of sugar in my latest ginger beer brew.  Not sure if it's honey ginger beer or ginger mead, but who cares?  It's cranking strongly.

Yesterday I was feeding the chooks when I found myself in the middle of a massive swarm of bees.  I followed them to the neighbour's place  (Ben and Anna) and found they has settled on a dead stringy bark.  I figured they would settle in the hollow of the tree, but they decamped to another tree nearby and formed a cluster 4-5 metres off the ground, on a steep slope among some scrubby saplings.

I put a garbage bin under them and then whacked the branch with a long stick.  Kerplop!  

Missed the bin.  

Gathered up as many as possible by hand, put them in the bin and then dumped them into the hive, scrambling up and down the slope with a bin of bees three times.

Then I used the same stick and duct-taped a plastic flower pot to it, put it up under the remaining cluster in the tree and shook as many bees as possible into it, and dumped them into the hive.  This was repeated 5 or 6 times, with the pot getting stuck in tree branches each time.

Somehow I managed to get lucky and get the queen in the process because the rest of the cluster moved down to the hive over the next couple of hours.

Went back just before sunset, gathered up the hive and brought it back home.  Woo hoo!  One strong colony ready to make honey.  I checked them this morning and they are quite active and settling in nicely.

There is a general rule of thumb that swarming bees will not sting.  My experience is that this is true until you start whacking them with a flowerpot on a stick, then all bets are off.  One little beggar got up the leg of my bee suit and stung me on the bum.