A MODEST RECOLTE

I bottled this year's honey yesterday. The honey was collected at the beginning of September, which is a little late, but it has been a very strange year. I do the whole process by hand, so it normally is very time consuming, but very therapeutic, involving as it does a lot of concentration and some strenuous effort. This year, however, it was all done in a trice. I have four hives and would normally have anticipated at least 30 combs to de-cap and then extract the summer honey from. I had eight. And I am not entirely sure why.

My bees got off to a very strange start. In March the weather was phenominally hot; I spotted queen cells in one hive - which is an indication that the bees are planning to swarm - and had to take preventative action. I created an articifical swarm and in the process added an extra hive to my apiary. The bees in the new hive took off at speed - drawing comb and bringing in nectar while the queen went into full egg laying production. The 'other half' of the artificial swarm - that is, the bees who had not left the original hive - made up the difference quickly and my other two hives were doing wonderfully.

Then April arrived and weeks and weeks of solid rain. The bees couldn't fly; they couldn't gather nectar and were confined to their hives. They had to eat all of their stores. I should perhaps have fed them sugar at this point, but I do prefer to let them eat as much true honey as possible, so I didn't. And it seems to have taken them all year to replenish their own stores before they have been able to get round to providing us with some honey. I guess it is just one of those things, but it has got me thinking of this year's winners and losers. This is something that varies each year, not least because nature loves diversity. I must put together a list of what did well in the garden - or particularly badly - this year.

Incidentally - the photograph at the top is not my entire honey collection for the year - just one or two artfully arranged jars!