Category: Bees

Installing a wildlife camera at Liss

Warm greetings to all our friends in  Kafuro, other Ugandan schools and our colleagues in the UK. This week, two of our pupils have been working with Geof, a volunteer helper at the school, to construct and install a wildlife camera in our nature area.

It took Jake and Oscar about 90 minutes to build the camera from a kit under Geof’s supervision.  After they finished, they installed the camera low on a tree in the nature area. The camera has a heat sensor which reacts to the proximity of animals (or indeed humans) and takes photos. As you can see from one of the photos below, we have an active badger sett in our nature area and the camera caught a glimpse of a badger walking through the long grass. Many thanks to Geof for all the time and effort guiding the boys and helping out the school.

In other news, we now have a colony of bees again, and we didn’t have to go and pick up a swarm. Yesterday, Mr Stanley noticed bees flying in and out of our Number 1 hive, and when he checked again this morning the numbers had greatly increased. It seems as if  a swarm of bees were looking for a home and found our hive. Happy Days!

We will keep you informed as to how the bees are settling in during the next couple of weeks.

Liss Honey Raffle

Our friends in Kafuro will remember that Mr Stanley posted a couple of months ago that we had collected some frames of honey from our hives. Mr Haycock worked very hard to uncap the honey frames and to filter the honey into jars. We were able to produce five jars of honey which is not a lot, but enough to hold a honey raffle.

The honey raffle works as follows: Children, staff and parents buy tickets at £1 each and then five winning tickets are drawn from a hat. Our five lucky winners were Harry Rosewarne in Yr 3, Daniel Peplow in Yr 4, Sam Viel in Yr 5, Mrs Frost (one of our members of staff) and finally our old headteacher, Mr Burford, who bought some tickets when he last visited the school. Congratulations to all of them.

We have heard that the Kafuro hives have recently suffered from vandalism, so we hope you are able to give us better news next time.

A jar of Liss honey

 

 

Update on Liss bees

Warm greetings to all our friends at Kafuro and to all the other schools involved in QEPP. We haven’t posted an update on how our bees are doing for some time. Last week, Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock went up to see our hives. The original bees that we have had for four year known as the Bordon Bees (as they came from Bordon) were in good health with lots of numbers. They were able to take three frames of honey from the hives which will be filtered and put into jars for sale before Christmas. The second hive, which is a new colony, were more of a concern as the bees were smaller in number and they did not have great stores of honey. The bees will be fed with sugar solution and fondant icing over the winter months to give them a better chance of surviving the English winter.

We would like to know how the bees are at Kafuro and whether you have been able to buy a new bee suit and smoker yet?

We are also happy to answer questions that any other schools might have.

Mr Haycock with a frame filled with honey.

Bees update at Liss and preparations for Kafuro visit are in progress

Today, Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock went to check on our two colonies of bees. Our original colony – the Bordon bees – are in great shape and are beginning to store plenty of honey, so we are confident that we will be able to extract some honey in the autumn. Our second colony of bees also brought good news: the queen has now mated and is laying brood. We are expecting the numbers of bees in the colony to expand rapidly in the next few weeks.

In other news, Mr Stanley ordered twenty chess sets to bring out to Kafuro in late July and they arrived at Liss yesterday. Mr Stanley is looking forward to teaching the Kafuro children how to play chess in a few weeks time.

 

Getting the Liss bees ready for winter

Today Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock went to prepare the Liss bees for the British winter. Each year we have made sure that the bees have enough food for the winter and that their hives are secure against intruders. This means checking that the bees have enough honey stored and that mouseguards are put on the hive entrances to stop mice getting in.

When we checked the first hive we found that the bees had stored quite a lot of honey, but we didn’t think that there was a surplus, so we decided not to take any frames. However, there were plenty of bees and there was lots of activity with bees bringing back pollen from various plants.

The second hive continues to be a worry. The queen is still laying, but the numbers are not huge and they have little or no stores of honey. Mr Haycock and Mr Stanley made sure that a container with sugar solution was filled up and the hive was completely secure.

Unfortunately, there won’t be any honey to sell this year as the bees need it, but we hope that the numbers of bees increase next year and that there is enough good weather for a bumper crop of honey.

We would like to ask our friends in Kafuro as to how your bees are progressing. Mr Stanley was very impressed with the level of foliage around the Kafuro hives over the summer. Has this led to bumper crops of honey?

Summer update on the Liss bees

At the end of last week Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock went to check on Liss’ two colonies of bees. The original colony of bees looked in great shape with lots of brood laid and plenty of young, busy bees. Also pleasing was the amount of honey that the bees are producing. Earlier in the summer, we though there was no chance of extracting any honey. However, if the weather holds through September, we might be able to take a crop.

The second colony of bees (our artificial swarm) did not have as many bees, but it was clear that the queen is laying brood. We are continuing to feed them sugar solution and hoping that the numbers increase to a level where the bees will be well equipped to survive the British winter.

We hope to keep our friends in Kafuro updated over the next few weeks and trust that you are enjoying your end of Term 2 holiday.

Mr Haycock with a full frame of honey
Mr Haycock with a full frame of honey

 

Latest bee news from Liss Junior School

Mr Haycock, Mr Stanley and three children went up to the hives at school today to see how the colonies are getting along. The news was all good. The original colony is expanding fast as the queen has laid lots of brood. After a spell of bad weather, the bees are making the most of sunny days and were very active bringing in nectar and pollen from the surrounding areas.

The second colony (created by an artificial swarm) brought further good news. The queen has emerged from her cell, mated and is laying eggs. We managed to find her quite easily, but it proved impossible to mark her; she didn’t want to be picked up and put in the marking trap. However, with this colony rapidly expanding it is the best news we’ve had for some time. We now need the weather to stay fair for a decent period of time so that the bees can really build up their honey supplies.

We would like to ask our friends in Kafuro for information on the progress of their hives.

Beekeeping – Marking a queen

Today, the Liss beekeeping club went to expect the hives up in our nature area. We had bad news last week when the swarm that we collected absconded after three days, so we are back to two colonies of bees. Our job in the first colony was to locate the queen and to mark her. We found the queen quite easily and Mr Stanley put her in a special plastic cage where she could be marked with a bright green pen.

In the second colony there are a few queen cells, but we couldn’t find a queen as yet, so we will inspect again next week. We would like to ask our friends in Kafuro how their colonies of bees are keeping?

Beekeeping update at Liss

The Liss beekeeping club went to inspect all three hives today following our successful acquisition of a swarm on Monday. This is what we found:

Hive 3

This is the newest colony of bees, who we acquired on Monday. They seem to have been settling in well and have been actively collecting pollen and making comb. We couldn’t find the queen, but will have another look next week and bring our marking kit with us.

The man who let Mr Haycock know about the swarm sent us this short video of the swarm in his garden

IMG_0021

Hive 2

This is the colony from which we took an artificial swarm a fortnight ago. A great deal of the brood has hatched and they have been raising queen cells. We think that the queen will emerge in the next few days and will mate and start laying her own brood.

Hive 1

Our original colony. The bees appear to be in good health with the queen laying lots of brood. We found the queen quite easily. The bees have started storing capped honey, but compared to last year there is very little. In all three hives we are supplementing the bees’ diet by feeding them a sugar solution.

We would like to ask our friends in Kafuro how their hives are? Has their been some rain allowing more plants to grow for the bees to forage?

Bee update at Liss

Warm greetings to our friends at Kafuro Primary School. We have just returned to school today after a week’s holiday and we hear that you have returned to school also after your longer break.

We had some good news today when the school was phoned to say that there was a swarm of bees in Liphook (about 6 miles away from Liss) that needed collecting. Mr Haycock, our site manager, took his car up to Liphook and returned with a cardboard box full of bees. When Mr Stanley went up onto the school field later in the day, the bees had settled in to their new hive. The other two hives seemed to be in good order as well with the bees making the most of the good weather conditions we currently have. So, we are up to three colonies of bees again which is great news.

The beekeeping club will visit the hives on Wednesday and Mr Stanley will post some photos after the hives have been inspected.