Fishing & Bees

Today was our first fishing excursion of 2025.

Bubbles and I had arranged it a few weeks ago and shortly after eight this morning we headed over to the Lower Park Fishery at Beoley.  The lakes had been recommended by a dog walking acquaintance many months ago, and this was our first visit.

After a couple of hiccups* we eventually got ourselves set up on the bank of the Abbey Pool and fishing commenced. I am absolutely delighted to say that I caught the first three fish, starting with a small Carp and followed up with a couple of Skimmer Bream.

Bubbles eventually got with the programme and reeled in a couple of Tench, but poor Ben struggled; possibly because he insisted on using sweetcorn as bait rather than the traditional maggots.

I fished through until the early afternoon, but then had to pack up and head back home ... I really needed to get the two colonies inspected.

On arrival at home I was surprised to see TP's car on the drive. It transpired that he had met up with friends in Worcester last night and had decided to make an unscheduled visit to see us the dogs!

The weather was perfect for the inspection and I soon had my smoker lit and the various beekeeping bits and bobs assembled.

The first task was to move the newer colony from Pete's hive to one of mine. The first stage was to remove the supers and these were checked for stored honey.  They had some stores, but nothing to get too excited about. I then removed the queen excluder and carefully lifted Pete's brood box and floor off my hive stand. The new floor and brood box were installed and levelled up, before I started to carefully transfer the frames across from one to the other.

I soon found the queen so was reassured that she had been successfully moved to her new residence. I continued to add the remaining frames, checking each one to ensure that there were no queen cells ... none were found. It was then a moment's work to replace the queen excluder, supers, crown board and roof and leave the colony in peace.

I then turned to the colony that was established and installed last year.  All that was needed was a check on their stores and  a run through the brood box to ensure there were no signs of swarming.  I lifted the roof and crown board and was amazed at what I found. Even without removing any of the frames from the super I could see that they were packed with honey and the bees had even started to cap off the cells.**

The second, lower super was even better and I was surprised at how different the two colonies are. I suppose that the newer colony has only been here about ten days, and should catch up in the coming weeks. 

I then moved on to check the brood box and all was well in there. I found the queen and could see no signs of swarming. I may need to add another super next week, depending on how good the weather is.

After a busy week on the boat and a day of fishing and bees, one might expect a lazy evening in front of the television, but we actually went out for a bite to eat with Bubbs & Bobbyn at the Four Alls at Welford-on-Avon.

A good time was had by all, but it certainly wasn't a late one!

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* It wasn't particularly well signposted from the Redditch approach and Bubbles and Ben had both ignored my instruction to bring cash for the machine that issues the day fishing permit.

** This is a sure sign that the nectar has been converted to honey and has had the moisture content sufficiently reduced.