Black Country Bees

Black Country Bees A local beekeeper selling honey and bee-related products from the heart of the Black Country!

A great harvest this year! Just sitting down to jar the crop and the weigh in occurred… 20KG OF HONEY! 🍯 Let the sticky ...
05/09/2024

A great harvest this year!

Just sitting down to jar the crop and the weigh in occurred… 20KG OF HONEY! 🍯

Let the sticky and time consuming process of jarring and labelling begin! 🐝

If today’s inspection is anything to go by, it’s looking to be a bumper crop of honey this year! The girls have been wor...
21/07/2024

If today’s inspection is anything to go by, it’s looking to be a bumper crop of honey this year! The girls have been working extremely hard! 🐝

Who’s looking forward to some Black Country Honey this year? 🍯

What a busy period it’s been! I hope you’re all keeping well?Swarms have been crazy this year! I personally ran out of e...
18/07/2024

What a busy period it’s been! I hope you’re all keeping well?

Swarms have been crazy this year! I personally ran out of equipment a couple months ago and yet more and more swarms are being reported. Seems the weather is not only messing us humans around! More information on swarms and reporting them here 👉🏻 https://www.bbka.org.uk/pages/category/swarm-removal

I’ve also recently began mentoring a fellow beekeeper and given them their first nuc to start their venture with… this has resulted in their husband getting involved, which has resulted in their children and now grandchildren getting the bug too! It’s an amazing experience to be able to share the hobby I’m so passionate about with others.

As the season is nearly drawing to a close, over the next month or so we will begin to look at harvesting the excess honey! Which means soon after the honey will be back in stock. Keep an eye on the page to know when it’s back in! If you purchased some honey from me this year, it would be amazing if you could leave a review on the page 🐝

Photos recently! Firstly is a picture of eggs in the bottom of cells, with pollen at the top of the photo accompanied by some nectar (the shiny liquid). Photo two is of some comb that the bees built between frames and filled with honey/nectar! You can see the walls of the cells and just how much they’re able to store. Photo 3 is of my mentee having a go at inspecting one of my nucleus colonies. She did a brilliant job!

Finally got round to jarring the honey! £6 for a 227g jar Only 39 available! 🐝
12/05/2024

Finally got round to jarring the honey!

£6 for a 227g jar

Only 39 available! 🐝

We’re still here! 🐝 I got a little snowed under with not being well, uni work and then starting placement, but I’m still...
29/09/2023

We’re still here! 🐝

I got a little snowed under with not being well, uni work and then starting placement, but I’m still here!

Whilst I’ve been a little quiet on here, the bees haven’t been taking a break!

I’ve rescued two colonies recently, both from people who took the time to report them and arrange a convenient time for me to come and remove them and take them back to my apiary.

Pics below of the colonies! They’re both happy in the apiary now, the next worry is hoping they survive the winter!

02/08/2023

Honey bees have a massive sweet tooth!

I’d clearly smushed some honey onto the top of this frame during my recent inspection and almost instantly this bee was there chowing down on it!

It’s amazing seeing their mouth work, which is actually quite a complicated piece of their anatomy!

30/07/2023

Have you ever thought about how a Honey Bee Stinger works? 🐝

Once a honey bee stings you, they’ll usually fly off, leaving their stinger in your skin. This is because the stinger is serrated, which unfortunately means that once a honey bee has stung you, it will usually die shortly afterwards.

In the video below, you can see that one of my bees decided to sting my glove (but thankfully it didn’t go through!). What you can see moving is muscle that’s designed to move the serrated digging blade part of the stinger up and down, whilst it pumps venom into your skin!

I admit, it’s awfully painful getting stung, but it’s so fascinating to be able to see this, especially without the pain!

A bee round up 🐝What a busy week it’s been! Swarm update - The two swarms naturally decided to come together (thankfully...
16/07/2023

A bee round up 🐝

What a busy week it’s been!

Swarm update - The two swarms naturally decided to come together (thankfully!), there were still some bees in the one nuc box that I wanted to combine together, so I sprinkled as many bees as I could in both boxes with icing sugar and then combined them all. The icing sugar is not only a sweet treat for them, but it confuses them long enough that they don’t end up fighting!

Colony #1 update - After taking a sting to the ankle last week, yesterday's inspection wasn’t ideal! I found two queen cells, one of which seemed that the Virgin Queen had emerged and the other cells larva had dropped down the cell, so hadn’t grown. I discarded both cells and my queen Bee was seen, so hopefully she’s been policing the frames and has dispatched any potential usurper daughters.

Colony #2 update - This colony is slowly chugging along, but not quite as quickly as I’d like it to. After struggling from losing their queen earlier in the year, the new mated queen is doing an excellent job. However, the colony is just refusing to draw out the plastic frames, so I’ve ended up buying some wooden ones and checker boarding them. This is where you alternate the frames, one plastic, one wooden and so on. I’m hoping that by doing this, it will encourage the bees to draw out the plastic ones while giving them wax foundation in the wooden frames to draw out. They’ve not drawn much of the wooden frames out yet, but every cell available has already had an egg laid in it! This queen is clearly raring to go.

Photo of the icing sugar combination

09/07/2023

Swarm #2 collection!

I’m a part of my local Bee Keepers Association and received a message yesterday evening regarding a swarm of bees that had amassed outside of The Lamp Tavern in Dudley.

I had the time and equipment, so put myself forward and headed up to Dudley to collect them!

As soon as I had placed the hive down, the bees started rushing towards it! Unfortunately their queen had perished, but due to her pheromones, I placed her in the box with the hope that the bees would run along to her.

As befits my first public swarm capture, shortly after, the heavens opened. Thankfully some lovely customers from the pub came and helped by sourcing and holding an umbrella for me and the bees! ☔️ I managed to collect the majority, and they have settled into my apiary now! 🐝

A massive thank you to the people at the pub who helped and were genuinely interested in the honey bees! 🍯

Swarm update! Checked the hive today and although I couldn’t see the Queen (they are masters of hide and seek!) I could ...
08/07/2023

Swarm update!

Checked the hive today and although I couldn’t see the Queen (they are masters of hide and seek!) I could see eggs, which leads me to believe that she has been successfully mated!

Just to be safe, I’ve left these two queen cells intact, so that the colony has options as to what they want to do.

Hopefully things are looking up for this little colony 🐝

Address

Brierley Hill
DY5

Telephone

+447487729458

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