13 BEES... A TRULY UNIQUE BED & BREAKFAST IN SOUTH WEST FRANCE
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Winter is almost behind us, the Spring equinox approaches, and the extra hours of daylight quicken our pulses as we look forward to warmer days. March is a nervous month for beekeepers as we are close to being able to carry out gentle hive inspections and discovering quite how our bees have fared since we last saw them in autumn. If we are lucky we’ll have some balmy weather with ambient temperatures in the early teens, just enough to allow the bees to take cleansing flights and begin foraging for early pollen and nectar.  So why the nerves? It’s a bit like being an athlete on the starting line, waiting for the signal to go, or being an actor waiting to go on stage. We’re ready, we’ve made all the preparations, have all the equipment, now we just need to see the bees and assess the situation. Over the past few weeks we have been mending brood boxes, painting new crownboards, putting new foundation wax into frames, cleaning out smokers and sterilising hive

This year has been unusually wet and as a result has caused lots of problems for beekeepers and especially for commercial honey producers. The problem was one of timing – the flowers blossomed but the rain also fell, meaning that by the time the bees could fly out, all the nectar had been washed out or the flowers had died off. The extra humidity has meant too that honey this year is proving to be too ‘wet’. The rule of thumb is that the moisture content of honey must not exceed 18%.  When bees collect nectar and store it in wax cells, the moisture content can be up to 80%. An enzyme is injected by the bees into the nectar which transforms complex sugars into simpler ones, and the nectar is gradually dried by a constant stream of air being passed over it by the bees beating their wings. After a short while the moisture content will have reduced to less than 20% and the bees will seal the cells with a wax cap. This year the French Union of Beekeepers (UNAF)