Welcome to the Bee Keeping Section

This section will contain regular updates from Ripal and Andy, both these guy's are members of the Barnet bee keeping society and have the correct training, and insurance and qualifications 

To keep Bees on our site

Some  information about bees in general

there are more than 250 species of bee in the United Kingdom. Here are two of  the most common bees you can see on our allotment site

 

                     Honey Bee                                                        Bumble  Bee

 

Pollinators (bees and some other insects transfer pollen and seeds from one flower to another, fertilizing the plant so it can grow and produce food. Cross-pollination helps at least 30 percent of the world's crops and 90 percent of our wild plants to thrive.2 Without bees to spread seeds, many plants—including food crops—would die off..

As a rule of thumb the foraging area around a beehive extends for two miles (3 km), although bees have been observed foraging twice and three times this distance from the hive.

The less distance they need to travel increases the amount of Honey that they  can produce

Burnt Oak Bees.
 
By Ripal Parekh
 
Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that without bees, the human race would only last five years. This is because of the crops that are consumed by humans, there are those  pollinated by wind and animals (including humans), and a third are insect pollinated.  Of the insects that pollinate plants, honey bees are the most versatile in terms of the wide range of different flowers they pollinate.  Without this fantastic service provided by honeybees, our diet would lose a lot of the colourful fruits and vegetables!
 
History of Beekeeping in Burnt Oak Allotment.
 
In 2012, I completed a course run by the BDBKA that covered the theory and the practice of keeping Bees.  At the end of the course, I was looking for bees and a place to keep them. Through mutual contacts, my path crossed with the Burnt Oak Allotment committee.  We had a long discussion about the committee's plans for the future of the allotment and the special place in the plan for the bees.  As a result, I became the allotment beekeeper.
 
I started out with two small bee hives, a lot of enthusiasm and looking back now, very little experience.  I was lucky that I had help from two sources; the first were my mentors from the BDBKA, who were on the end of a phone, to provide advice for any questions I had related to beekeeping and helping me find my way out of situations where the bees thought they knew more about being bees than me; The second were the allotment committee who generously helped me by building my hives, and also providing me with tea and some biscuits, especially on the cold winter mornings.  They also encourage the members to grow bee friendly flowers, the result of which has been proven by the honey winning an award in the Blind Tasting competition by a professional BBKA judge.  The honey is sold through the Allotment Shop.
 
A couple of years ago, Andy joined the allotment apiary as our second Beekeeper.  Andy has had significant experience of Beekeeping previously, and between us we have a number of active beehives at the allotment.  
 
Queen Rearing.
As well as producing honey, part of the philosophy of the apiary is to follow best practice in beekeeping and to keep our skills and knowledge expanding.  The current exciting project that we are embarking on is to try to raise, rear and mate our own queen bees here, at the allotment.  We have had varying levels of success with this over the last couple of years and plan to continue to do this over the coming seasons in order to become as self sufficient as we can.
 

 

 

Standard National Hive

More bee information

Should you require any more information or have questions about the bees and Bee keeping please click on the contact Ripal or Andy button you can then send then a directly email.