An Apiarist's Diary

My wife, Marja, had been thinking about keeping bees and making honey for some time. In January of this year she became a member of the Finnish Beekeepers Association (Suomen Mehiläishoitajain Liitto) and started a course to learn how to keep bees. So, having moved to Finland in July 2010, with me unable to speak either of the official languages, with three children under 5 years old and a fourth on the way, it seemed like an ideal time to embark on a new enterprise, about which we knew nothing!

Just 2 weeks ago we spent our Saturday extracting our first season's honey from our bee hives. This required a mini-industrial setup in itself. To summarise: we had to drive the boxes (supers) containing honey to my in-law's house in the Finnish countryside, then uncap the honeycomb, load frames (where the honeycomb is built) into a recently purchased second-hand honey centrifuge, spin the frames for about 20 minutes to fling the honey out, sieve the resultant honey through two grades of sieve into large buckets, then remove the frames (containing now empty honeycomb) from the centrifuge and pack them back into the supers for later cleaning and storing.

I had imagined that this process would be a particularly sticky affair. Whilst our clothes, hands, tools and containers we were using did get caked in honey and beeswax, that was pretty much the extent of the mess, with the floors and walls suffering minimal coverage. We also managed to keep our children out of the way (apart from a quick tasting), avoiding the spread of the sticky stuff too far.

This week, after a 10 day or so maturation process, we are jarring-up the honey. Due to the small-scale nature of our set-up, we are improvising with the equipment we have available. So, using a 20L water container with the tap removed, we are decanting our buckets of honey into 450g jars, ready for distribution. Point to note: unlike water, 'running' honey is silent, so you can have a large mess on the floor if you don't watch where your buckets / taps / jars are.

We are currently, therefore, at the end of the harvesting process. However, a beekeeper never stops tending to the hives or for the preparation of next year's hives. The following weeks will see measures for the reduction or prevention of disease and getting our bees cosy and ready for winter. This diary will keep you updated with what is current in our bee keeping calendar, taking you through to the next harvest next summer, an insight into bee keeping with a young family in tow.

Jamie Craig (IB Biology Teacher)