Neils

I've meaning to sort this out for months but used "i'll do it in winter" as an excuse to save me a lot of un-necessary hacking and slashing.

My out apiary is on a nature reserve, nicely tucked away behind some brambles. We originally cleared the area and put down a lot of mulch/wood chippings about this time two years ago.

By last summer you pretty much needed a machete to get to the hive and as quick as I could clear the space around the hive weeds were coming back and brambles were trying to take over.

I know brambles are always an ongoing battle to keep at bay but the speed at which some of the other weeds were growing back made me determined to try and sort it out on a more, hopefully, permanent basis.

Yesterday I cut back the brambles and cleared out all the dead junk that they tend to accumulate and pulled as much of the other stuff out as I could. I've put some of that anti weed sheeting down all around the hive which is on pallets fixed onto posts sunk a couple of feet into the ground which I really should have moved but didn't in the end. I may well change the pallets for a proper hive stand in the spring as they're too low to the ground for me to comfortably inspect and the outside of the hive is very damp. Once I do that another square of sheeting will be required but I have plenty spare.

After seemingly endless barrows of mulch/wood chippings to go on top of the sheeting the apiary site now looks pretty good, well I think so:

(click for large image)






I'm hoping this should now be more manageable and is now ready to take another couple of hives in the spring as I try to reduce the number of full colonies on my allotment site and use that one more for queen raising and the Nature reserve as my honey producers.

I actually think that the Allotment honey is has more depth of flavour but it is far more convenient and secure a site for me to have Apideas and Nucs there without too much fear that they'll go walkabouts.