COLUMNIST: Kelly Ireland
That bee hive sat empty for nearly eight years as I went on an introductory course, read books, watched videos, and spoke to other beekeepers. I had just about plucked up enough courage to actually get some bees and then the pandemic happened.
I was really sad as I had finally found a mentor who was willing to sell me some bees, but with lockdowns and driving off the cards, I had to abandon this plan.
It was through a chance chat with someone in our village that I found out there was a resident bee expert in the area. She had been keeping them for forty years. Once restrictions were lifted, I met up with this lady and she took me for a tour of her Apiary (a fancy name for a collection of bee hives).
I was spellbound from the minute she lifted the lid on the first colony. I forgot to be scared. I forgot that they could sting me. I was just utterly and completely transfixed by them.
I must have passed the test, because a few days later the lady offered to sell me a nuc. A nuc is a small colony of bees that has a laying queen and brood (eggs, larvae, and bees) in all stages. A price was agreed and a few days later, she arrived with the nuc and that is when my beekeeping journey really began.
I am embarking on year five of keeping bees, and now have five colonies - all of which originate from that one first nuc. Each colony has its own personality. I have read somewhere that whilst bees as individuals are insects, as a colony they have more in common with mammals. For example, the bees keep their house temperature the same as a human body.
Keeping honey bees made me aware of all the other bees and pollinators we have around us. There is a nest of bumble bees burrowed in the ground by the wood store, and mason bees have moved into the bug hotel. There are wood wasps that rest on the warm house in summer (terrifying to look at but harmless) and, of course, we have our fair share of common wasps that find their way into the house.
Pollinators need to… well… pollinate. Food sources need to be available from early spring through to the end of autumn. With this in mind, nectar and pollen production has become one of the biggest driving factors of what plants will make it into my garden.
Before keeping bees I assumed that all flowers were good food. Turns out that this is not the case, and a great deal of plants have adapted specialist skills in order to attract the right kind of pollinator.
We have a lot of Ranunculus repens (creeping buttercup) here, due in part to the fact that our garden was once a part of a field used to graze farm animals. Only short-tongued bees can actually reach this food source. Honey bees are not short-tongued so can’t access it. This isn’t a bad thing, as it means there are nectar sources available that the honey bees can’t get but other pollinators can.
I have found trees are actually a great source of early food. Salix (willow) catkins are amongst the first things to make an appearance in the garden, and on a sunny day you can hear the tree buzzing as the girls get to work collecting all that pollen to turn into bee food.
That is the other surprising thing about bees. They don’t just live off of nectar from plants. They also need pollen, tree sap, and water. Nectar makes honey, but pollen makes bee bread to feed baby bees, and tree sap helps make propolis which the bees use to fill gaps and insulate the hive. Water is not only drunk, it is also used in summer to cool the hive down.
Pollen varies in colour, and if you pay close attention on hive inspections, you can learn to identify which pollen has come from which plant by learning the colours. It still amazes me every time I see the variety of colours: not just shades of yellow but pinks, reds, and even blues!
If you want to help all pollinators, there are many things you can do. Planting early flowering bulbs is a massive help. Snowdrops, crocus, and daffodils are beneficial, although avoid double flowering types as their nectar is hard to access. Fruit trees and shrubs are fantastic, and mutually beneficial. You feed the bees and, in turn, they will improve your fruit harvest with their pollination skills.
I plant radishes and leave them to go to seed. They are easy to grow, relatively resistant to other garden visitors and have sweet little purple flowers that the bees love. A cloud of radish flowers buzzing with pollinators is a late summer delight.
Honey bees will stick to one type of flower on a foraging trip, so it is worth planting multiples of a plant in order to get the best pollination. In beekeeping, we call this a flow, when a certain plant is at peak nectar production and the bees are in collection mode.
Habitat is important as well. I don’t start clearing debris from my garden until night temperatures are above freezing. A cold snap can really harm insect life, so although the scruffiness might annoy me, I will tolerate it for the promise of a garden alive with insect life in the months to come.
Lastly, and I think this probably goes without saying, you need to garden organically. Pesticides and herbicides will impact all pollinators, resulting in death and a lack of beneficial insects in your garden. Tolerate the nibbled leaves and the odd loss, and you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful and bountiful garden.
If you would like to learn more about planting for bees, I would recommend the books “Planting for Honeybees” by Sarah Wyndham Lewis, or “The Bee Garden" by Maureen Little. My absolute favourite book about beekeeping is “Bees at the Bottom of the Garden” by Alan Campion. It’s an older book, but just lovely.
Should you decide you’d quite like to keep bees, I would suggest getting in touch with The Scottish Beekeepers Association to find information about courses local to you, as well as all kinds of useful bee -elated information.
Kelly Ireland is a keen gardener living with her partner on an off-grid smallholding in the North East of Scotland. After ten years, the house is finished and it is now time to concentrate on the garden. Kelly completed her Permaculture Design Certificate in 2022 and is using this to develop the new gardens around their home.
Keep up with her garden on Instagram at @growingseasons_.