BEE KEEPER
By the Dart INTERVIEW
PAUL ALLEN
Dartmouth Beekeeper Paul Allen
He’s been stung countless times but Dartmouth Mayor, Paul Allen finds keeping bees therapeutic. Paul has seven hives dotted around
Dartmouth and Dittisham, each containing up to 100,000 bees. In a good year his 700,000 bees produce 175lbs of honey from the nectar they collect from flowers growing in local gardens. Paul became a beekeeper eight
years ago, buying his hives from the monks at Buckfast Abbey who had decided to stop producing honey commercially from their 500 hives on Dartmoor. His hives are what are known as National Hives, which are the most widely used hives in the UK, and some of Paul’s are hundreds of years old.
I met Paul at one of the hives
he keeps in his son’s garden in Northford Road. He has another hive in a garden at Newcomen Road and five in the garden of Dittisham sculptor Bridget McCrum.
Relaxing with his bees is one of his
favourite past-times. ‘Keeping bees is a bit like living the Good Life,’ he laughed. ‘It’s about giving something back.
We do our little bit for keeping the planet going and it’s quite therapeutic. ‘I go to my hives and sit down with the bees, I call them my girls and ask them what they’re up to. ‘A lot of people are quite sympathetic towards beekeeping but a lot can also be intimidated and frightened. They may not want to
actually do it but they can help by planting their garden accordingly.’ Although the bees do not like to be disturbed too much, there is an art to successful beekeeping and help is always at hand for Paul from fellow members of the Totnes and Kings- bridge Beekeeping Association. ‘There are no other beekeepers
in Dartmouth that I am aware of but there are a couple of people doing it in Kingswear and in Blackawton too,’ Paul said. ‘There are about 30 beekeepers in the area from Totnes to Kingsbridge’.
It’s about giving something back. We do our little bit for keeping the planet going
Paul is a hive of information about the fascinating life of bees, and waxed lyrical telling me all about them as he showed me the inner workings of his Northford Road hive, which is currently empty awaiting a new swarm of bees. The bottom box of the hive consists of a brood chamber with a set of hung frames containing preformed wax hexagons which the bees push out to create beeswax cells. The queen bee, which rules the hive, lays her eggs in these cells. Brood cells also contain some honey. Paul tops the brood chamber with what is known as a honey super – a set of smaller frames and honey- comb cells where worker bees store processed nectar. A board is placed
BEE KEEPER PAUL IS A HIVE OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE FASCINATING LIFE OF BEES.
on top of this second chamber to protect the hive from the weather. Paul said: ‘I take my honey from the super. I leave the honey in the brood chamber because the bees need this to feed on during the winter. If it is a really good summer I can build up to four or five supers.’ If the queen bee does not lay enough eggs the hive will swarm. When this happens about 60 per cent of the worker bees leave the hive with their queen. When a honey bee swarm
emerges from a hive they gather just a few metres from the hive in a tree or on a branch while scout bees are sent out to find a new nest location. If Paul manages to catch a swarm of his bees he can use them to fill another beehive.
The queen is the mother of honey- bee colony and as well as laying eggs she produced pheromones that keep the colony working happily together. If the queen is lost, the change in pheromones will alert the colony to this fact very quickly. After 10 to 24 hours, the bees will be quite sure the queen is lost and will set about making emergency queen cells with any fertilised eggs present in the hive. Alternatively, Paul can buy a new queen for £40. ‘They send them in the post for
you, but I’m not sure the postman would be too happy if he knew! She comes in a small metal cage with a lump of sugar in one end. There are two to three little bees with her be- cause the queen never feeds herself.
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