Liz Wyatt’s Guest Blog.

Liz in her home garden apiary about to check on the supply of fondant in the hive.

Introduction.

Liz has kindly agreed to share some of her recent Costa Rican holiday experiences. Like lots of us abroad, Liz enjoys exploring local beekeeping and learning from new experiences, and I thank her for sharing the following with us.

Over to Liz.

I live in a small village in Clackmannanshire at the foot of the Ochil Hills in central Scotland and I’ve been keeping bees in my garden for 6 years. Currently, I have 2 colonies and an overwintering nuc. A further colony is in a friend’s garden nearby. I try to garden for bees and all wildlife.

It’s a very wet area and you can see, in the photo above, the construction covering the hive. This was new for this winter and my husband built the roof attached to the stand to keep off the worst of the winter rain.

I was delighted to see a few bees flying on 2nd March when I checked the fondant. They were flying despite it being 5 degrees Celsius with too little sun for the surrounding crocuses to open.

Bees foraging on Christmas Box, Sarcococca, confusa, at 7 degs C on 22/01/20.

Costa Rica.

On our recent holiday to Costa Rica in South America, my husband and I discovered tiny stingless bees (Melipona spp.) during a guided walk. You can see the nest in the next photo, clinging to a rock.


Discovery.

I enquired about beekeeping and I found these absolutely fascinating tiny bees. And what a wonderful strategy for making increase they have. When these little bees swarm the scout bees have already done the house hunting and a consensus is reached before they leave home. So, unlike our honey bees they don’t hang about for a bit once they leave the original nest, they go straight to their new nest site. Some bees come along as helpers where they clean, polish and make new comb before returning to the original nest to resume duties back home. During my research, I discovered this comprehensive article from Bee Culture which covers everything that I wanted to tell you about Costa Rica, honey bees, beekeeping and stingless bees.

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