Top Bar hives and Swarm Control: Bee News...

With the warm weather and abundance of flowers planted by Jan our horticluture technician, the bees are in full swing producing honey at a fantastic rate. Our friends at Cardona and Sons came to check on one of their hives and found it so full they had to split the colony to stop it swarming...

Fully suited and with a prepared brood box Andre first inspected the large colony...

One by one Andre removed the frames and checked the health of the bees, their stocks and reserves and their brood. Some of the frames showed sign of queen cell formation. When the bees are preparing to swarm they produce a special brood cell in which the juvenile queens will develop.

The large Queen cup is clearly visible

All but one Queen Cup must be removed and destroyed, the surviving Queen Cup (Usually the largest) and its frame are placed in a new sterile brood box along with several frames of unhatched worker bees. The Queen Cups are destroyed by scraping them off the frames with your hive tool. The bees still flying will serve their original hive and queen, the newly emerged bees will serve the new queen in the new hive...

The other good news is that we have raised £390 to buy the equipment and 4 hives for our Kenyan orphan project. The equipment will be winging it's way to Kenya on the 23rd June and the hives will be in place by mid July. Plus to get into the theme of our project we have invested in a top bar hive. These hives are used across the developed world and instead of being split into mulitple chambers like the national hives they are one long colony.  The bees produce their own combs and the hive is said to be more 'natural'. If nothing else it will be an interesting side project.

Redborne Lamb For Sale...

For the first time ever we are selling our lambs direct to customers. We feel that having invested so much time and effort to produce a product of fantastic quality that we would like to put our name to it as opposed to letting it head to the supermarkets and join the long lines of cellophane wrapped mass produced meat.

Now a lot bigger than this, all our lambs were born and reared at Redborne. Grass fed and allowed free roam of our paddocks they are a high welfare, high quality product.

To that end we are selling our lambs initially by the half or whole animal, fully butchered and packed up ready for the freezer. We’re also ensuring that we can match our quality product with fantastic prices just £65 for half a lamb and £120 for a full lamb. Lambs will be released in phases throughout June allowing you to free up that much needed freezer space.

If you are interested please feel free to request an order form from the school Farm:

Redborne School Farm, Flitwick Road, Ampthill, Bedfordshire, MK45 2NU

or Email

stbwilliams@redborne.beds.sch.uk 

Don't forget that you can also buy rare breed pork from the farm as well...

A Hog Well Roasted...

We were asked to cater for a party this weekend with a Hogroast. As it was our first, we were a little nervous and apprehensive so we got up nice and early (4.30am). We got everything ready and started cooking at 7am...

Scoring the fat ready for cooking...

We only specialise in rare breed pork and this Large Black pig was the perfect hogroast pig, it's marbling produced moist and tender pork when cooked for a long time...

Nearly done...

10hrs later it was cooked and ready to serve. Over 160 people tucked in...

Birthday boy ready to tuck in...

Tucking in...

And soon there was nothing left...

Plant Sales and Bacon...

Our plant sale was a great success, despite a slightly chilly start we managed to sell out of plants, bacon and sausages. Thanks to our volunteers for making it possible, as due to the sunshine we were inundated with customers...

Cold and slightly misty morning at 6am

Fantastic plants and the cooking started

All our meat is produced on the farm with the bacon cured and smoked onsite by ourselves

Jan's plants in all their Glory...

The heat of the Kitchen...

A stockpile that did not last long with well over a hundred bacon and sausage baps sold, it was a very busy day...

The 'Alan Sugar' of Horticulture does her thing...

The last of the bacon; sold.

Even these last few plants disappeared pretty fast...

Guest pigs III: Mangalitsa Pigs...

We have two new guest pigs which arrived amongst the down pours.

Loaded up and ready for the trip home...

The two Mangalitsas along with the Gloucester Old Spots will hopefully help to enrich our curriculum, teaching students about the great variety of traditional breeds...

In their new pen before the big escape...

Mangalitsas come from Austria and areas across Eastern Europe and there has been suggestions that the Managalitsa is a relative of the now extinct Lincolnshire Curly Coat...



Mangalitsas come in three distinct colours, Blonde, Red and Swallow Bellied. Our two new weaners are both Swallow Bellied, blonde underneath and black on top...




Due to their ability to seemingly run through electric fences, they now have a more secure temporary home before being trained to stay in their nice grass covered new pen...

 

A picture of Mum, she is a blonde Mangalitsa with a very woolly snout.

Settled in and having a drink.

The personalisation of their new home begins

How to catch a wild swarm of bees...

Thanks to Andre from Cardona and Sons, I had my first taste of harvesting a wild swarm which will now be filling one of our previously empty hives. As student I tried to follow all the instructions from the expert so here's how we did it...

It should be noted that the swarm was collected later in the evening once the temperature had dropped and the swarm collected for the night. If you harvest a swarm in the day you risk leaving a lot of bees behind...

1. Wear appropriate clothing! A veil and suit are essential as bee's can be unpredictable. Luckily these ones were very well behaved.
2. Lay a white sheet on the ground near the swarm. This will give them a guide to follow into the skep...

3. Place your Skep next to the swarm raising one edge to allow the bees entry...
4. Using a bee brush or other handy equipment start to 'encourage' the bees onto the sheet and towards the skep...

5. Once the bees have discovered the nice warm and cosy Skep they will release pheremones encouraging others to follow...

6. Use smoke lightly to encourage the bees to head towards the Skep. The smoke will help remove the pheremones from the queen that encourage the bees to stay in a swarm. The bees will soon begin to follow the queen into the Skep...

7. Once the bees have marched into the Skep wrap them into the blanket or sheet...

8. The Bee's can then be emptied into a nucleus...

Thanks again to Andre and if you fancy a hive of your own follow the link to Cardona and Son to find out more...

Green Fingers...

Thanks to Jan, the Greenhouses are filling rapidly with a vast number of plants, shrubs and trees to tempt would be gardeners. All of these will be available to buy on the 13th May at our plant sale 7am -12pm...

Including Jan's top creation, Jubilee hanging baskets...