BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Please introduce yourself here ...

  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #281  by Newbee
 13 Aug 2018, 11:15
Hi all,

New to beekeeping this year, with two national hives in Greater London. Very keen to benefit from wider learning and knowledge and look forward to one day feeling like I might be able to offer advice based on successful beekeeping experience.

Newbee
 #333  by nealh
 19 Aug 2018, 08:51
Hello All,
Neal here been keeping bees since 2007, colonies vary from 4 - 8 all kept on Brood & half BS national, I hate plastic inc poly as non bio so use trad timber. Member of WSBKA div CSBKA.

Seems I'm a newbie as had to re reg to use the new look forum , great to see it back in this form as I don't use any of the other platforms for conversing.
 #367  by allthatjazzx
 21 Aug 2018, 13:52
Hello! My name's Charlie and my company is looking into hosting some bees at our offices in London. Does anyone have any advice on how best we go about doing this?

Many thanks,

Charlie :)
 #402  by AdamD
 24 Aug 2018, 17:00
Hello! My name's Charlie and my company is looking into hosting some bees at our offices in London. Does anyone have any advice on how best we go about doing this?

Hi Charlie,
Welcome to the forum.
From speaking to my colleague at work who deals with the ISO14001 environmental for us, I am aware that it seems a 'good thing' for offices to have bees in the car park or on the roof. And he went on a course earlier this year and it was positively encouraged by the course leader as a way of "helping the environment." For me, I bring some colonies to work as a temporary location or occasionally to overwinter. Forage is not too bad at this site and bees do well enough here despite being a mile from the North Sea and open to the North wind.
I have heard that there are problems in some parts of London due to too many companies siting bees on their roofs - i.e. too many colonies for the available forage, so I would be cautious about keeping them. If you don't have an experienced beekeeper employed by the business, then you will need to find a local beekeeper who will manage them. I would hope that they don't charge for the priviledge! (A good site is worth a jar of honey per year to the site owner). My own suggestion is that the beekeeper should have managed, as a minimum, 3 or 4 colonies for 5 years and have passed the BBKA 'Basic' exam. (Search for local beekeeping associations on the internet - most are part of the BBKA although not all). They should also have somewhere to remove bees to if there are any problems. (Say, someone has an allergic reaction to them).

Something that my colleagues are acutely aware of is bee poo. Even when just one small (nucleus) colony is 20 metres away from the car park, someone will notice little orangy-brown specs on their car and blame me!
You will need to expect the occasional swarm from the hives - a part of natural reproduction - and although I have always known bees to be gentle, they will alarm your work colleagues, they will spend man-hours looking out of the window at them and get your H&S staff hot under the collar!

Does this help?
 #455  by jaytee2006
 30 Aug 2018, 12:39
Hi I'm Judy and have been keeping bees for 8 years in Langstroth hives ranging in number from 6 to 12 depending on the time of year. As stated by a previous poster I'm marked as a Newbee as I had to re-register on the new forum.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 7