Co-Created by Josh Gomez & Rosie Stonehill

We attended a biological bee keeping course in Coimbra botanical garden, the course was split into 7 Saturdays spread over 6 months, it took you through all the different aspects of beekeeping, from introducing a swarm to harvesting honey, to diagnosis and action in the case of disease and the various products that can come out of the hive & what you can make with them etc. We were lucky enough to be able to pay for the course by doing an exchange for helping at the botanical garden (we did juggling, balloons and face painting at a pumpkin party and gave plants and help to prepare for another course).Our tutor Harald Hafner is a full time bee keeper with 200 hives he was first trained in Austria and has also worked in Dominican Republic helping the locals start bee keeping.

In the first session we were introduced to melifera iberica, the Portuguese native bee, and told the importance of the melifera species or honey bee not only for the many products which they produce but also for pollination of 78% of the insect pollinated plants.

We were then given an introduction to the equipment necessary for bee keeping and shown 3 forms of bee hive.

Lastly we sited a hive, learning what factors to take into account and the best orientation to have the door hole.

In the second session we focused on creation of a bee garden and learnt about what types of nectar & pollen producing species are necessary for the bees to have nearby.

Then we created a bee garden in the botanical garden with fruiting trees & a set of small ponds as it is very important that the bees have water close by all year.

Then we had our first contact with the bees, spotting all the things we had just learnt and did some routine work with the bees.

In the third session we learnt about the 3 types of bees in the hive, worker, drone and queen, about the processes of bee birth from egg to larva to pupa to bee and that the worker takes 21 days to form, the drone 24 days & the queen 16 days. We looked at the anatomy of the bees and their functions within the hive. We also learnt about the reasons for and signs of a swarm and how to use the swarming mechanism to multiply your hives.

On the fourth saturday we learnt how to diagnose common diseases and how to treat them, organically and biomechanically.

Then we worked with the bees again, this time removing some drone brood as a bio-mechanical intervention to reduce the number of varroa. We also created some new swarms in smaller swarm boxes.

We learnt about varroa and how to manage and live with this largely unavoidable mite, that in the warm seasons breeds at an incredible rate and can literally suck the life out of the hive.

The fifth session was all about the products from a hive and the myriad ways in which they can be used, whether to eat to the great benefit of our health, specific medicinal uses and even making candles, polish and waterproofing. We learnt about, Honey, Pollen, Wax , Propolis, Bee Venom and Royal Jelly

Finally we visited the hives to observe the state of the bees, replace some honey filled frames which we hadn’t managed to eat and remove some more drone cell frames to continue the control of Varroa.

We then had a delicious taster of the honey which was being gathered in the hives, eating big chunks of honey comb and feeling a bit like Winnie the Pooh. We also saw a demonstration of how to make a healing balm using propolis which had already been prepared as a tincture, wax, olive oil and honey. We each received a jar of his balm and we have found it to be really effective for every kind of burn, cut, sting or dry skin condition. We then continued the honey bonanza and had a tasting session of four different honeys from different seasons.

On the last day of this course we had a honey harvest celebration, watching and being involved in the collecting of the frames, spinning off or pressing out of the honey, sieving and jarring.

The honey was particularly special because it had all the diversity, pollen and nectars of the botanical garden and the many surrounding parks and gardens of Coimbra. It really was delicious and we ate so much and also got to take our own jarred sample home with us at the end of the day

It was the perfect end to a really enjoyable course, that we would recommend to anyone interested in learning more about bee keeping. Lowarn particularly enjoyed that last day as he got the chance to go crazy on the liquid gold as it came out of the press and centrifuge and buzz around with honey happiness for the rest of the day.

This is the Top bar hive Josh built.We got the design for it from The back yard hive company, it is a Golden Mean hive and is based upon the dimensions of the lower half of a pentagram. We chose this style of hive because it boasted max honey production with the min size hive.

Bee Tea RecipeTake one large hand full of seasonal fresh herbs favouring plants in flower (with a predominance from the Thyme and Mint family, but it can also include Sage, Comfrey, Yarrow, Cleavers, Nettle & Rosemary - not too much rosemary as it bitters the tea). Add this to 3 litres of boiling water and leave to simmer for 5 mins and stand for 10 mins then strain though a sieve. Put 1 litre into the pump sprayer for the bees, which is more than enough for an hour of work in the bee yard (of the other two litres we all drink some as a health boost and make kombucha with the rest). To this litre add two teaspoons of fructose or honey and shake to thoroughly mix, this combination calms the bees & gets them busy licking the tea off themselves. Also to this, at certain times, if there are signs of growth in varroa populations, add a couple of drops of both Thyme & Peppermint essential oil.If you want to know if you’ve got the tea right then taste it, it should be strong but not unpalatable.

Bee Tea – Instead of the conventional smoker we decided to try another method of

distracting the bees when working in the hive. This is to spray a fine mist of slightly sweet herb tea which not only wets their wing, making it impossible to fly, but also boosts their health. We partly choose this method because we wanted to see if it would help with keeping down the number of Varroa and also because we felt that using smoke was quite a violent way of approaching the bees, akin to a fire alarm going off in your home every couple of weeks. But with the tea, they seam to really like it and are a lot less aggravated by it. It’s more like being bathed in your one of your favourite foods but a food that's good for you too.

Bee Keeping and Social NetworkingRosie goes bee keeping in Colmeal

Bee Keeping is a practise which is very much alive here in the Serra of Central Portugal. A few months after arriving in this area I was able to attend a free 50 hour bee keeping course in Colmeal, the local village. This was the first course of it’s kind run by an association called ADIBER in this Junta (Local council) and it was attended by local people, many of whom were already keeping bees or their families had done so for many generations.

In terms of structure, the course started on 24th Jan and ran for four weeks, three days a week with sessions from 6 until 10 in the evening. This was quite intensive for both Josh and I as I was reaching brain meltdown with so much Portuguese and Josh was dealing with getting Lowarn to bed on his own when Lowarn was previously only used to me. However, the challenge was beneficial on all accounts.

The course was taught in Portuguese so for improving my communication skills it was fantastic. It was also an incredible way to become involved with the local community, something which is really essential to any functioning system. I met the Presidente and various other key workers from the Junta plus many people from the village and surrounding areas. It really helped to start making connections with people and for them to not see me as so much of a stranger. This aspect alone made the course hugely worthwhile.

As for the content, the course was very informative in describing many fundamental aspects of bee keeping such as the anatomy, behaviours and life cycles of the three different bees in the hive, optimum site and orientation for a hive, traditional beekeeping, protective clothes worn, necessary climactic conditions and personal mental state beneficial to visiting and opening the hive. It would be fair to say that a lot of the methods prescribed for maintaining the health of the hive and dealing with the bees (for example forcing bees to swarm by killing the queen in order to multiply the number of active hives) were fairly conventional and largely focussed at the commercial beekeeper. There was a heavy reliance on chemical treatments and the methods seemed, to me, to be forcing the bees into massive production rather then working with their natural habits and traits to enable them to be healthy and numerous and hence highly productive by default.

In summary, I was very grateful to have the opportunity to attend this course, it was a great way to kick start our learning about bee keeping, I supplemented my learning by reading books in English which we already had. The course gave me some useful information about the basics and also an insight into conventional methods. It was also very positive to be part of this new venture in the local area and to add my support in numbers to the possibility of it happening. The fact of attending the course may help in official ways at a later date and I may still find use for some of the strategies taught at some time.

We also had a one day outing to visit the apiaries of the teacher and see active hives in a few different situations. This got me into the local paper and meant further contact with the other course participants.

Bee Gardens

As shown in the example from the botanical garden, it is possible and of great value in certain situations to create a bee garden planted out with pollen and nectar giving plants and trees and ensuring a supply of flowers throughout as much of the year as possible. However, rather than creating a specific bee garden, we have decided instead to compile a list of plants that we might use throughout our land design once we have one. We feel that in any design we made, a bee garden would also serve many other functions and at times would be a forage zone for food crops and culinary and medicinal herbs and a fodder space for the chickens and the horse (in some parts and at certain times), it could also have some aquaculture with fish. All in all, personally, we would provide for the bees and their needs in block plantings throughout a design, putting certain species in places where they serve as many other purposes as possible, e.g. Placing a line of willow pollards along permanent fences at the edge on pasture, giving shade & extra chop and drop feed for the horse, providing craft materials & fuel for the rocket stove, stabilising the slope, cleaning ground water as well as being an early source of pollen and nectar for the bees.

Bee PlantsTrees

•Crab apple & Apple (Malussylvetris)

•Locust

•Orange (citrus spp.)

•Pear (Pyrus commumis)

•Peach (Prunus persica)

•Apricot (Prunus armeniaca)

•Tulip tree

•Plum (Prunus)

•Lime tree / Tilia

•Hawthorn

•Willow

•Cherry (Prunus avium)

•Chestnut (Castanea sativa)

•Almond ( Prunus dulcis)

•Alder

•Elder

•Mulberry (morus spp)

•Acacia Species

•Hazel (Corylus avellana)

•Horse chestnut

•Maple

•Poplar

•Rowan

•Pecan (Carya illinoinensis)

Climbers•Grape

•Kiwi

•Passionfruit

•Wisteria

•Pumpkins and squashes

•Peas

•Runner Beans

•Cucumber

•Ivy

•Honey suckle

•Jasmine

Shrubs•Eleagnus species – Autumn Olive,

Goumi Berry...

•Lavender

•Rosemary

•Sage

•Raspberry

•Black current

•Gooseberry

•Logan berry

•Heather – The area in which we live is very rich in wild heather all over the mountains.

•Bramble – W

•Broom – W

•Buddleia

•Blackthorn

•Holly

•Hyssop

•Mahonia

•Wild Clematis

Herbaceous•Strawberry

•Thyme

•Bee balm

•Mint

•Angelica

•Borage

•Catnip

•Chicory

•Chives

•Coltsfoot

•Common Mallow

•Cornflower

•Corn Marigold

•Corn Poppy

•Dandelion

•Sunflower

•Evening Primrose

•Field Beans

•Flax

•Forget me nots

•Golden Rod

•Globe thistle

•Himalayan Balsam

•Honesty

•Hollyhock

•Lupin

•Marjoram

•Meadowsweet

•Nasturtium

•Self heal

•Sweet Violet

•Valerian

•Vipers Buglos – W

•Clover

•Woad

Bulbs and Tubers

•Bluebell•Crocus•Grape Hyacinth•Snowdrop•Snowflake•Squill•Solomon’s Seal

SummaryWhat would we do without the honey bee? It is the primary pollinator of most of our food and without her we would have little chance of survival. It is a very sad state of affairs that, all around the world, the numbers of honey bees are decreasing. This is mostly due to pesticides, herbicides, genetic modification of plants, migratory beekeeping practises, use of chemicals in beekeeping and just bad practises of commercial, non organic beekeepers and agronomists alike that have turned the natural instincts and habits of the honey bee into a domestic cash crop forgetting that it is not her that depends on us but us that depend on her for so much.The time has come for many of us to take up responsible, conscious and respectful keeping of bees and also take a strong political stand against the poisoning of the bees and our local environments. Everyone needs to be informed of what the multi national agro-chemical companies are achieving with their short term profits and long term devastation. Somewhere, soon, there needs to be a compromise between these very rich companies getting richer and the health of the planet and every living species. It is not only the bees who are suffering, firstly it is all insect life and then, in turn, the whole food chain falls leaving behind only poisoned deserts of lifeless soil. We must reverse this trend soon before we, and many other species, face extinction.More and more people, in almost every situation are keeping bees, from rooftops in central London to the botanical gardens in Coimbra, from high in the mountains to coastal wetlands. Wherever flowers blossom and bloom we can keep bees.

© Copyright 2011Rosie Stonehill and Josh Gomez