Bee Keeping

Anything to do with keeping bees please post on this thread

does anyone have a hive, or keep bees? we should all love to know about it

does anyone know what we should be doing to help the bees, I saw on TV about all the problems that bees are having, with varroa mites (spelling maybe wrong) and some hive syndrome.
Are there things gardeners can do to make life a little easier for bees?
Farmers and gardeners alike would be at a loss without bees to pollinate the plants.

When I first started keeping bees at the bottom of my garden, I thought they would be great for pollinating my new fruit trees. But I rarely saw a honey bee on an apple flower. They prefer dandelions, a compound head of many flowers which gives them a better return for their efforts.
However, bees have a colony size of around 50,000 per hive and so must range far and wide - most books say up to 3 miles. So a single garden provides a tiny proportion of their requirements. Trees are a good source of food, pussy willow being an important early season provider. "Weeds" are also good and willowherb and balsam provide late season supplies.
Come and visit our stand at Tod Show and learn more about the wonderful world of the honey bee.

that is really interesting, I shall make sure and leave an area of dandelions, if I take the dead heads of before they set seed, I wont be upsetting neighbors by having weed seeds blowing around.
I shall most definitely come to your stand at the show, to learn more.

here is a link for the ag show site if anyone wants to check it out.
http://www.todshow.org/

The bee problem is quite worrying, most of everything we grow in the way of fruit needs to be pollinated by bees I think.