Due to various commitments and family matters, we haven’t been around much for about a month.

Paid a very brief visit to the bees yesterday and was amazed at just how busy they were despite the moderate wind with a bit of chill in it.

Watch the video above and if you like it, there are a few more. CLICK HERE to watch them.

You may not like wasps at the end of the summer, when they’re crawling all over your cream tea or paddling in your beer, but what you possibly don’t realise is all the good work they do for the rest of the year.

See this article in today’s Independent.

With summer gone at last after a blissful final fortnight of sunshine, I wish to advance a proposition with which many people may disagree: having fewer wasps around is not necessarily a good thing.

Source: Nature Studies: Fewer wasps to swat is a sign of an ecosystem in serious trouble | Voices | The Independent

In a new study, Harvard researchers looked at pollen and honey samples collected from the same set of hives across Massachusetts. Findings show they contain at least one pesticide implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder.

Source: Pesticide found in 70 percent of Massachusetts’ honey samples | Harvard Gazette

Wasps get their fair share of bad press. They have painful stingers, and they’re not as useful (or cute) to us as bees. However, their time to step in the spotlight may be just around the corner: Their venom has been shown to attack cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.

Source: Brazilian Wasp Venom Kills Cancer Cells, But Not Healthy Cells | IFLScience

We have pure, raw local honey back in stock and available in 454g/1lb jars.

The very warm summer and a worsening of hayfever symptoms resulted in a rush and we were completely sold out for a few weeks.

As I was busy with work and away quite a lot, I couldn’t process honey, but that has now been resolved.

We have our own Seven Kings honey produced by our bees in Seven Kings. This is a light, runny, multi floral honey – that just means it is made with nectar from lots of different flowers – and is £7 for a 454g/1lb jar. It tastes delicious, just as honey should.

We also have some light, clear runny Essex honey produced by a friend’s bees about 15 miles from us. It is also a multi floral honey very like ours, but has a slight caramel note to the flavour. It’s simply divine and is £6 for a 454g/1lb jar.

Finally, we have cut comb in honey, which honey that is still contained in the cells the bees made. We cut squares out of the frames from the hive and present them in small, clear resealable boxes. This is on SPECIAL at £4.50 for 227g (each box is weighed separately).

If you’d like some, simply call me on 07894 419800 or email us on sevenkingsapiary@gmail.com to fix a time to collect.

I look forward to seeing you soon.

Pádraig Floyd

Seven Kings Apiary

Straight forward swarm collection from a compost bin in Chadwell Heath seemed too good to be true.

Well, it wasn’t. Not only was it easily accessible, the bees were very good natured indeed.

Only slight hitch was bees were determined to go back into the bin and so had to smoke out returning foragers twice to get them to orientate to the nucleus.

Perhaps the plastic retained the queen’s pheromones a little better, but they still wanted to go in even after a liberal dousing of the inside and outside with a can of Glade with a fragrance that should have been “Florally Offensive”.

Anyway, see the video here.

This is definitely NOT the way to transport bees when they’re in your car…

Buzz-ted: Police ticket driver swerving ‘all over the road’ while transporting thousands of honey bees loose inside his car  | Daily Mail Online.

First of a couple of short videos from a swarm collection in Seven Kings last Friday.