Steves Bees

Steves Bees Covering Littlehampton and surrounding areas since 1986!

Beautiful tasting local honey and beeswax products, Learn about beekeeping, bee loving plants, delicious honey inspired recipes....

30/05/2026

Last week was a hot one. Here a quick update from the out apairy.



Its nearly spring harvest we are just waiting on a few supers to finish off being capped. Heres an example of a beautifu...
17/05/2026

Its nearly spring harvest we are just waiting on a few supers to finish off being capped. Heres an example of a beautiful capped frame of honey.

All the new queens are emerging in the hives. When they are ready to emerge, it was 12-13 days in this case. They will c...
17/05/2026

All the new queens are emerging in the hives. When they are ready to emerge, it was 12-13 days in this case. They will chew through the bottom of the cell and emerge its like a little hinged door. The queen will now spend a few days in the hive maturing before going on her mating flight.

When the hive decides that a new queen is needed they will select a cell with a 1-3 day old egg/larvae in and then feed it with a high nutrient rich diet of Royal Jelly. This goes on for around 9 days as they continue to build the cell and close it off.

After this, the larvae starts to pupates and develop into a virgin queen and normally at around day 16 she will emerge. But in ourcase they have done this quicker.

The who process can take up to around 24 days.

After she's mated she will spend a couple of days developing before laying eggs.

Its good practice even in small scale beekeping to have a hive set up which is purely for raising new queens, as if you have queens on hand then you can split and introduce a new queen straight away. As if you leave a hive queenless for over 20 days thats 20 days without any new bees being produce so the hive would dwindled slightly and you would notice the difference in honey stores.

05/05/2026

Sit back and watch the mesmerising sight of bees going to and from the hive in slow motion.



We had a nice suprise earlier i needed to use a couple of the slabs which i keep in front of the hives to put on top of ...
04/05/2026

We had a nice suprise earlier i needed to use a couple of the slabs which i keep in front of the hives to put on top of the nucs to weigh down, under two of the slabs there were slow worms! Two big ones and a baby. I carefully lowered the slabs back down. What a great find! We also had one on our lawn at home earlier too. These elusive reptiles are always great to see.

04/05/2026

A little video update on splitting of the big combine.
An early start at 7am up to the apiary.

I could have easily made up a further 6 to 8 colonies. As it stands, before this method there were 9 colonies and now there is 19 but this will be further reduced once the splits are combine with the original hives.
Next thing is to get them re-queen asap!

To save space and equipment the splits were put onto the hives seperate by a crown board and a open mesh floor.
This is a trial and a take on Viktors recycling method, my main focus was to get all hives with equal numbers of bees and requeened with a reliable queen, so i have all strong colonies.

We then went onto the other apairy to get the nearly hatched queen cells into the apedias. We did have a surprise at the first apairy when i went to move two of the slabs that i had put in front of the hives check out my next post!



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This evening we gave this young man an introduction to beekeping, he just about squeezed into my old bee suit. And i eve...
03/05/2026

This evening we gave this young man an introduction to beekeping, he just about squeezed into my old bee suit. And i even managed to get Abby in a suit shes always happy to help out with the honey extraction side of things but its another thing to get her suited and up close with the bees.

They both helped move the mini mating nucs into position and open them up. We opened up the standard nucs where they spotted the queen and saw the eggs that the queen had been laying.

We moved onto the nationals where we added fresh supers and i showed them how busy a main hive was. They both enjoyed the visit a well worth trip.

03/05/2026

Making up some frames ready to take down to the apairy ready for the bees to draw out and fill up!
One of my memories of a child was going into the bee shed to find my father building frames the smell of the fresh wax sheet and wooden frames always brings a smile to my face.

At the other apairy this morning. Here ive set it up as a breeding apairy.First job was to transfer the frames from the ...
02/05/2026

At the other apairy this morning. Here ive set it up as a breeding apairy.
First job was to transfer the frames from the wooden hive into the polly hive. We want polly hives here for the lightness making moving supers easier. These bees are doing very well bringing in lots of nectar and pollen. They both could do with an additional super!

Then i moved onto my third hive here, this hive has been a top honey producing hive for many years i remove the queen a couple of weeks ago with some bees. The original hive then reproduced lots of queen cells. These cells can be careful cut out and introduce into mini mating nucs (see photo) so today i added fondant in the small feeder section, shook bees into a large bucket then if you gently roll the bucket the bees will go into a ball and then can be poured into the apedias. (mini mating nucs) They are then closed up for 24hrs in a shaded place.
Next week i can return cut out the queen cells and pop them into the apedias where the bees will raise the queen get her mated and once she's laying and laying correctly they can then be introduced at my other apairy to head the hives. This way all my colonies will be run off the same family. A gentle hardworking colony that is not prone to swarming.
Tonight back over to the other apairy to remove the open mesh floors for the big combine and battle of the queens.

01/05/2026

What we did at the apairy today.

Address

Littlehampton

Opening Hours

Monday 7am - 9:30pm
Tuesday 7am - 9:30pm
Wednesday 7am - 9:30pm
Thursday 7am - 9:30pm
Friday 7am - 8pm
Saturday 8am - 8pm
Sunday 9am - 4pm

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