The excuse for my absence -Bees and Life.

 Bees and life!

Photoshoot by Chris Campbell of Hiveshare

Well, I am back blogging. I am determined to share more what I have learned in my beekeeping.  According to my last post, it was March last year! where has the time gone? I can tell you it's just been awesome!

Those who have been following my YouTube channel (all about bees in Brittany.).  I can say how much I am enjoying sharing my experiences with bees, it's just amazing to be able to share what I do. The comments and feedback are wonderful and I thank you all!

So here we are,  were now early December, the first frost on the ground this morning and boy was it a cold one. Seeing and hearing all the social media from around the world, makes me feel kind of humbled as to our privileged position in the climate zones. Were never really too hot, never really too cold. were lucky here in Corseul Brittany, La belle France!

What I would like to do over the next few weeks is write about my experiences over the last two years and bring you up to the date with where I am now. I have treated myself to a gorgeous MacBook Pro which is beautiful. Perfect for when your travelling as well as enabling me to write at home. As my children have grown up, my desktop Mac has bee hijacked and filled up with each of my children various projects.

I am going to be upgrading this blog site too. Time for some better pictures and a fresh look, so bear with me as this all takes place.

Big changes

A huge amount has happened to me over the last two years. 

I feel I have fallen on my feet,  Fallen in love,  Tasted success with beekeeping and learnt a whole lot about life! 

My children are also finally growing up, which means I don't have to be home when they are. I am getting a life again! ( yes a life so I can work harder lol)

Finding a formula that works for you but also pushing yourself is a difficult balance. I've always had at least two jobs and last year I was finally able to reduce my gardening activities to just one client. This is always a difficult thing for anyone to do if you're depending on both jobs for the source of income, but I knew that because of my successes it was now time that I relied on less one my old job and finally was able to take that step and make that leap.

The other issue is it's so physically difficult to juggle two jobs in the spring. Clients want the grass cut on a regular basis, bees like to swarm on a regular basis in spring,  What do you do? 

I hate not being able to do the things I say I will do.. but my bees had to come first if they didn't, I would never be able to get ahead! 

I needed 200 + colonies for production, as well as brood factories and Finishers so I can make nucs with my own queens that I raise form my resources. This I have achieved and at this moment I am going into winter with a various assortment of colonies, nucs and mini nucs to give me the financial support into next spring and plenty of bees and queens for next year.

Next year is going to be really interesting. I have given notice to my one existing gardening job, my last month of work will be March, from then on its just bees that will give me my income. I have nucs to sell this spring ( I hope) and some honey to give me some turnover until then until hopefully, we have another good spring harvest. 

The circle of beekeeping is a fascinating one, each year its the same but each year is completely unique. 

Being able to understand each year's uniqueness is the key to good time management. The is what I am only Just learning and what a learning curve it is.

Here I am talking about the spring harvest this year. I was amazing to have 6 barrels of honey from one flow  but I suppose I can say I did earn it. I worked really hard and the results are there. 

As I say in the video, if there isn't honey in the barrel, you might just as well go back to your old job! because it's that which pays the bills.

Speak soon and think positive! you can achieve whatever you want to manifest! I dreamt of one day seeing this, well here  I am, honey is in the barrel!!