Preparing for Bees

We ordered some bees in the Autumn from a beekeeper who lives in Tarbes. They will arrive at the end of May so we have been preparing the spot the hives will sit as well as reading reading - it seems quite hard to keep bees alive.

This is just below the house. We have levelled an area on a track that was already cut in to the hill

We then laid sand and weed block membrane and then some paving stones

It is not the best laid patio as we didn't get the area level enough before starting to lay the paving. Hopefully it will work out well for the bees though. It's main purpose is to keep make it possible to keep the area round the hives and access to the hives free of bracken and brambles.
It was a pretty big job just clearing enough to allow us to reach the spot we wanted to locate the hives as we kind of lost control of this field a couple of years ago! It is also very useful that this clears round a few fruit trees that had been struggling to get established in competition with all the weeds.

The hives have now got to the person we are buying the swarms off and we have to wait a couple of weeks until they are established and have built up a food supply before collecting them.

Exciting and scary!