At the BetaTec Innovation Centre (BIC) in Malvern UK, we have been working on a project to save the world's bees from the deadly varroa mite. This, of course, means we need a beehive for research. This beehive is located on the BIC roof and has to be looked after and managed by us. Covid has caused multiple lockdowns in the UK and obviously added social distancing restrictions and the need to wear face masks etc. However, the bees still need to be looked after.
One of the targets during the lockdown in early 2020 was to undertake a beekeeper course, which helped us build our confidence in taking the right decisions in order to prevent the bees from swarming during early Summer. Thankfully we managed to avoid swarming this year by splitting the hive into two smaller ones. As always, the honey harvest was a great team effort and excellent team-building exercise during these times. It was a real success considering all the extra rules we had to follow. A beekeeper could not be better rewarded at the end of the season than with the delicious honey produced with so much work by the bees…All 12kg of it!
The global restrictions surrounding Covid have meant that promoting our product, HopGuard 3 has been severely limited; however, it was decided that the use of the BIC beehive was a good source of interest for marketing purposes. Again, fully kitted out in PPE/bee suits, we filmed various clips over many weeks detailing our processes, such as, doing a mite check and feeding the bees overwinter.
Stay tuned by subscribing to our YouTube channel as we have many more videos lined up when the bees come out of hibernation in the Spring.
Watch our Feeding Bees in the Winter Video!
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