Bee Keeping - Peter Charlesworth

Wed, Mar 13th 2019 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

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Peter Charlesworth, former Rotarian of Thornhill and District, now lives in Portobello with his Wife. Two years ago they embarked on a new venture keeping bees.  They went on a one-day course on Beekeeping and bought some bees.  They took them home in a cardboard box with holes in and then the next day bought a Hive.


Different bees do different jobs – the worker bees of which there are tens of thousands – guard the Hive, cool the Hive with their wings and do all the work collecting pollen. Drones sole job is to mate with the Queen and then die.  There is only one Queen bee who lives for two years and is essentially an egg laying machine.  If the Queen dies, they feed one of the cells with more Royal Jelly than the others and this grows into another Queen. Interestingly it takes 2 days less to grow a Queen than a worker even though she is much bigger.
We were given all the information needed to start our own beekeeping enterprise – from the construction of the Hive, what to feed the bees in winter and spring (mainly sugar and fondant) so you can make honey.  We were shown how to take off the wax from the frames and put them into a spinner to collect the honey. It is very important to make sure the bees stay healthy, avoid diseases and help them to survive he winter.
We then had a taste of the honey which Peter put into jars with his own designed label. Everyone agreed the honey was very good.
The vote of thanks was given by Richard Basker  
Richard also presented Peter with an excellent painting of a bee on a flower that he had painted.

At the same meeting Helen Syme from the Rotary eClub was presented with a cheque for £150 for Gorgie City Farm following her talk to the Club.

A letter of thanks has been received which you can read below

Gorgie City farm.pdf



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