My name is Mike and I became interested in bees about 5 years ago.  A friend of mine in Slovakia, Martin (more of him later), kept them and I decided to find out more about keeping them myself.

 

Bee hives in Slovakia

I went along to Bristol Beekeepers and met a great group of enthusiastic, like minded people. and have been going along ever since.

Last year I got my first hive of bees and found an ideal location in which to keep them – an orchard.  The orchard that we at Nailsea Cider collect many of our apples from.

My first task was to prepare the site.  A hive needs to be on a firm level surface so it was out with the shovel.

It needs to be off the ground so I built a stand made from wood that I bought from Bristol Wood Recycling Project.

Then the hive and bees arrived.