The Farming Today bees are getting their own blog over on the Farming Today web site. While they're finishing off the design, Chris Impey and Fran Barnes, producers and trainee beekeepers, bring us news from the hive:

When Fran and I started this project we thought it would be an age before we started on the honey-making process - and that we'd be lucky to get a single jar in our first year. But if all goes well, our mentor Clive has assured us, we'll soon be rolling in the sticky stuff.

We've now put a 'super' on our hive. This is essentially a second storey on top of a mesh which allows the workers through but not the queen with her larger body. It means the honeycomb cells are only filled with honey - and not brood. When I checked after two days of it being on there was already some honey in there - but only enough for a teaspoon.

When we'll be able to start collecting honey depends on the weather. It's turned a bit cooler and wetter meaning the bees will be doing less foraging - so they'll be collecting less and feeding more off the current reserves.

One of the best parts of our evening classes was learning about the different types of honey, and that it's what the bees forage on which influences the taste. Honey from heather for example (very strong) tastes markedly different to honey from flowers (very delicate). Ours likely to come from a variety of flowers, trees and crops, and Clive says this will make it taste what he describes as a typically English honey.

The endemic nature of the disease varroa means it's very likely our bees already have it. Fran's off this week to do some work with Clive to monitor for it. There should be something on that on the programme soon.

And our suits are beginning to look and smell like the real deal. No longer pristine white, they're now covered in bee poo. And they stink of smoke.

Fran Barnes adds:

It's official, we have 'swarmy' bees. I've just been to the hive with our mentor, Clive Joyce. Only to discover in the 7 days of rain we've had the bees have been very busy. Unfortunately their efforts have not been directed into the honey-making deparment (it being too wet for them to fly mostly) but, instead, they have been making many Queen cups.

This is not good news. Queen cups are the spherical cells which a new Queen grows in. For the uninitiated (which included me up to a couple of weeks ago), the worker bees occasionally decide they want a new Queen (or 10 in our case). They then create big round cells which the current Queen lays an egg in. The workers then fill this with Royal Jelly to create a very large, fully formed bee - a Queen.

We really don't want more than one Queen in a hive as the bees will swarm off with the old Queen to create a new colony. When that happens the chances of getting any honey are remote. We 'dealt with' the Queen cells and will have to be very vigilant over the next few months. We're slightly mystified why they're doing this, usually bees only produce extra Queens and swarm when they run out of room. The Farming Today hive is still as spacious as a New York loft apartment.

If the bees do swarm and take our current Queen with them this would be very annoying, particularly as we've only just named her. She's called "Auntie" - thanks to all your suggestions - from the intellectual, to the surreal (Kenneth?). We need to keep Auntie happy in her hive.

While there, Clive also put in a varroa floor. This will enable us to count the dead varroa mite which fall through the holes of the new floor onto a piece of white cardboard. Any more than 6 a day is a problem apparently. Watch this space next week. Would love to hear your comments about swarmy bees and your efforts to control varroa mite. Anyone harvested any honey yet?

Fran Barnes and Chris Impey are producers on Farming Today

• Previous posts about the The Farming Today bees are here (27 April) and here (1 May).
• The Farming Today web site.
• Picture of a European Honey Been touching down by Autan (used under licence).

Chris Impey and Fran Barnes from Farming Today have been learning the art of beekeeping for a year-long project. They've acquired a hive and a colony of bees, which they're keeping at the British Beekeepers' Association apiary at the National Agricultural Centre in Warwickshire. They're going to see if they can keep the colony alive for long enough to produce a crop of honey. They're going to be visiting the hive regularly during the year and will be blogging about it too. Here, Chris Impey introduces the project.

So after five weeks of evening classes Fran and I have finally taken delivery of the Farming Today bees - the first time we've done any bee handling. Under the watchful eye of our tutor, Clive Joyce, we went from being beekeeping students to actual beekeepers - albeit inexperienced ones.

It was amazing to see how quickly they took to their new home. Within a few minutes one bee had taken up guard at the hive entrance while others were coming back and forth as if they'd been living there for weeks. I can't wait to see how they develop. There are 10,000 of them at the moment but that's likely to go up to 50,000 by the summer.

I was surprised to learn that even though our colony is new (it's been supplied by a local breeder) it's very likely it's already got varroa. One of our biggest challenges over the coming months will be to monitor for the disease which devastated so many colonies last year.

We had evening class again last night - the lecture was about how to handle bees so we felt at an advantage over the rest of the group. Fran was showing off the skill she learned from Clive in properly "turning" a frame laden with bees. People must think we're swots because we always sit at the front.

We can't decide what to call our queen. Fran suggested either Charlotte or Anna after our presenters. Any suggestions welcome.

• The slideshow shows Chris and Fran's first visit to the hive
• Listen to Chris and Fran's first visit to the new hive on this morning's Farming Today.


• Fran and Chris have been trained by the Warwick and Leamington branch of the British Beekeepers Association.


• Some photographs of Chris and Fran at the new hive, taken by Clive Joyce, their bee mentor.