My Passion: Nothing is as sweet as listening to the gentle buzz from my bees

I now have two hives which live at the bottom of my garden and although it is a continuous learning process, it is one that I am thoroughly enjoying.

For me, most of the action takes place during the harvest period in summer.

At this point, it is important to regularly inspect the hives which involves stripping them down to check there is no sign of disease as well as looking at the number of eggs being laid by the queen to ensure the breeding cycle is continuing.

While one of the hives has flourished, the other has struggled through winter and sadly, its queen bee died.

In order to build the weak hive up again, some of the bees were rehoused from the strong one.

This was done in order for them to feed royal jelly in to one of the eggs already laid by the departed queen and in doing so, form a new queen bee.

Thankfully, this hive now has a new queen and is continuing to build up strength.

During the early summer months, the colony starts to think of swarming which means the queen will be looking to leave with a large number of the bees to set up a new colony.

This is an important time and I need to check the hive regularly to prevent this from happening. If I am successful then honey production can continue uninterrupted.

When I first started beekeeping I was really wary of bee stings and though I do still get stung, I am used to it and know I just need to pull the sting out.

Protective clothing still needs to be worn, though it isn’t particularly fetching.

I usually wear a smock, boots, a pair of jeans and while most beekeepers wear special leather gloves, I prefer to wear marigolds because they give better dexterity.

In the first year the hives produced 10lb of honey and I am expecting even more this year.

This is collected by taking frames of honeycomb from the hive, scraping the wax capping off the cells and spinning the honey out of the comb.

The honey is then filtered and bottled. This part of the process is particularly satisfying as it is the final step in honey production and also one that my two children can get involved in too.

For those who want to get closer to nature and enjoy the satisfaction of tasting home-made produce, I would recommend they consider beekeeping.

I like nothing more than sitting in my garden on a summer evening with my family and a glass of wine listening to the gentle buzz from the hives.