So this is the current state of the apiary:
I have the 2 central beehives I started off with. Each of these beehive colonies then split into 2 so we’re up to 4. The right hand one isn’t actually a proper beehive but a smaller nucleus. It’s for insurance purposes as every year you lose on average 1/3 of your colonies. So if one dies over winter I can hit the ground running with all the beehives populated next year.
The first year of a new beehive is very hard work for the bees. They need to make comb and put a layer of wax over everything and producing wax is far more difficult than honey. So from my two original hives only one of them produced surplus honey.
Here you can see the centre frame and the one to the left of it is filled up
With this style of beehive harvesting the honey just involves turning a key and it runs out the bottom into your vessel of choice
And the final product
Been unlucky with the dry weather this year, so I don’t think there will be much more honey to be made this year. Also all the farms here planted wheat which produces no nectar. I will move a hive or two to the woods next year as I think the plant biodiversity is much better.
And as for the birds. I started building a chicken coop in August last year.
This has been a long slog, as I still haven’t finished it. But then I ordered eggs online and put them in an incubator over winter.
They hatched in my flat in London. And as I had nowhere to put them they stayed in my flat for months
Then I bought a few more sets of eggs to incubate as the hatching rate was pretty low… So as the chick situation was spiralling out of control I thought I’d better start building the coop again.
I think it was cold this day
Meanwhile, back in London… More chicks…
Things were getting bad. Also I never wanted to have chickens in my house again even if it was in the middle of winter so I started fitted underfloor heating to a brooder section of the chicken coop.
Things took so long that the weather had warmed up. I realised I’m never going to get the interior done so maybe I can just do the run and they can live in that bit to buy me more time as my flat was like a dusty shit heap at this point.
So got to this stage where it’s at least secure from foxes
And that brings us up to the present day. The 3 original chicks now:
The black ones both ended up as roosters. And all 3 imprinted on my dog. So they think they’re dogs. And the roosters bark instead of crow. The other lot:
There’s a few more out of frame but most of these ones are giant Brahmas. They will take 2 years to grow but they’re already pretty chunky 
And no the aviary still isn’t done.
