Month: February 2023
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Beehives Open Up Day Beekeeping 101
Our hive visits are usually restricted to society members only, but what better time than LSESU Green Week to have a Beehive Open Day? In fact, we had not one but two open days – one for students and one for staff. The staff open day was particularly popular: the 30 available spaces got booked…
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Honey Bake Sale Motion Picture Evening
As part of LSESU Green Week 2018, we organised a Honey Bake Sale, where all items – sweet or savoury – had to include honey as an ingredient. Alaina’s baklavas won the popular vote and she took home a jar of LSE Honey as her prize. But every single dish was delicious, and we especially…
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What do bees as well as infants have in common?
What do babies and bees have in common? They don’t read the same books as me. Our queen bee arrived on 20 July. We named her Constance Amelia Maund. She is about three months old here and staring at the sunlight through the trees for the first time. As you may have guessed, I have…
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Honey Sampling!
Our honey tasting session on 16 November was a great success! Many of us stopped by after class to taste samples of last year’s harvest of LSE Honey and compare it to jars from previous years, as well as a few different varieties of supermarket honey. It was surprising how different honey can be based…
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The garden from May to July
Our neighbour’s buddleia is thriving much to the delight of bees, butterflies, hoverflies and wasps, and providing a feast of insects for the birds. Our own garden has overgrown in the heatwave as preparations for a special arrival (we don’t know yet whether we will have a queen bee or a king drone) have taken…
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Day trip to Kew Gardens
Following the success of last year’s spring trip to Kew Gardens, the society headed back to the Gardens on Sunday 29th October, to appreciate the beauties and secrets of autumn, and of course learn about bees and beekeeping. The highlights of the trip included a visit to the Palm House, where we learnt about the…
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In the bee garden from March to April
The grape hyacinth flows like a river of blue along garden borders, hedgerows and woodland spaces. A small, hardy plant that doesn’t seem to mind the cold. It has patiently waited for the bees while the crocuses withered in late frosts. These plump, purple-blue flowers are receiving many bee visitors as spring awakes. Like our…
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LSE Bees Mosts Likely To School (to run a Bee Workshop!).
We do a number of outreach events and we enjoy them all, but just like last year, the absolute highlight was doing a workshop about Bees and the Environment at Fairley House, a school for children with learning difficulties. About 20 children aged 6-9 participated in the workshop: a very different target audience from what we have in our outreach events…
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A year in the garden– February
In the short month of February there is little activity in the bee garden, but there is a lot to observe. Which early bulbs have emerged – the snowdrops and crocuses planted in the shade beside the ivy or those planted in the lawn? Which plants are already springing up new shoots – the crocosmia…