revtothelimit - motorbike forum

Nordboy wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 6:32 pm I have an area to the side of my property which is a little bit shaded and the soil can get very wet and boggy. It's a very much ignored area and is fenced off at the moment, mainly to stop my dogs escaping into the woods or jumping in the stream that runs alongside my garden.

I'm wondering if wild flowers would be able to grow there, it's rather 'weedy' at the moment but I suppose i could plow it a bit and re-seed. There's very little grass growing there, which makes me think that maybe it's not suitable?

I'm certainly not really the gardening type so no idea?

Sorry, I've hijacked the thread a bit. Top stuff Taff, loving the beekeeping. I'll take my question over to the rewilding thread I think.

Taff wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 8:00 pm

Nordboy wrote: Fri May 22, 2026 6:32 pm I have an area to the side of my property which is a little bit shaded and the soil can get very wet and boggy. It's a very much ignored area and is fenced off at the moment, mainly to stop my dogs escaping into the woods or jumping in the stream that runs alongside my garden.

I'm wondering if wild flowers would be able to grow there, it's rather 'weedy' at the moment but I suppose i could plow it a bit and re-seed. There's very little grass growing there, which makes me think that maybe it's not suitable?

I'm certainly not really the gardening type so no idea?

Sorry, I've hijacked the thread a bit. Top stuff Taff, loving the beekeeping. I'll take my question over to the rewilding thread I think.

Very wet and boggy is ideal for willow (iirc), which happens to be a great pollen source in early spring and is brilliant for the bees.

IccyV2 wrote: Sat May 23, 2026 8:36 am We have Middle Eastern miniature honey bees, they’re tiny and make a nest about the size of a small plate, it’s a perfect disk shape about 10” across.

They nest in our hedge and they’re very relaxing to watch and extremely laid back, the gardener trims around them and they don’t seem to even notice him doing it.

I’d rather like keeping a hive in the UK when time and circumstance allows. Honey on toast is very agreeable for a Sunday morning breakfast.

Taff wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 8:54 pm what a rollercoaster year 2026 is turning out to be. This is going to be a bit rambly, sorry.

we started off in early and mid spring with the colonies exploding in size, it was absolutely amazing to see the brood nests expand really quickly and loads of honey coming in nice and early.

Next up is the June gap, yes June is my next doors granny, but that's not the gap that we're interested in .
This is the 2 week gap between the spring flowers finishing and the summer flowers starting. It's very easy to get caught out and that mega strong colony that had 30lb of honey suddenly run out and starve to death.

It's normal for the colonies that are usually placid to get really arsey and make the weekly inspection a real chore and more likely to get a sting or 2. I had 2 colonies that got down to virtually 0 honey but not quite.

The next thing to happen is that the Linden / Lime tree comes into flower - this is normally where most of my honey come from, if it rains in these 3 weeks then I get bugger all, if we have a heatwave then the boxes fill up at a rate that you have to see to believe - and this is where we're at this year and the blackberry is only just getting going
I've run out of honey boxes to put on and so the only thing I can do is extract because when the boxes are full the bees will be prompted to swarm.
3 boxes extracted so far and I've nearly filled my 50Kg settling tank, and there's at least another 10 boxes left to extract.

A bumper harvest is good news for my customers because I can keep my price the same as I have for the last 4 years when I had planned to up the price a little to cover the costs of the new equipment that I've bought this year.