So, a little into about myself, I'm a full time pest controller sub contracted to London underground on a nightly basis, for all their unwanted pests (no, the does not include people)
around 2yrs ago I became friends with a guy via shooting, and then found out he was also a bee keeper, so went on a call out to collect a swarm of bee's with him, and that's when I got interested in bee's

putting them into a hive

well, that's about as far as I got, the beekeeping idea got shelved as other hobbies took over, shooting,cray fishing etc, it's a good job i love my wife and she loves me, as she puts up with hell of a lot including my ever changing/expanding hobbies, being a pestie (pest control) tends to do that to you.

just recently I got into home brewing, MEAD, which is basically honey,water and yeast, and lots of waiting, and this of course started me thinking about bee's again, the one thing that had really put me off from starting sooner, was the cost factor, normal "national" hives take frames and foundation, these can be expensive, so the total price per hive was quite high, add to the fact that your hoping to place it on a farmers land, where you may only visit once a week, possible theft of hives comes into play.
so started searching the web and utube, and came across top bar hives.
These can be made with limited diy skills from scrap wood, I was hooked, using this type of hive is more "bee friendly" but less honey productive, not that that really worried me.

I built a small 15 bar top bar nuc in a couple of hours, from scrap wood laying around the garden

at first I hoped that a passing bee swarm would find it on the shed roof and take up residence, but then I mentioned to my bosses at work that I could collect swarms, within a few days I had my first call, a difficult swarm to collect as it was not only my FIRST COLLECTION, but also next to the railway track, although the power is turned off, they were quite hard to pick up, but I got there in the end

swarm on the track

well, I got these bee's home by around 6am on the 20th of this month, and although I update my facebook daily, I thought now would be the time to start a blog

got up around 10.30am and checked out the bee's, end of the garden was full of them doing orientation flights, a little nerve racking as a new beekeeper,

6hrs after installing bee's

and when I went to check on them after nightfall, I found them split into three clumps, the largest inside the hive, viewable through the side window, a medium mass on front of hive and a smaller mass on the cardboard box used to transport them in, this still smelt of lemon grass, so perhaps that attracted them, anyhow got suited up and put them inside for the night.

On the next mornings inspection, everything seemed to have settled down, with only a few bee's outside and bee's returning and leaving from further than our own garden, our next door neighbours garden is a mass of flowers and fish pond (drinking source) and she's very happy we have bee's

took this next video on the camcorder rather than my phone, a lot better picture and zoom
a settled hive

on returning home early this evening, before darkness, but in a rainy,windy moment, not a bee insight, I put the cork in the entrance hole as I wanted to move the hive a couple of feet forward towards the fence, but before doing so, wanted a look in the observation hatch, panic set in as the hive looked empty, I was sad as they looked so contented earlier, I opened the lid and removed the last rear top bar, to be greeted by my girls, they were hiding, quickly put bar back in and shut the lid, then looked through the window again with a torch, this time could see them up in the corner, the fondant that I put in last night was half it's size, so good to see they are feeding,
crazy how you can get attached to a bunch of bee's.