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What the Heck is Rosacea?

I’ve been asked, by several customers, if I have a product that can help this condition for them. Although I’m fortunate not to suffer this condition myself, I have friends and family that do, and I can see this one of those conditions that can diminish self confidence and prevent enjoyment of just day to day activities when it strikes.

  What Exactly is Rosacea?

  (pronounced “roh-ZAY-sha”) is…

The Secret about Serums

So we’ve all heard of them and we know they can be expensive but what exactly is a Serum? What does it do? And…why the high price tag?

Well, I’ve done a bit of research on your behalf and while Serums first started out as a blend of intense oils that were chosen for their specific properties, things have moved on. While you can still get serums in little brown oil bottles with pipette droppers,…

What’s the biggest beauty bug bear at age 40+?

We’ve been working at The Happy Bee Company now for a few months and things are ticking over but it’s all gone a bit quiet and settled – I’ve been talking to the bees, and we have agreed that it’s time to step things up a notch or three. We are very excited to be launching some new products and new packaging designs in the near future! Here’s our new product range logo –

Listening to our…

Been for a quick visit up to see the bees today. At yhe moment I’m feeding them a sugar syrup. This is for two reasons.

1: The bees for some reason havent got any honey. I’m suspicious about the nectar flow from the Oil Seed Rape flowers that they had this year. I didnt see any insects on them at all and I noticed the fields were sprayed a lot this year too. Just recently the National Bee Unit…

Just needed to quickly give an update on the rose hive colony.

Really very pleased to say what a difference from last week. The recent rain has helped I’m sure but the colony was the calmest I’ve ever known them. These were bees that I was looking to re queen last week as they were vicious. This week they all just continued to busy themselves on the frames while I went through to take a look.…

Just a quick post as im trying out a new phone (I manged to soak my iphone so its not happy)

Anyhoo.

Theres been a lot of wasps about and they’re a bit stingy so I’ve been making up a keep cool and itch free lotion to try and help. Recipe as follows: Fresh plantain from the garden Sweet almond oil Cucumber (peeled) Xanthan gum Lavender and tea tree essential oils (optional)

Chop up the…

Hmmm…lots of brood but no honey. 

   Update on the Rose hive (left) 

I went to take a peek and my goodness they were feisty beggars. There’s four boxes and all but the bottom box has brood in it which is not what it said would happen in the book. (Obviously the bees aren’t on the same page as me!)

I took the bottom box off and moved it up one level. (The book says to expand the colony, you split the colony and insert a box in…

Very good news!!!

The bees that were relocated into the new Rose hive are thriving. I’ve just been up and checked – there’s eggs in all three boxes. Yikes they’re a very big colony!! So much so that I’m going to make up some more frames for another two boxes and then, next week, add a box just above the bottom box (apparently that’s how you expand the colony is these hives) and put one on top for…

   With an enormous help from my lovely beekeeper friend Trisha Colchester, we managed to finally get a colony transferred last weekend into the Rose hive from the Langstroth.  

I went up to check on them today and they are a huge colony managing to draw out a lot of wax in each of the boxes. 

The only issue is – no eggs larva or brood found 😕

I fed them anoth bucket of sugar syrup and I’ll check…

 Who’s caught the sun and is a little sore?

Try this to soothe away the burn. 

Grated Cucumber juice, (peel and grate a cucumber onto a clean tea towel then squeeze out the juice)

Aloe Vera juice (from the plant not a bottle) 

Pinch of xanthan gum, 

a drop of raw honey, 

1/2 cup of spring water

1 tablespoon of sweet almond oil. 

Swizz it up with a hand blender and apply the gel liberally. Keeps…

Today I’m beekeeping by tidying up some equipment. I thought about it and I’m trying this steam method to clean out some dirty old frames and sterilize the hive at the same time. 

Here are some photos of how I built the steamer – it seems to be working rather well. The only thing I had to buy was the wall paper steamer.  

via How to Calculate the Volume of a Soap Mold.

Oh I’m ALWAYS finding this one difficult so I’m really grateful to find this useful link – especially when I’m working with new molds. I seem to always fall a little short so this is going to be soap life changing!!

I’ll test it out tomorrow and I’ll let you know if I have any problems. :-)

Last week I had a lovely time with new friends making up soap, creams and lotions in my workshop and this weekend’s work has already started. 

A Swedish massage this event for a lovely lady, one tomorrow morning as a birthday present, then a visit to the bees in the afternoon. 

(I’m barking on a conversion plan to move my bees over from a Lansthroth hive to a rose hive by replacing a frame or two…

Beekeeping Backwards.

Love this article – its really a good place to start – by watching the bees.

Its made me even more determined to start up the Rose hives this year.

They’re based on Tim Rowe who watched the bees and questioned the reasoning behind a lot of beekeeping methods that we currently use and just don’ t make sense.

For example – last year I took of the queen excluders on all my…