3 + 7 = 10, 10 + 10 = 20

Everything is reproducing, expanding and growing. We’ve gone from 3 colonies of honey bees to 10 within 3 months and doubled our headcount of chickens overnight. With all this warm weather and regular watering, the kitchen garden is covered with sprawling vines of grapes, cucumbers and melons. The red oak lettuces are magnificent as a living border to the tomatoes, and the peppers and aubergines are ready to fruit.

I saw an instagram post recently that said:

Chicken maths: Did you know that it’s just as easy to look after 20 chickens as it is to care for 10? So you might as well get 40….

I’ve discovered, first hand, that this is absolutely true (though don’t tell Andy) and I promise that I’m not planning on more chickens in the foreseeable future…

Did you know that, back before I had my own children, I used to work for an HIV/Aids charity teaching sex education to high school students all across London and the home counties?

Now my life is still full – teaching others about ‘the birds and the bees’ and there is fertility and reproduction all around… As always, the summer term has found me taking my glass observation hive of bees around London primary schools as part of our Honey Bee lessons. We talk about the importance of pollinators, look at a selection of food that we can enjoy because of the bees, dress up as bee keepers and taste their lovely honey. Did you know that honeybees even pollinate cotton plants, so without our hard working busy bees, we would have significantly less clothes to wear!

The picture above is of one of the queen bees that we spotted in early spring, she first ‘came out’ in 2023 and was marked with a pink dot to remind me how old she was.

Since then, her daughters have replaced her with a new, younger, model which I’ve marked with white paint to indicate that she is a new queen of 2026.

As only three colonies made it through winter, one on each apiary, I’ve been kept rather busy with the expansions. I can’t believe that we are already at ten colonies – and that’s without collecting any swarms this season.

We’ve already harvested 50kg of honey and have much more to take off over the coming weeks, I really think that this year is going to be our biggest honey harvest ever!

Last month I told you that we had adopted 10 new chickens from Fresh Start for Hens, this is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

I’ve heard about the horrible conditions that commercial hens are kept in, and mine (so I’m told) were in the worst barn that the volunteers had ever seen. With their beaks clipped and bald bottoms, most of their white feathers were covered in muddy footprints (well it’s not actually mud on the floor of the warehouse, I was just being polite). We have needed to be careful with them as they may well have vitamin D deficency due to never seeing sunlight, so their bones are quite vulnerable to breaking.

Fortunately, they’ve taken to their new home really well. It’s such a delight to watch them experiment with ‘usual’ chicken behaviour – scratching the ground for worms, eating and drinking as much as they like, sunbathing and enjoying a cooling dust bath and, already, within just a couple of weeks, they are starting to grow back their missing feathers. These lovely hens should still lay us around 300 beautiful eggs a year (each) and we are already collecting around 8 a day from their nest box – so I’m very happy. You can read more about them here.

I do feel rather lucky with the new hens. Most rescue hens are the classic ‘little red hen’ which I confess to finding rather boring.

I did contact Clarence Court Farms (you know the posh multicoloured eggs that you can buy in high end supermarkets?)  to see if they had a rehoming scheme, but they didn’t reply, so I guess not. Then after contacting Fresh Start for Hens they confirmed that they were collecting a barn full of White Leghorns, so I rearranged my diary to be on that collection list, 3,000 were saved that day – I just took 10 of them.

There were two main reasons for my enthusiasm for this particular breed:

1. The White Leghorn is the logo for Hen Corner – an artist actually traced around a photo of one of our previous chickens.
2. The White Leghorn has white earlobes, which means that they lay perfect chalk-white eggs.

When I have a bit more space, maybe I could find a couple of Marans, with dark red earlobes who lay dark brown eggs, and a Cream Legbar or two, who have blue pearl earlobes and lay pale blue eggs…

Anyway, I have more than enough eggs every day at the moment so I’ll just enjoy my blessings and the warm feeling of saving the lives of these ten new precious girls…

Coming up at Hen Corner:

July

Bees for Children Tuesday 28th

Full Day Bee Keeping Wednesday 29th

Pasta Together (Families) Thursday 30th

August

Bees for Children Saturday 1st

Introduction to Scandinavian Baking Tuesday 4th

Full Day Bee Keeping Saturday 15th

Introduction to Making Bread Wednesday 19th

Bees for Children Thursday 20th

Growing the Good Life Thursday 27th

September

Introduction to Making Bread Wednesday 2nd

Introduction to Pickles & Preserves Tuesday 8th

Making Cheddar, Stilton & Sourdough Wednesday 16th and Thursday 17th (Two Day Course)

Introduction to Making Bread Tuesday 22nd

Introduction to Making Cheese Wednesday 30th

Other news:

• We are planning a new course Become a Bread Angel – Start your own Micro Bakery in October, might this be a new adventure for you?
• We’ve got lots of almonds on the tree this year – I hope we can keep them safe from the squirrels
• I’m planning to plant out 4 new grapevines, that I’ve grown from cuttings, at the allotment (when it’s cooler)

Jobs for the week:

• Prep all the hives for their honey making over the next few weeks – is there enough space in each hive?
• Keep an eye on mites and lice in the chicken coops – cleaning their housing regularly keeps it under control
• Remember to turnover my homemade Manchego cheese every day, it’s looking really good…

Whilst I’m showering and swimming as much as possible to keep cool – I do like this weather!

I hope to see you soon,

Sara