We reached out to Steph, who lives on one of our WWOOF host farms located in South Wales, to hear more about her beekeeping learning journey.
Steph is a community member of the permaculture farm and intentional living community IDMWYD, in South Wales. She lives at IDMWYD with her husband John and their baby Violet, where together they embrace a lifestyle rooted in sustainability and connection. A long-time lover of growing food and baking fresh bread, Steph recently discovered a new passion: beekeeping. Sparked by attending an introductory beekeeping course, she’s become fascinated by the complex, cooperative world of bees and their vital role in healthy ecosystems. In the article below, Steph shares what she’s learned so far on her journey into beekeeping, offering insight, reflections and a beginner’s perspective on working with these incredible pollinators.
A journey into beekeeping
It was only when I completed the six-week introduction to beekeeping course with the East Carmarthen BeeKeepers Association, that I fully realised quite how complex a honeybee colony is.
The life of a worker bee is just 6 weeks, but they accomplish so much during this short time. When they emerge their first job is to clean their own cell and any others and to keep the brood warm by fanning their wings. Then at 3 days old they move onto feeding the older larvae, then are promoted at 6 days old to feed the younger larvae. Between 12 to 17 days old they produce wax, carry food and build comb. Then at 18 days old they become hive security and guard the entrance, until finally at day 22 they can leave the hive to forage, which they do until the end of their life. You can certainly see where the phrase ‘as busy as a bee’ comes from!
Honeybees rely heavily on the fine weather; they navigate using UV and they don’t like rain! So, as you can imagine, 2024 was a tough year for beekeepers. A wet spring and summer, a later warm spell, and a mild but wet winter have caused chaos with many colonies. Meaning many beekeepers unfortunately lost their bees over winter.
I would have liked to get bees this year, but after chatting to a few beekeepers, it seemed that queens may be in short supply this year. So, with the guidance of my bee mentor, I decided to put up a “bait hive” to try and lure a swarm of bees. What was there to lose? My mentor had kindly lent me all of the equipment and a couple of old frames which had some attractive honey on them and also some lemongrass essence to put around the entrance.
I put the bait hive in place and didn’t think anything more of it. I was told I’d be very lucky if I did manage to catch one. Well, two days later, I received a panicked text from my husband to say there were ‘bees everywhere’! Unfortunately, I’d just travelled to visit my parents, so I wasn’t able to do anything! When I got back, I had a look into the hive and there were a few bees in there, but my mentor wasn’t sure if it was a swarm. A few days later, and they’d gone.
I was a little disheartened but knew it would have been extremely lucky to catch a swarm so soon. So I carried on dreaming of my own colony of bees…but I didn’t have to wait long, as three days later they were back! This time in bigger numbers and it was looking like they were settling in!
So at the end of May 2025, they went on a little holiday to my bee mentor’s apiary to re-orientate (another extremely fascinating thing about honeybees!) and they’ll soon be coming back down to IDMWYD to enjoy the abundant forage this homestead has to offer!
I hope next year we’ll have some of our own delicious honey to enjoy here on the farm. As my beekeeping experience grows and the number of colonies increases, I hope I’ll have enough honey to sell locally.
I look forward to sharing my new-found knowledge with the community here and with the WWOOFers that come to stay with us.
Stay at IDMWYD as a WWOOFer
For more information about IDMWYD and to find out how to sign up as a WWOOF UK member and pay them a visit, you can head to our website wwoof.org.uk.
