24 April 2025

Our beekeepers, Khalil and Salma, reflect on the last season:

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A cold start to 2024

2024 was a difficult year for our bees, mainly due to the unusual weather patterns we had in London. It started nice and warm in February, and this allowed the bees to start building up their numbers quickly. It then became cold and wet, and this continued until May. Spring is usually the time when the bees are active and need warm days to fly out and collect pollen and nectar, this enables the colony to grow ready for the summer months. Being cold and wet meant the bees were mainly confined to the hive and could not collect pollen or nectar resulting in some some hives running very short of stores and their growth stunted.

Thankfully our bees did not suffer from a lack of food as we left them plenty during the previous year and kept a very careful eye on them during periods, they were unable to leave the hive.

As beekeepers, it is imperative we are always aware of how much food our bees have and if necessary perform some remedial action to give them extra as required. Early in the year we ran a refresher course for our previous beekeeping students, one of the items we teach is how to ‘heft’ the hive. This is a quick and easy way of determining how much food is still in the hive. In essence we are learning to weigh the hive.

Checking weight of hive for food

Beekeeping courses

For the last few years, we have been running beekeeping courses at the mosque. In 2024 we once again ran two successful courses. These run over 4 half days and are a mix of onsite theory and practical sessions. The sessions are designed and refined each year to ensure our students get as much hands on experience as possible, with our aim being to teach a smaller number of students everything they need to successfully manage their own bee hives after the course.

We also keep in touch with our students past the course, so they always have someone on hand if they have any issues or questions after the course.

Checking for disease

Refresher session

In 2025 we trialled a refresher session for our past students where we would go over what was taught on the course and how to get their hives ready for the upcoming year. We also taught how to extract honey, make up frames and went over legal duties when selling honey. The course fee was kept to a minimum with the proviso each person brings in some food for a collective lunch. They brought in an amazing selection and learned much.

Beekeeping student lunch

Beehive numbers

Although 2024 was a difficult year for the bees, our hive flourished. We went into Winter with around a dozen hives. We did experience a couple of hives losses mainly due to queen mating issues due to poor weather conditions in the early part of the year. This resulted in some of our new queens not mating adequately and subsequently the colonies did not survive the winter.

Saying that most survived, and built up well ready for the year ahead.

Beehives on Roof

Events with bees

Alhamdulillah during the year the bee have been a source of fascination for many visitors to the Masjid. Many people managed to see the bees at the Maryam Centre, and at other events held at the Masjid. This included the Faith in Environment event. It is always great to speak to our visitors about the bees and to especially to discuss how these tiny creatures are so vital for our environment.

Bees at Faith in Environment event

2025 and beyond

In 2025 our goal is to once again run beekeeping course and experience days, plus provide the masjid visitors with a unique experience by being able to view honey bees up close and in safety. We also plan to run some advanced courses including a microscopy session. During 2024 we became authorised to assess students for the British Beekeepers Association Basic Examination. We plan to perform the examination using the bees the roof top bee hives.

We also look forward to extracting some of amazing honey produced by the amazing bees at the mosque.