Queen comes to Gliffaes

I bet that headline got you going, well its true, we have two queens living at Gliffaes now. In the beehives at the bottom of the walled garden. Susie and I started keeping bees some years ago when the man who used to keep several hives here passed on. We had some very successful years at first and then we hit a rocky period along with most of the country's bee keepers and had a struggle to keep our three hives going. The verora mite and the disease known as, 'Colony Collapse' put paid to our bees. Due to the scarcity of bees I have been unable to buy any colonies for the hotel for two years until this year.

This summer has been a good summer for bees and the bee keeper who sells us Usk Valley Honey for the breakfast tables sold me two hives last week. The hives were brought to Gliffaes at dusk, once all the bees had returned to the hive at the end of a busy day. It does not take bees long to acquaint themselves to their new surroundings as long as you move them more than three miles from where they were before.

Bee hives are inspected about once week during the summer and as we do have an extra bee suit you might like to come and have a look inside a bee hive when we go and take the lid off. Friday afternoon is when we normally go and inspect the hives.
 

Riverside Clean Up

Getting Ready for the Fishing Season.

Fly fishing season begins on March 3rd on the River Usk. Gliffaes Hotel has two and half miles of fishing on the Usk so before the season begins we have a day cleaning up the river bank, yesterday was the day. A lot of rubbish is brought down by the high winter flows on the river and before all the trees and shrubs spring into leaf makes this a good time to clean up.

We managed to fill a one tonne builder's bag with everything we found as this short video will show you.



Fishing at Gliffaes Hotel is open to non-residents but please call us on 01874 730 371 to check availability.

James Suter

Completing The Food Chain

At the moment a lot of words are written about sourcing of food and how far food has to travel to get to the plate and such like but very little thought has been given over to how we dispose of food waste. Waste has to travel to landfill and then lies in the landfill, taking up precious space and giving off CO2 while it rots away. Even at a small hotel like Gliffaes we generate about a ton of food waste per month from meat and fish trimmings to fruit and vegetable peelings to what is just left on plates.

We have taken a different approach to food waste disposal by investing in an accelerated in vessel composter. This is long insulated and heated drum into which a mixture of food waste and wood chip is added. The wood chip provides added carbon to the very nitrogen rich food waste. The waste is moved along through the composter by a large screw over a period of two weeks. It drops out the bottom and we gather it in a large pile and let it rot for further 3-4 months. Unlike a conventional compost bin we are able to process meat and fish without the added attraction of rats!

Today was the day to start spreading some of the lovely worm rich compost around the gardens. Three loads were spread underneath our apple trees as a rich mulch and to stop the grass growing around the trunks. In the photo you can see me sieving out wood chip for fine compost that we can use for potting in the spring and the last couple of loads went on to the small vegetable patch we have. If anyone is interested in seeing our composter ‘in action’ I would be delighted to show you when you next visit.