Annabel Hughes finds out about the ancient art of beekeeping.

At the risk of upsetting dogs generally (and mine in particular) the title 'man's best friend' must surely belong to the industrious little honey bee.

What has the humble bee done for us? Well, apart from producing honey - which is both nutritious and has a wealth of medicinal uses - and beeswax for polish and candles and Royal Jelly and propolis, the benefit of pollination by bees is said to help the economy by millions of pounds each year!

Some crops are thought to yield up to 25 to 40 per cent more if efficiently pollinated and farmers in some areas pay beekeepers to put hives into their fields and orchards.

It's an amazing fact that to produce just one pound of honey bees cover a distance equivalent to several orbits of the earth.

Les and Jill Chirnside (who is currently chair of Gwent Beekeepers' Association) have been beekeeping for 30 years. Their Skirrid Honey Farm at Upper Llanover produces honey, honey marmalade, beeswax candles and polish and propolis.

The couple are keen to pass on their knowledge - exhibiting hives at events like The Big Cheese and encouraging children to try their hand at rolling beeswax candles. "Honey bees have been around longer than man. They're featured in cave paintings," said Les. "The wonderful thing about them is that they don't take, they just give. "There's been an upsurge of interest in beekeeping all over the UK but we'd strongly advise anyone thinking of taking it up to go on a course. Producing good honey requires good management."

Gwent Beekeepers' Association runs an eight-week spring course for beginners, with members giving talks on specialist areas.

Practical training is provided at the association's hives in the old walled garden at Cefn Tilla, home of Lord Raglan who, like his father before him, is the association's president. Bees collect both nectar (a source of carbohydrate) and pollen (protein) from most plants, including many weeds like thistles, nettles and dandelions. "The type of honey depends on the type of foliage and flowers available. Garden flowers tend to give a clear liquid honey. To produce a particular tasting honey like apple or orange blossom the hive is put well away from other sources," Jill explained. "Heather honey, which has a clear, jellylike consistency, is regarded as the king of honeys."

Les and Jill's heather honey, produced from the moors above Blaenavon, won first prize at both the Royal Welsh and Lincoln shows this year.

Bees overwinter as a colony, clustering together for warmth and living on the honey they've produced in summer. Although a hive only needs 20-30lbs of honey to survive an average winter, the bees, given the space, will store much more. In essence, that's what beekeeping is all about... "When a hive's in full swing it will have 60 - 70,000 bees and, in Britain, will produce on average 27lbs of honey, although it can be more than 100lbs depending on management and the weather. If they have the forage they could make 20-30lbs in one week," said Les.

Each hive has a single queen, thousands of workers (infertile females) and, in summer, hundreds of drones (males). In autumn the drones are evicted by the workers and die. Beekeepers use smoke when they're working on a hive because bees fear fire and their attention is diverted into eating as much honey as possible in case they need to abandon their home.

The queen's primary purpose is to lay eggs. During April and May she lays up to 4,000 a day. She mates just once but with several males and holds sufficient sperm to lay eggs for three to five years.

A healthy queen is continually emitting pheromones which tell the colony that she's still alive and all is well in the hive.

The queen lays eggs in three types of wax cell. In the smallest she lays fertilised eggs which produce the female workers. In larger cells she lays unfertilised eggs which become the drones. A special cell, which hangs vertically downwards, is used to produce new queens.

The queen bee larvae is fed with Royal Jelly made from nectar and very rich in proteins and fatty acids. The queen herself is fed on honey and nectar supplied by the worker bees.

The queen is kept below the upper boxes in the hive ('supers') by a wire or plastic grid which she can't crawl through (the 'queen excluder').

As the queen can't lay eggs above the excluder, the workers only use the supers to store honey.

The bees combine nectar with enzymes from glands in their mouths and store the mix in the honeycomb of hexagonal wax cells in the super. Water in the mixture evaporates overnight by around 17 per cent, making the substance viscous. "It's an amazing sight on a late summer evening to see the bees standing at the hive entrance fanning their wings to blow the air through," said Jill.

A thin layer of wax, produced by glands under the bees' abdomen, is then applied to seal the cells until required. This capping indicates when the honey can be harvested. "We keep adding extra supers as the season progresses. If we want to remove a super we fit a special gate below it and, when all the bees have left, simply lift it off," said Les.

The honey is collected using an extractor, rather like an upright spin dryer. It's then filtered and bottled. "Honey contains enzymes and trace elements that are not present in sugar. It has antiseptic qualities which are good for treating sore throats, cuts, burns, scalds and it also works as an analgesic. "We separate the wax from the honey and use some (dissolved in turps) to make polish and some for candles, which are slow burning and give off a lovely aroma."

During the Middle Ages beekeeping was one of the most important jobs in an Abbey, to provide a constant supply of wax for ceremonial candles.

Bees also produce propolis, a resinous substance collected from plant buds, which has anti-bacterial properties and can be used to treat everything from mouth ulcers to bronchitis.

When a queen's productive life is coming to an end the workers either send her off in a swarm or stop feeding her and develop a new queen from one of the eggs laid in a queen cell.

Bees also swarm if the hive is overcrowded, leaving behind young bees and a new emerging queen. "Swarms are just nature's way of producing new colonies and, unless the weather's very bad, the bees will be in a good mood. They'll cluster in a bush or tree for a short time while scouts look for a new home and, providing they're within reach, a beekeeper can transfer them easily by offering them suitable, temporary accommodation!"

Les and Jill have studied bee-keeping in many countries, including Tanzania, Uganda and India. "In colder climates the honey bee is apis melifera. But hot climates like India suit a huge, fiery species known as apis dorsata and the smaller apis cerana . "In some countries they harvest honey by raiding wild bees' nests, which is extremely dangerous. We once watched honey-hunters in a forest in Malaya cutting honeycomb from the trees."

Through their talks the couple help to raise funds for a small charity, Bees for Development, run by Dr Nichola Bradbear and Helen Jackson in Mitchel Troy.

The charity supports beekeepers in the developing world, where the sale of honey and wax provides an income for local women, and farmers benefit from the bees pollinating their crops.

For more information on beekeeping log onto: www.gbka.co.uk.