CLYDEBANK, like many towns, has hidden treasures. Things that even if you have lived there all your days you may still not have known about.

One of these gems, however, is not so hidden, and can be found on the roof of the Clyde Shopping Centre.

Up high, and away from the hustle and bustle of shoppers, are two beehives which have been situated at the shopping centre since June.

These hives are home to hundreds of buzz-y bees working hard to produce honey, which is harvested every two weeks by the centre’s head beekeeper, Meik Molitor.

On a visit to the centre earlier this month, Meik showed the Post the process of checking on the bees, something he does on a weekly basis.

During the course of checking on the hive he ensures that the queen is still present and that the worker bees have enough food.

Meik explained: “The bees are getting ready for the winter now. They are filling every single cell of the hive with honey at the moment.

“I know that sounds crazy, as it is only September, but the bee season is almost at an end now. They are still, however, producing new bees - there are plenty of them.

“Unfortunately, at this time of year they can become infected with mites, so we place strips of medicine in the hives to try and prevent this.

“The reason that we check on the hives every week is because during the spring months the hive wants to multiply and therefore they will try to create another queen.

“This would then create a swarm, almost like a cloud of bees, and we try to avoid that with consistent check-ins.”

Meik told the Post that the bees are also a source of education with the company that he works for, Webster Honey, hosting beekeeping lessons in locations including St Andrews and Falkirk to inform people about the importance of these little creatures.

Although lessons are currently unavailable in Clydebank it is hoped that will become available in the future.

During the course of the Post’s visit to the centre Meik introduced a new queen bee to one of the hives after it sadly lost its previous queen earlier in the year.

Meik added: “The queen bee has a yellow mark on her back so that she can be identified. She also has a number of distinguishing features including her size as she is typically bigger than a worker bee and she has shorter wings as she is not meant to fly. She flies after she is born but will not leave the hive.

“Unfortunately, we lost the queen in our second hive quite a while ago and I tried to get them to make a new queen which didn’t happen so now we are slowly but surely running out of time.

“So, we brought another small colony with a new queen which we will unite together and hopefully they accept her or they won’t survive the winter.”

In the coming weeks Meik, who has been a beekeeper now for around eight years, is going to begin feeding the bees syrup – a mixture of sugar and water – to help give them a boost as winter draws in.

He explained that the milder and colder the winter the better and that if it is a wet winter like last year the bees end up going through a lot more food.

For further information on beekeeping lessons or indeed the buzz-y little guys themselves visit Webster Honey’s website at websterhoney.com.