Are Your Queens Majestic?
Actors from the Crown and Victoria Are Your Queens Majestic? Anybody who has been reading my blog for a while will no doubt form the view that I am obsessed with queens. I'm talking about queen honey bees, not what…
Author: Walrus
Author of "Interviews with Beekeepers" and "Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives"
Busy as a Beekeeper
Horse Chestnut Tree In Flower by Renoir Busy as a beekeeper: Here in my part of England, the weather is currently absolutely perfect, and we have shaken off the oppressive depressed state induced by a long cold Winter followed by…
Velutina has a touch of Latina
Penelope Cruz Getty Images On my recent trip to Brittany, I saw my first Asian Hornets (Vespa Velutina). They were queens trying to establish nests early in the season, and even though I'd only seen photographs before I instantly recognised…
Vive Le Morse!
Treguihe near Corseul in France Oh, the power of Google (other search engines are available, and some of them don't track your every move and send adverts to you). I just used it to find out what the French word…
Swarm Control by the Experts
Bee Books At some point, some colonies will make swarm preparations, and if the beekeeper wishes to keep his or her bees, and hopefully the lovely honey they will make, he or she needs to do something about it pretty…
The Cliché Photo that keeps on giving
Swarm of Bees on a Car The easiest way to understand how honeybees work is to think of the colony as the body of an individual, and therefore the bees themselves are more like cells which make up that body.…
When the going gets tough…
Hives in Winter Image above copyright Mariusz Nikiciuk Here in the UK, and particularly in my corner of our emerald isle, we are accustomed to some unpleasant weather, mostly of the wet kind. A couple of years ago I picked up…
At Least I’m not Starved of Metaphors
Baby Walrus Gosh, I've been running around like a blue-arsed fly, a headless chicken, a striped ass ape…[insert favourite metaphor here]…which is not how your average walrus likes to be. We are sedentary creatures. We like to muse, and ponder,…
Hivemaker and the Walrus
With Peter and Andrew Little I can be an anti-social walrus at times. I am currently sat alone in a beautiful apartment in Funchal Old Town, Madeira, while my wife and daughter are off exploring the island doing Levada walks…
Life is a Gift – enjoy it!
Me and my wife at Woolacombe beach I seem to be doing a lot of travelling at the moment. It wasn’t long ago that I was in New Zealand, which is certainly “travel”, but more recently I have been doing…
You are what you eat!
Honey Bee collecting pollen from willow It’s been a while since my last blog post, so sorry to anybody who has been struggling to get through their days without hearing about life, the universe, and bees from this corner of…
More than Manuka
A New Zealand Honey Bee My time here in New Zealand is drawing to a close. I have managed to interview three different beekeepers and have had a great time too, plus I have picked up a bit of a…