Where you put your bees matters more than most beekeeping books admit. Apiary layout affects everything from drift and robbing behaviour to your own ability to work safely and efficiently across a full season. This category covers the practical decisions that shape a well-run apiary: site selection, hive positioning, access, and the kind of thinking that tends to separate beekeepers who struggle with recurring problems from those who don’t.
Some of it is about forage — understanding your local landscape well enough to know where the gaps are and when they occur. Some of it is about management efficiency: the layout choices that save you time and reduce mistakes across dozens of colonies. And some of it is about the longer view — planning an apiary that works not just this season but year after year, in a British climate that rarely cooperates.
If you are setting up for the first time, or reconsidering an established site, this is a good place to start.
Is there method in this madness? As you can see from the photograph showing part of one of my apiaries, there is plenty going on. One might even conclude, upon initial investigation, that the resident beekeeper is a raving lunatic. While this may be true, this smorgasbord of different types of hive actually works quite … Read more
Answer: it depends. That is always the answer for every beekeeping question, or so it seems. Actually, there is one which is always ‘yes’ – see end of this article. When I had kept bees for only two or three years, I decided to forego queen excluders, to see what happened. This is actually quite … Read more
It’s not that difficult to be the greatest show of 2023 when we are still in February. I’m talking about ‘The Beekeeping Show’ last Saturday in Telford, a trade show for beekeepers, which seems to have gone down well with both equipment suppliers and beekeepers alike. Congratulations to Rob, Alex, and Paul who organised the … Read more
It’s finally happened. I bought a van. It’s only a small van, but a van it is. Not only can I carry around a lot more bee stuff and bees, but I can also drive like a madman, and nobody will care – vans do that. It’s part of the code. Actually, I try to … Read more
At this time of the year, many beekeepers are preparing trips to Stoneleigh and/or Harper Adams to attend beekeeping supplier trade shows. New or future beekeepers may find that the vast array of available options is difficult to navigate. Polystyrene hives have recently grown in popularity, so I thought I’d write about my experience. I … Read more
Now is the time when I buy lots of bee stuff. It’s better to buy things when items are being discounted than wait until spring when suppliers run out of stock. I know that beekeepers are not well known for getting their wallets out, but I’m okay with investing for the future. It all starts … Read more
Spring is my favourite season, and spring has sprung at last. Critters are waking up and making baby critters; it’s getting warmer, and if bees can be happy, mine are. They are flying like crazy, like champagne bursting from a bottle as the cork pops. As the Covid-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, bringing fear and … Read more
A nucleus hive, customarily called a “nuc” is just a little hive. I have heard it pronounced “nuke” and “nook” and I imagine non-beekeepers wonder what weapons of mass destruction have to do with bees. Many nucs are about half the size of a standard brood box, but there are all sorts. Mating Nucs Some … Read more