Beekeeping is really about keeping your bees alive. If you can’t manage to do that, you don’t have bees. It is not as easy to be successful as some people think and the learning curve is steep.
Somebody asked me yesterday, “what makes a good beekeeper?” I don’t know if I’m qualified to answer that, but what I said was, “If you can keep your bees alive from year to year, you’re doing pretty well.” That’s probably not the best answer, but experienced beekeepers who […]
Mites, Weather & Queens I’m a beekeeper, so the majority of my posts are probably about varroa mites, the weather and queens. So many of the problems I’m likely to face are covered by these things. Varroa mites are a significant problem for honey bees, and that doesn’t […]
How this Walrus does it I harvested my last honey in August and treated for mites as soon as the honey supers were off. This works for me. Many beekeepers leave the harvest until later, maximising their honey crop, but I’m happy with what I do. At that […]
There is always something new to learn about bees. The same probably applies to almost anything. Material for my blog posts should be endless and easy to come by. Ubiquitous, you might say. I have a vast library of books, interviews with beekeepers, my own experience, research papers, […]
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date (William Shakespeare, from Sonnet 18) The End is Nigh Strange as it may seem, we […]
Losing sleep about bees Beekeepers, especially those new to the noble art, get anxious about a multitude of factors surrounding the keeping of their bees. I know this by looking at posts on beekeeping forums and letters in the bee press. Also, I remember how I used to worry endlessly about […]
Yesterday I treated all of my hives with oxalic acid vapour using a Sublimox device plugged into a generator. The generator was a gift from a friend who I have helped out with bees over the last year. The Sublimox was a gift to myself and my bees. […]
Here’s a repost from last year. I find it timely especially for those new at keeping bees. ~sassafrasbeefarm I find myself digging ever deeper into the void of my beekeeping knowledge. It seems the more you think you know, the more you realize you don’t know enough. That […]
I have just been directed to this by hivemaker on the beekeeping forum (Peter Little) and it really is groundbreaking stuff. It seems extremely likely from this work that the varroa mites feed on the bees’ fat body material rather than blood, and 95% of mites attach to […]
Gosh, it’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post. Perhaps I have some sloth DNA somewhere in me. Maybe long ago a wayward walrus mated with a sloth and generations later the characteristics of our three-toed slow-moving friends popped up in me. It’s surprising how […]
