Raising your own queen bees so that you don’t have to buy them from elsewhere will help make your beekeeping sustainable. Your queens will head your own colonies and any surplus can be sold.
Raising queens has helped my beekeeping enormously. I have been able to compare hives headed by home bred queens with ‘self-made’ queens. The latter tends to occur when bees swarm or when I make a ‘walk away split’. I leave them with one queen cell from which to […]
I stumbled upon a fantastic resource for beekeepers concerning the monitoring and management of Varroa mites by the Honey Bee Health Coalition. There is some comprehensive guidance, including videos plus a neat decision tool to help decide whether to treat and what the treatment options are. A few […]
Here in the UK, and presumably, across much of the northern hemisphere, we are in that beautiful time of the year when optimism reigns supreme. I’m optimistic that this season will be a great one. The bees appear optimistic; they are busy and growing and, in some cases, […]
The bees don’t care about COVID-19; in fact, they seem to be having a great time. I don’t know if it’s the reduced air pollution, the beautiful weather or something else, but my bees are booming. I’m a little concerned about the lack of rain which is a […]
There is that saying, “if it were easy, everyone would do it,” and I think it applies to some aspects of beekeeping. Frankly, in the early years of one’s beekeeping life, just keeping them alive and well is a significant achievement. Come to think about it, that still […]
In my area, we are entering the busiest time of the beekeeping season. Colonies are expanding rapidly, and some have swarmed or are about to. Spring/early summer is often like that; a massive amount of nectar and pollen coming in, queens laying like there’s no tomorrow, and beekeepers […]
Drones are awesome. Everyone should love them, but they have had a bad rap. Many believe that they are “lazy” and all they do is hang around eating stores and contributing nothing much to the hive. Then they leave for a leisurely flight at noon to try to […]
You don’t even need to be able to graft larvae to make good queens. Apparently, grafting puts a lot of people off, because they find it too hard or they heard that it was difficult and didn’t try. I think it’s like most skills; at first, you are […]
OK, so we’ve been in lockdown for a while now. I only venture outside to go shopping occasionally and to walk the dog. Oh, and beekeeping, of course. It’s never been busier in the parks and the places where I like to wander; somehow, a lockdown has made […]
The Chosen Ones I have some great queens in my hives. My best one is a “yellow dot” in her third season. Her hive is always one of my tallest, giving me loads of honey every year. I’ve never seen any signs of swarming in her colony, and […]
