Beekeeping is an annual cycle, and the decisions you make — or fail to make — at each stage have consequences that ripple forward for months. This category covers the seasonal rhythm of colony management in the UK: spring build-up and swarm prevention, summer honey production, post-harvest treatment and feeding, winter preparation, and the critical late-season period when the quality of your winter bees is being determined. It also includes the less predictable aspects of British seasons: dearths that arrive at the wrong time, weather that collapses a nectar flow, and autumns that do not behave like autumns.
The emphasis throughout is on proactive management — understanding what the colony needs before it becomes urgent, and planning around probabilities rather than reacting to surprises. Experienced beekeepers will recognise the patterns; newer beekeepers will find these posts useful for building a mental model of how a season actually unfolds in practice.
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, and pontificate; the occasional stretch is delicious, but all this frantic activity has unbalanced me. It has … Read more
Did you know that honey bees are experts at managing the temperature inside their colony? There are even “heater bees” who act like little radiators, applying their heat as required. They vibrate their wing muscles vigorously in order to generate the heat, which, as you can see from the above thermal image, is concentrated in … Read more