Not everything in beekeeping fits neatly into a management category. This section is for the wider conversation: interviews with beekeepers whose experience and methods are worth hearing about, reflections on the culture and contradictions of the beekeeping world, and the occasional long look at where the craft is heading and why. It includes pieces on how beekeeping advice is made and how to evaluate it critically — a recurring theme here, given how quickly new ideas can sweep through the community without much scrutiny.
If you want to understand the thinking behind the practical posts elsewhere on this site, this is a good place to look. Beekeeping is more interesting when you engage with the ideas and the arguments, not just the techniques. There are plenty of places online to find out how to do things; this category is more concerned with why.
When I was a child, obesity was much less common than it is now, and we ate things like lard. In fact, lardy cake was a delicious treat that I used to purchase on a Saturday from a baker shop in Brockenhurst (they still sell it occasionally). We ate bacon and eggs, steak and kidney … Read more
What the evidence shows, and what it doesn’t Since the late 1990s, varroa resistance has resurfaced repeatedly — Africanised bees, the Gotland survivors, hygienic breeding programmes, and more recently treatment-free narratives — each time framed as a solution, and each time constrained by ecology, genetics, and scale. Talks promise it, social media celebrates it, and … Read more
As an editor of a bee farming magazine (called Bee Farmer, would you believe?), former director of BeeCraft, author, blogger, podcaster (sometimes) – you get the picture – I’m always interested in communicating valuable information on keeping honey bees to others. There are many others doing something similar, and probably better. The challenge that we … Read more
“Wild” honey bees have recently been classified as “endangered” in the European Union on the “Red List” of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This seems to have been based on a paper by Patrick L. Kohl & Benjamin Rutschmann (2025) which is not yet peer-reviewed and seems, to me at least, to … Read more
To the handful of crazy beekeepers who wait in anticipation for my blog posts – there are a few, apparently – I’m afraid this one is basically a few photographs that I have taken this season. It’s all too much effort to string words together into sentences, because I have just MOVED HOUSE. This means … Read more
When I was a small cog in “the machine1,” stuck in the “rat race2,” and attempting to “climb the greasy pole3,” I often felt disoriented and confused. Who knows whether my sense of being a piece in the wrong jigsaw puzzle contributed to my slide into alcohol abuse—it certainly can’t have helped. The world didn’t … Read more
The audio version (listen rather than read) is on the podcast page Overall, the 2024 beekeeping season ended up being fairly average for me in terms of honey production. The weather conditions were quite challenging in the spring and early summer, but, as is often the case, things turned around by the end. Nevertheless, as … Read more
I have been blundering my way through twelve years (feels like more) of beekeeping and, more recently, raising queens, so some people might assume that I have achieved beekeeping enlightenment. What’s more, I have had the privilege to travel and meet/work with/interview some very enlightened keepers of bees, some of whom are now friends. Then … Read more