The Walrus and the Honey Bee ›

Practical Tips About Queens

New virgin queen Finding, Marking and Introducing Queens As any regular reader of my blog will know, I'm obsessed with two things; queens and Varroa mites. Queens are essential to honey bees, as mothers are to all families. Mites are horrible things…

21 Aug 22 Walrus

Bringing In The Honey

Honey extractor How We Harvested Honey This Year That's it; we have finally finished extracting honey for 2022. We got 1,540 lbs for the season, an average of 55 lbs per hive, using the number of full-sized hives in the…

10 Aug 22 Walrus

Murphy’s Law Applies To Bees

Kieler mating nucs Some Of My Beekeeping Mistakes Murphy's Law - "If anything can go wrong, it will" - comes from a chap in the US Air Force in the 1940s. He was involved in testing new engineering designs. Perhaps…

18 Jul 22 Walrus

Latest Events Of Note

Chickens in a tree Latest Walrus News I don't know why, but this tickled me. A couple of enterprising chickens managed to hop onto the tree. They were furiously pecking at the green leaves, the only green things available at…

10 Jul 22 Walrus

Have I Lost My Queen?

Where's the brood gone? They Are Not Necessarily Queenless When I was a beginner beekeeper, I thought I knew most things about the noble art of 'bee bothering', but I was wrong. In my case, the beginner years were the…

3 Jul 22 Walrus

Treatment Free Beekeeping

Photo by Maja Dumat - CC BY 2.0 Risky To Go Against NBU Advice The July 2022 issue of the BBKA News features not one, not two, but THREE articles on treatment-free beekeeping. That's three out of eight (37.5%). Given…

23 Jun 22 Walrus

Winter Oxalic For Survival

Oxalic acid How Many Varroa Mites In The Hive? The point of this article is to encourage beekeepers to carry out mite washes at some point in the season and treat colonies with oxalic acid every winter. I missed the…

New queens in cages with attendant workers

16 Jun 22 Walrus

Summer in the apiary

New queens in cages with attendant workers Swarming Is Finished, Now What? Phew, it looks like the swarming season may have ended. I'm tempting fate, but that's what it looks like to me. Also, after about three weeks of nothing…

7 Jun 22 Walrus

Successful Queen Mating

Kieler Mating Nucs Best Time For Queen Mating Flights The problem with beekeepers is that we are all cooped up for ages over the winter with no bees to see. It isn't enjoyable. Then, suddenly, the weather improves, spring arrives,…

28 May 22 Walrus

Varroa Mites Are Lurking

Varroa mites cause the death of more colonies than most people admit - here I discuss a summer mite check, if only for peace of mind.

Honey bee queen with yellow dot on thorax

14 May 22 Walrus

How I Make Queens

One of my lovely queens with quite light coloured bees Grafting, Cell Builders And Mating I'm good at learning from the successes, mistakes and wisdom of others. Once, we had a fishing tournament at school that I'd entered. Never having…

9 May 22 Walrus

Are Small Queen Cells OK?

Queen Cells It's only the 7th of May, and I've already done my second batch of grafts. The queen cells from the first batch have mostly gone into mini-plus hives, with a few left over in the incubator. I'm really…