Spring is my favourite season, and spring has sprung at last. Critters are waking up and making baby critters; it’s getting warmer, and if bees can be happy, mine are. They are flying like crazy, like champagne bursting from a bottle as the cork pops. As the Covid-19 […]
I am no literary academic and don’t know how much of this is true, but it seems that Shakespeare’s life and works were shaped by the plague. This article (go on, click it) suggests that he had a lucky escape as an infant and that several of his […]
I have been keeping a low profile of late because I have a touch of walrus flu. I don’t think it’s anything exciting like that Covid-19, but who knows? A couple of weeks ago I got back from the gym feeling decidedly green about the whiskers, and since […]
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 […]
A nucleus hive, customarily called a “nuc” is just a little hive. I have heard it pronounced “nuke” and “nook” and I imagine non-beekeepers wonder what weapons of mass destruction have to do with bees. Many nucs are about half the size of a standard brood box, but […]
Many very experienced beekeepers in the UK advocate using the Demaree Method of swarm prevention for people with a small number of hives. George Demaree (1832–1915) from Kentucky first published his approach in an article in the American Bee Journal in 1892. I love the fact that a […]
We recently took delivery of a piano. My wife saw it in Forsyth’s in Manchester and, having declared it to be a lifelong dream to learn to play, persuaded me that such purchase made perfect sense. I have to admit; it is a thing of beauty. It’s a […]
I had a lovely chat with David Kemp this week on the telephone. He is a talker! It’s always a privilege and a pleasure to hear his stories, and he’s still going strong at 82 years of age. I asked him for the secret to long life and […]
Peter Drucker The legendary management consultant, Peter Drucker, may well have kept bees; I don’t know. He certainly made a vast contribution to twentieth-century management theory, and I’m sure his influence will stretch far into the current century too. He is well known for, amongst other things, these […]
As I was thinking ahead to next spring and summer, and reflecting on seasons past, I decided to check my records to look at swarming. In the season just gone swarming kicked off much earlier than I’d seen before. I have detailed records going back to 2013, which […]
