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 […]
So Long, Spring Spring is over. I’m not going by the calendar but by what I see at my beehives, although as it happens, the two are in synch. We are now in what they call the “June Gap”. The trees have finished flowering apart from lime trees […]
The honey flow seems to have slowed down for a while, and my bees are less desperate to swarm. Last week I discovered that three of my hives swarmed even though I had checked them, which goes to show how easy it is to miss the odd queen […]
Before I get into bee stuff, I must say something about a show on Netflix that has blown me away this season: American Idol. I think I have previously written about how it makes me cry, which is not something I’m proud of, but there it is. It […]
How to stop swarming? Answer: you can’t! At least not completely. However, beekeepers have to try to stop their bees swarming. If you lose swarms, you will not make as much honey as you could do. You can also catch swarms which is great fun. There’s a swarm […]
The term “newb” is typically used by gamers to describe somebody new to the game, or gaming, and is somewhat derogatory. However, we all have to start somewhere. Even the most gloriously proficient expert at something was once a humble newb. With bees, we usually start off knowing […]
Am I Dying? For the last seven months, perhaps coincidentally since my Dad died, I have been having strange aches and pains in my chest and back. I’m okay with pain, mostly, but when I don’t understand the cause of that pain, my little walrus brain starts over […]
Sorry about the audio quality on this clip; somebody once asked if I used a potato as a recording device! I don’t, but I actually think my iphone does it better than my portable digital recorder, which is what I used for this. Anyway, I still think it’s […]
Peter Little has always been an absolute legend to me because he knows so much about so much and is quite happy to pass on his wisdom. He runs Exmoor Bees and Beehives with his wife and sons producing honey from the glorious Exmoor countryside. They also make […]
I met up with a very busy Ray Olivarez of Olivarez Honey Bees last October at his company headquarters in Orland, Northern California. In this audio clip from the interview he talks about his famous Hobby Day which is coming up this weekend, as well as pollination, mite […]
