I am going to write about some things which I have found surprising since taking up beekeeping. It could be that I did not talk to the right people or read the right books, but for whatever reason, these are things that were either unknown to me, or maybe they just weren’t stressed strongly enough:…
Typically, when I tell somebody that I am a beekeeper I get a big smile, then I get told how wonderful it is that I’m doing my bit to save the bees, because they are really struggling at the moment aren’t they? It seems churlish to tell them that the reasons I keep bees are…
I am recovering from a mild bout of walrus flu, which is a bit like man flu but heavier. I still ache like I’m 80, but today the sun is shining and life is for living, so what to do? I decided to wash my cars. This is therapy for me. Yes, I’m weird, but…
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…
I recently had my 54th birthday, which was a pleasant affair spent with family doing what walruses do best, eating and basking. Well, actually we ate tapas then laid about watching Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which is like basking but without the sun. I don’t know how Marvel Studios did it, but I reckon…
Ahh, peace at last. My wife and her friends have just taken our two beagles out for a walk in the nearby Chorlton Ees nature reserve, and their deafening howls can no longer be heard, by me at least. Anyone nearby hoping to get a few extra hours of sleep on a dull Sunday morning…
I used to be a “striver”. I was always striving for something. It never really felt that great, all that striving; it felt like I was running on one of those airport conveyor belt walkways but going the wrong way, against the tide so to speak. Everybody else seemed to have a plan. They knew…
As we are now in the middle of the summer holiday season there are plenty of opportunities to use my word for the day, “vulgar”. What a delicious word. Just saying it makes my walrus moustache curl up and sends a quiver down my tusks. Defined as, “lacking sophistication or good taste”, the opportunities for…
To me, the bee season never seems to last very long. I’m already thinking about winter holidays and it’s still August. Perhaps this has something to do with all the rain we have had in my area over the last few weeks. As a well padded walrus I have plenty of insulation about me but…
There is an ancient symbiotic relationship between the walrus and the honeybee. We have all heard the expression, “float like a walrus, sting like a bee”, and this bond has been forged over millennia – we depend on each other. It’s not always easy though. I have had plenty of disasters in my beekeeping time,…