A year ago, the very idea of starting to raise queens at this time was madness, such was the hideous weather. This year, spring has been kinder, and I have already done my first batch of grafts. Now, I know that the easiest part of raising queens is making cells, and getting virgins well-mated is … Read more
I imagine that we all have our heroes. On the matter of producing queens, mine are Jay Smith & Brother Adam (both no longer with us) and Mike Palmer (alive and well). The teachings of these talented individuals are about what they do, or did. They are practical and honest, and generally, they subscribe to … Read more
Answer: it depends. That is always the answer for every beekeeping question, or so it seems. Actually, there is one which is always ‘yes’ – see end of this article. When I had kept bees for only two or three years, I decided to forego queen excluders, to see what happened. This is actually quite … Read more
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 fished before, I consumed a library of books on the subject and, incredibly, I won. It wasn’t difficult; I think I caught two fish and … Read more
It’s a non-beekeeping day today, and we have had some much-needed rain overnight. This should not be unusual here in Manchester, but it’s actually been untypically dry. My bees have generally got off to a quick start this year. Many forage plants are available simultaneously, especially dandelion, apple, oilseed rape and trees such as horse … Read more
You don’t even need to be able to graft larvae to make good queens. Apparently, grafting puts a lot of people off, because they find it too hard or they heard that it was difficult and didn’t try. I think it’s like most skills; at first, you are a bit rubbish, but with practice, it … Read more
About 2 years ago I had an amazing life changing experience. Ever since I was 7 years old I had worn eye glasses and I quickly became the shy boy with massive thick goldfish bowls on his face; eyes disappearing into tiny dots, and huge craters on my nose where they relentlessly pressed down on … Read more