Grafting Archives - The Walrus and the Honey Bee

Queen excluders: are they needed for successful beekeeping?

Framed wire queen excluder 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…

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…

1 May 22 Walrus

Temperature And Queen Colour

A 2021 Queen 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…

21 Apr 20 Walrus

Any Beekeeper can make Queens

Queen honeybee by @squgcreative 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…

29 Jun 17 Walrus

Queen rearing: first attempt

honeybee queen cell 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…