Newly emerged virgin queen bee

Practical Tips About Queens

New virgin queen Finding, Marking and Introducing Queens As any regular reader of my blog will know, I'm obsessed with two things; queens and Varroa mites. Queens are essential to honey bees, as mothers are to all families. Mites are horrible things…
Frame showing no brood

Have I Lost My Queen?

Where's the brood gone? They Are Not Necessarily Queenless When I was a beginner beekeeper, I thought I knew most things about the noble art of 'bee bothering', but I was wrong. In my case, the beginner years were the…
Bar chart showing survival of introduced queens

Survival Rate of New Queens

I'm going to be dipping into some research by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation in Australia in 2003. You can get the research paper here. It's by Rhodes and Somerville and has some clues that should help with…
Rolling Stones 1969

Introductions

Rolling Stones 1969 Creator: L. Trievnor | Credit: Getty Images "Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name," teases Mick Jagger in the epic Stones track "Sympathy for the Devil". He sings, "Let me please introduce myself; I'm a…