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 first five. For those with just one or two hives, it could easily be longer, and for bee farmers, … Read more
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 she has gone through two winters in … Read more
For those that do not know, which probably means all non-beekeepers, supersedure is what happens in a beehive when the bees make a new queen to ultimately replace the existing queen. The other way of doing this is by swarming. In supersedure, the bees do not swarm, theoretically, so the beekeeper does not lose large … Read more
I’m back home in Blighty after a wonderful stay in Vermont, a very pretty corner of the USA near the border with Canada which reminded me of parts of Scotland. Instead of whisky they have a big maple syrup industry, and instead of the midge it’s the mosquito. This year they have had lots of … Read more