Mike Palmer's Cell Builder Apiary in Vermont

Better Bees

Mike Palmer's Cell Builders Humans (and walruses) are part of the natural world. We are animals. Sometimes we like to set ourselves aside from nature as if we are not part of it, but this is wrong. However, there is…
Mike Palmer moving a barrel of honey

Dreaming of 2020

Mike Palmer moving a barrel of honey I often like to have some theme for my blog posts, but today I'm just writing whatever pops into my head. There are lots of things to say about bees, but after a…
Air Conditioning units on a roof

Hive Ventilation

Air Conditioning There are many things in beekeeping which cause furious debate. One part of this, which this demonstrated below, is that different beekeepers deal with different environmental conditions. Here are some extracts from Interviews with Beekeepers on the subject…
Walrus Honey Label on a jar of honey

Keeping High Standards

The Walrus makes great honey! It's that time of the year when it's time for me to start to get my hives ready for the winter. I'm currently treating all of them with Apivar, which means that the evil varroa…
Steve Donohoe with Frame of Sealed Brood

Pragmatism or Xenophobia?

Frame of Sealed Brood Beekeeping is Local Maybe I am naive or just positive and optimistic, but I'm sure that to many people I have some dangerously liberal ideas. For a start, I deliberately travelled all over the place to…
Green Fields https://flic.kr/p/8RnP8z

Mind The Gap

Green Fields https://flic.kr/p/8RnP8z So Long, Spring Spring is over. I'm not going by the calendar but by what I see at my beehives, although as it happens, the two are in synch. We are now in what they call the…
Actors from the Crown and Victoria

Are Your Queens Majestic?

Actors from the Crown and Victoria Are Your Queens Majestic? Anybody who has been reading my blog for a while will no doubt form the view that I am obsessed with queens. I'm talking about queen honey bees, not what…
Treguihe near Corseul in France

Vive Le Morse!

Treguihe near Corseul in France Oh, the power of Google (other search engines are available, and some of them don't track your every move and send adverts to you). I just used it to find out what the French word…