After a 20 year hiatus I’ve got bees again. Previously I’d had National Hives and worked pretty conventionally. Now I’m using horizontal hives, planning to work at being treatment free as far as possible, avoid feeding sugar if I can etc. Hopefully I’d record the good, the bad and the better here.
An amazing sunny spring day and I finally got around to opening up the hive. I’ve been wanting to get this done for a while but even though its been sunny the past two weeks the wind’s been cold. But today it was beautiful, sunny and 22 degrees. So time to start sorting out the […]
Sorting out the Bees 11/4/25 Read More »
This seems like a very odd question, after all we’ve all had honey on toast and what’s that honey if not a surplus (conveniently available for us to harvest). When, 25 or so years ago, I kept a few hives over about three seasons that’s certainly what I believed. I think I also saw beekeeping
Do Bees Really Produce a Surplus of Honey? Read More »
I just noticed that Forum Auction is selling a 1st Edition of the Rev. Charles Butler’s The Feminine Monarchie or a treatise concerning bees, and the due ordering of them. This book, which was published in 1609, was the first full-length English language book on beekeeping and remained a valid guide for beekeepers until the
The First English Book about Bees Read More »
Introduction Bee-keepers have probably been arguing about which is the best hive design for as long as there have been bee-hives and with the invention of the movable frame hive in the mid 19th century those arguments intensified. Bee-keeping periodicals from the second half of the 19th century are full of these debates and those
Choosing/Building a Bee-Hive pt.1: Thoughts and Considerations Read More »
When people ask why humans should care about bees the first answer is almost always ‘pollination’ and the explanation almost always always focuses on how humanity benefits from ‘pollination services’. There’s nothing wrong with this answer and pollination is vital not just for our well-being but for much of life on Earth. But maybe its
Why We Really Should Learn to Care about Bees Read More »
