Those of you who have been following my blog for any length of time will know that I am a champion of small-scale, observational, hands-off beekeeping. But as my background is in agriculture and ecology, I am primarily concerned with how honey bees work and impact the wider environment, hence my interest in both keeping …
What can beekeeping teach us?
Beekeeping is more than just keeping bees, and right now, with the world in a state of flux, I feel it is more important than ever. Not, I hasten to add, because we should all be installing hives, but an understanding of a bee colony allows us to connect with the interactions of nature so …
First hive check
The past few weeks have been warm, sunny and mild here in the UK, and as such, the bees have been out looking for pollen and nectar. I don't normally check my bees until March or even April, but as they have been so active, I wanted to see what was going on and they …
Cross comb
It has been uncharacteristically hot and sunny here for weeks now and the bees have been making honey. I'm a bit mindful that we desperately need some rain otherwise the plants will reduce their nectar reward in order to conserve moisture, so the bees will need their stores. However, they are still producing prodigiously at …