Category Archives: Queen Rearing

How to Breed Varroa Resistant Bees

It is well known that some colonies of bees have traits such as grooming or hygienic behaviour which make them better able to cope with Varroa. Pinpointing such colonies with the aim of selectively breeding from them can be a challenge. There are several  different methods and they range from the meticulous to the downright ruthless. Continue reading How to Breed Varroa Resistant Bees

Queen Rearing – How to Graft

Grafting is often seen as highly technical and an unattainable skill. It shouldn’t be though – because it isn’t – it’s just practice and knack.

After all, the aim is simple enough: – to transfer a young larva from one cell to another. How difficult can it be?

To maximise success you need to sit down and think for a bit though. Consider how to choose your larvae, which grafting tool to use and how to set up your rearer colony. Then get stuck in – what’s to lose? Continue reading Queen Rearing – How to Graft

What to do with queenless Apideas

An annual quandry for beekeepers is – what to do with all those queenless Apideas at the end of the queen-rearing season.

Most advice is to set the Apidea over a nuc and unite the two but this often comes to one sort of sticky end or another and is less viable when you have a number of them.

Here’s a neat alternative: Continue reading What to do with queenless Apideas

How to improve your bees

There are all sorts of bees for sale out there – Buckfast, Carniolan, Italian, Russian, Greek – you name it but how can they possibly be  better than the locals on their home turf? Think about it, think about the risks in importing diseases and god knows what-all else. Don’t import bees – improve your own.

Click here for more information on the Native Irish Bee.

Here’s how and it isn’t difficult. In fact it’s fun and very rewarding – you will see real results year on year. We used to have some really horrible bees here and only a few hives of them but each year they would chase us round the garden. Now, in the middle of summer I have around 25 hives of bees here and stings are rare.

So make a start this year. Continue reading How to improve your bees