Christmas is one of the four quarter days which mark the changing of the seasons.
The four quarter days are:
They all approximately coincide with either an equinox or a solstice.
Bee feeders come in all shapes and sizes, a variety of materials, complexity, price, feed capacity, bee capacity and feed speed; some you can make yourself and some you shouldn’t even try!
So which feeder? Continue reading Bee Basics – Which Feeder?
Preparations for winter should begin immediately after the honey harvest. Treat your bees and feed them as soon as possible or they might not be there to greet you come spring. Continue reading Wintering Bees
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
by Dorothy Parker
Michaelmas, or the Feast of St.Michael, is one of the four quarter days which mark the changing of the seasons.
The four quarter days are:
They all approximately coincide with either an equinox or a solstice. Continue reading Michaelmas – Bees and Wintering
August is a wicked month and the bees are at their very worst: the major summer flows have dried up and the ivy is weeks away. The bees will beg, borrow or steal to build themselves up for winter.
Of course neither begging nor borrowing is open to them but they know how to steal!
Once robbing has started it is very difficult to stop so the best thing to do is try and prevent it from starting.
Here’s how: Continue reading How to Stop Robbing Bees or Wasps
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
… bees cannot live on honey alone. While the sugars in honey supply the bees’ energy needs, in addition they require the protein, fats, minerals and the miscellaneous dietary supplements found in pollen. The protein content of the pollen of different plants is variable but generally very high, containing amounts comparable with peas and beans (Witherell), or seeds and peanuts (Dietz). Continue reading Importance of Pollen
The most common scenarios when you might want to unite two colonies of bees include:
Most bee books will tell you to unite the two using the ‘newspaper method’ Continue reading How to unite bees – the Newspaper Method
Once upon a time I used to keep mice. They don’t swarm but they are territorial and they do fight. If you try to introduce two mice, of any or either sex, by simply dropping one into the cage of the other they will fight. However, if you put the two of them together in a third cage they will get along like a house on fire. This is what I call ‘the third box principle’ and the same thing applies with bees.
Before we go any further I should state that the Third Box Principle is not an explanation of bee behaviour but it is a mental model which helps the beekeeper to ‘put a handle’ on what is observed. It is also a particularly helpful thing to know when you are in the thick of the latest bee conundrum and wondering what the hell to do next – it can give you extra options.
Here are some useful things to do with it:
Continue reading How to unite bees – the Third Box Principle
