We found a wild colony in bees living in a fallen oak tree!
We love working with wild colonies of bees. The temperament isn't always the best but they are often incredibly resilient.
This colony has managed to survive a badly damaged fallen tree and are fully exposed to the elements. We will return in the spring and get them into a beehive once the weather allows.
Marking a queen bee is one of those small jobs that makes a huge difference to your beekeeping. Once you know how to mark a queen safely and confidently, everything from finding her on a busy frame to tracking her age and performance becomes much easier. In this blog I will walk you through exactly how I mark a mated queen, the tools I use, and some simple tips to help you avoid common mistakes. If you have ever thought “I can never find my queen” or “I am too nervous about hurting her”,...
Old brood frames and scrap beeswax can look like a horrible mess, but there is still a lot of value left in them. Once I have rendered out as much wax as I sensibly can, there is often a pile of darker, lower grade wax that I would never use for candles or cosmetics. Instead of throwing it away, I turn it into simple, natural firelighters. In this guide I will walk you through how I make beeswax firelighters using wood wool and recovered wax from old brood frames. This is not about fancy...
Beeswax cappings are one of the nicest by products of extracting honey. They look and smell fantastic, they are usually much cleaner than old brood comb, and they give you some of the highest quality wax you will ever get from your bees. A lot of beekeepers scrape them off, let them pile up in a tub and never quite get around to dealing with them. That is a shame, because with a simple process you can turn those sticky cappings into clean wax blocks ready for candles, polishes or swapping in...
Varroa is still the number one health threat to honey bees in the UK. You feel it in spring when colonies that looked fine in autumn come out weak, slow and virus ridden. One of the biggest improvements I have made in my own beekeeping is learning to time winter oxalic acid treatments around a natural brood break, instead of just picking a random date on the calendar. In this guide I will show you how I use the first proper cold snap as a trigger, apply a simple three week rule and then treat...
Comments