Professor David Evans is a virologist studying the biology of single stranded positive sense RNA viruses, including poliovirus, hepatitis C virus and deformed wing virus of honeybees. He has a fascinating, practical beekeeping blog, https://www.theapiarist.org/
- Beekeeping is all about making informed decisions, some of which involve calculated risks. Are there ways to improve the decision-making process?
- The impact of queen excluders on the colony, decoding the waggle dance, a clever approach to control DWV and a not-so-clever way to treat Varroa, more beewash nonsense, an Asian hornet update and a DIY Varroa tray for poly nucs.
- How might you exploit the maternal effect to generate bigger and better queens, and avoid needing to graft day-old larvae? Plastic queen cups and practical experiments.
- How does the egg laying rate of the queen and the longevity of workers influence colony size, and why is the statement that 'workers live for 6 weeks' wrong?
- Spring has sprung. Everything is a bit earlier and a lot wetter than last year. Colonies are looking good and the OSR is starting to flower. Some thoughts of spring 'dead outs', moving hives, phenology and copyright.
- How to keep hive numbers to a manageable number, whatever that number is. Balancing the needs of swarm control and replacement of winter losses with the time, energy, equipment and enthusiasm available.
- Expensive, versatile and really useful, at least they are if they are well-designed and manufactured. Some of the current models are good, but none are close to perfect.
- Why are bigger queens, better queens? It may be more to do with queen mating success and colony fitness than simply the number of eggs she lays.
- Beekeeping with back pain makes an enjoyable pastime feel like a chore. Learn good lifting technique and use a hivebarrow to 'take the strain' when moving hives any distance. The ultimate one wheel drive, go anywhere, vehicle.
- How can something so simple cost so much? Dummy boards and fat dummies. Some you can buy, but shouldn't. Some you can't buy at all. Both can be built very inexpensively.