Based on Andrew Durham’s webinar given to the BBKA 03/09/25 Twenty years after Vespa velutina nigrithorax arrived in south-west France, nest numbers and predation have surged across large parts of Europe. Andrew, a Cambridgeshire beekeeper who has studied the hornet since 2014, argues that once the hornet establishes, large scale…
Bees in a bird Box?
Most bird boxes are too small for a honeybee colony and it is almost certainly bumblebees that you have. Tree Bumblebees love birdboxes although other species of bumblebees will take over an old bird’s nest in a birdbox. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust writes: We do not recommend moving nests unless…
Checking Colonies for Disease
Spring is an excellent time to check your colonies for disease because the population in the hive is low…er than in summer. To carry out a disease inspection each brood frame is carefully checked for the queen before the bees are shaken into the brood box: this means that the…
Swarms
Looking for help with a swarm that you have seen? CLICK HERE Beekeepers often take great care to avoid letting their bees swarm. To the beekeeper, a swarm represents a loss of bees resulting in less or no honey production and a reduced ability to over-winter colonies due to a smaller…
Stings
It is a simple fact that honey bees can sting. They don’t go out of their way to sting. They don’t intend to harass us and cause pain at the first opportunity. Honey bees sting usually in a selfless act of defence of their colony and occasionally as a self…
Honey Bee Disease
Just like any other member of the animal kingdom, honey bees have their fair share of ailments. There are too many possible diseases and ailments that can affect honey bees to list here, so this section gives a brief introduction to the main bee diseases. Dealing with bee disease has…
Honey Bee Sexes
Honey bee colonies are perennial in nature. They undergo an annual cycle based around the seasons however they persist in the hive year-on-year. This differs from similar creatures such as bumble bees and common wasps where the colony – in effect – collapses at the end of the season. Bumble bees and…
Honey Bee Species
There are almost 20,000 species of bees in the world which have been identified to date. Bees are close relatives of ants, wasp and hornets. One genus under which all honey bees fall, Apis, contains all the known species of honey bee forming at least 44 sub species. Bees in…
Honey Bee History
In this section we take a closer look at the the origins of the honey bee and beekeeping by humans.
The Apiarist Blog
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/
Swarm Season is here!