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/
- 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.
- And then there were two. What happens when you split a colony into two? Why might ‘walk away splits’ not be the best way of increasing colony numbers?
- Synopsis: How do eggs appear in places the queen cannot reach? Do these eggs produce worker or drone brood? If bees can move eggs, can they move them to queen cells? Introduction There was a lot of interest in the post last week, and I’d like to thank
- Recent research on the maternal effect in honey bees suggests queen rearing using worker larvae may produce undersized and underperforming queens.