Rebel Bee
Bees + Honey
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Getting really up close
“There’s places available and it’s free, would anyone like to attend the microscopy workshop?” The Bee-health officer announced to the beekeepers gathered for one of the weekly winter lectures. It’s funny how the mind works, I thought wouldn’t it be nice to see the magnificence of a bee’s wings up close and to study the variety…
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Rhododendron
As I cycle my bicycle along the country lanes I see large swaths of Rhododendrons. In bloom they are a flashy advertisement of flouncy herbage. Their buds are just forming now and will shortly open in a showy display of pink which look specular in a photograph. However, their beautiful display hides that they are…
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Bees are planning and conniving
They’re smart you know. Temperatures are below average but the bees still know it’s spring and they are planning shenanigans. May is around the corner you see. Swarming season. Don’t think that your bees are not already taking little notes with the jotters and pens that they keep hidden somewhere in the vicinity of their…
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Honey with the taste of humility
It was a very wet, windy, dreary and horrible day so what better why to occupy my time than to annoy the good folk of an esteemed and reputable bee keeping forum. I blame Google. It’s too easy to get information…the information of folklore and urban myth that is… finding real hard scientific fact is…
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Deadout
If you’re squeamish don’t read this. For the rest of you if you want to be a beekeeper then you must get used to dead bees. Don’t worry, they don’t haunt you…well kinda but not really. You may have a few sleepless nights wondering what happened and worry just how awful a beekeeper you are…
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Spring inspection of bees… and grass.
The soft, lush grass felt cool against my left cheek through my bee suit hood as I lay sprawled in the orchard beside one of my hives. I look up to see my aider-and-abettor busily putting a box with the old comb into the car. “Good.” I thought, “He didn’t see me.” “Did you enjoy…
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Can I open them yet?
“Can I open them yet? Can I? Can I?” The child ogles the gift of a box of sweets. “Ah, go on, let me open them.” Five minutes later “Can I open them now?” The beekeeping forums are littered with it, the annual plaguing of the Sages for the answer that they want to hear. …
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Missing the point
You’d think that one teeny little dot wouldn’t make any difference. That one teeny little dot wouldn’t make such an eejit of you. Hive alive but it does! There’s this product made in Ireland from some secret ingredients which include seaweed extract that just sang to the bohemian, eco, save the bees, side of me.…
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Full of potential
Bee Nirvana, that’s what I call this apiary. I still feel funny calling the place I have my beehives an apiary as it’s just a place I keep bees. I don’t even own the land, not a chance. A young farmer asked me would I put a hive or two on his land and when…
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Bees, bees, bees
“You’ve bees in your bonnet!” Significant others have a lot to suffer. Then a surprising “Shouldn’t you be feeding the bees or something?” all concerned and surprised at my blasé attitude now that there is a window of reasonable weather. That’s what everyone needs, an aider and abettor but not someone who wants to take…