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Introduction to our Honey Bee FAQ

I wrote this FAQ before I'd ever heard of FAQ's and I called it 'Common Questions about Honey Bees'. When collecting swarms I would chat to the panicking 'victims' and generally win them around to being interested in the life of the honey bee. This was OK but I soon realised that people were often asking the same questions and sometimes I didn't have time to give the whole answer.

Eventually I got around to writing down all the answers to the typical questions asked. This was great because now while the bees were climbing into their new home I could slope off to the pub for an hour leaving the FAQ with the interested party. When I returned, often I was greeted with 'This is really interesting' or 'I never realized that...' and 'Can I keep this (FAQ)'. When the Internet came along a couple of years later I realised I was an author of a FAQ. Now click here to go to the FAQ.

If anyone wishes to copy it you are most welcome, I only ask for credit as the original source.

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Beekeeping Beginners FAQ Introduction

This FAQ that is intended to answer these questions that potential and new beekeepers tend to ask. In its present format it is aimed at UK beekeeping with the styles of hives and contact details, happy reading and let me know if there are any problems to be corrected.

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Introduction to Our Exhibition Bee Model

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In 1995 we went to Malaysia on holiday and saw a fascinating poster depicting all the activities within a honey bee colony in a humorous and educational way. We were so impressed that we thought an even better medium would be to build a large model. A three dimensional cartoon really. When we built this model about 6 months later we could not remember much detail about the original

poster and used all our own ideas which exhibits a fairly warped sense of humour. Since then it was been exhibited widely in the UK including the Royal Shows and at Apimondia in Antwerp 1997. Click here to see more photos

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Introduction to Running A Live Bee Show

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At country shows for over 150 years a great attraction has been a live demonstration of a beekeeper manipulating a colony of bees. Bee driving and bee beards where also greatly appreciated but not part of this article. However with the world becoming increasing litigious it has been a concern that with bees flying free in public, the risk of an odd sting is always present. I have been working on the idea of containing the bees within a completely netted gazebo enclosure and allowing the public to view real manipulations at very close quarters. Recently we have even allowed children, suitably protected and supervised, to take a colony apart in front of their parents and friends with great success. And the following describes my methods

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Easy Processing of Oil Seed Rape Honey

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Much is written about creaming OSR honey with special tools and the black magic of 'seeding' with that perfect fine grained honey you kept from last year. Having tried these methods, and at best found them tiresome and inconsistent I eventually developed a much easier and simpler method. I have honey from five years ago that is still the consistency of whipped cream today.

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Open Mesh Floors

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Conventional open mesh floors seem to be similar in that they all use a drawer type arrangement. This arrangement is vulnerable to the bees gumming up the sliding elements unless messy lubricants are applied, they also demand a relatively skillful carpenter to manufacture the varies detailed joints. So I set out a few years ago to design a very simple OMF trying to overcome the shortcomings of existing designs.

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