A mother-daughter beekeeping adventure
BEE HAPPY HONEY | The Bee Garden | Between June and July The blossom is over, the summer flowers are not quite here yet, and your colony is bigger than it has ever been. This is the moment every new beekeeper needs to know about. We had been feeling pretty good about things. The hawthorn … Read more
The weather these past few weeks has been miserable. Showers, thunder, cold snaps dropping into single digits when May should be settling into the teens. And like a lot of beekeepers I know, weekends are realistically my only window to get into the hive properly. The girls don’t care about my Monday to Friday. The … Read more
Everyone has their own way of lighting a bee smoker. This is mine. By Bee Girl We got a smoker this Spring. It came in a box and I got to open it which was the best bit. It is very shiny. I don’t think it will stay shiny for long because that is not … Read more
A real hive inspection from 24th April 2026. Bee Girl ran the whole thing. Mum worried about chalk brood. It was a drone larva. Six frames of solid brood and a lot of optimism about this year’s honey.
It is hailing outside. Not drizzling. Not “a bit damp.” Hailing. In April. In Northern Ireland. So today we are not opening the hive — and here is why that is absolutely the right call.
The Buzzword | Learning Together | March 2026 There is a moment in every beekeeper’s education when they discover that something they thought was their own idea already has a name, a method, and about seventy years of history behind it. This post is about one of those moments. After adding our second brood box … Read more
Our bees built comb in the roof. They needed more space. So we added a second brood box — but not before standing in the garden overthinking it for ten minutes.
We thought it was a nice little tradition. Then we fell down a research rabbit hole that stretches from ancient Greece to 7th century Irish law to the Royal Beekeeper telling the bees when Queen Elizabeth died. The story of why bees must never be bought — only gifted.
Bees do not care about your schedule. The plan was simple: a colony of bees as a birthday present for Bee Girl. But nucleus colonies are ready when nature decides, not your birthday calendar. This is the story of our first bees, our incredible mentor, and a summer we’ll never forget.
We’d done the course. We’d passed the assessment. And then Bee Girl looked at me and said: ‘So… now we actually have to do it?’ This is the story of how we went from classroom beekeepers to actually owning suits, a hive, and approximately 50,000 new pets.