A mother-daughter beekeeping adventure
So that’s what I did. I built hive stands. I tidied the garden. I enjoyed, genuinely enjoyed, having nothing beekeeping related that needed doing. If you keep bees you will know how strange that feels. Standing in your own garden with your hands empty, on purpose, is not something this hobby prepares you for. I … 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
A Buzzword Post There are moments in beekeeping where the bees do exactly what you hoped they would do, exactly when you needed them to do it, and you have to resist the urge to ring someone about it at an inappropriate hour. This was one of those weeks. But we’ll get to that. The … Read more
A Buzzword Post There is a specific kind of beekeeping day where the sky looks at you, then looks at your hive, and makes a decision on your behalf. Today was that day. The BBC had been threatening thundery showers since Wednesday. By Saturday lunchtime the air had gone heavy and the bees were flying … 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.
BEE HAPPY HONEY | The Bee Garden | May The hedgerows are alive with blossom. Your colony is at its most ambitious. And somewhere in all this abundance, there is a problem waiting to catch you out. May is the month that beekeepers talk about all year. The blossom is out. The hedgerows are white … Read more
A spring varroa board count in County Antrim, a gust of wind at exactly the wrong moment, and what we learned about mite monitoring when the week’s debris ends up scattered across the apiary gravel.
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.
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.