I Built Them a Buffet
Wasps stripped our new queen’s colony back to a few dozen bees, and it turns out we’d left them a snack. What we did, what we got wrong, and how it all traces back to a split that went sideways in June.
varroa
Thirteen Ways to Treat Varroa, and Why We Reach for Apiguard
The home apiary. Three hives and a new nuc, as of this week. We ordered the Apiguard yesterday. It hasn’t landed yet, and for once that’s useful, because it means there’s still time to do a proper mite count before anything goes near a hive. Three hives now, and a new nuc that turned up … Read more
Two Weeks Later
One queen thriving, one nuc lost to wasps, and one hive still refusing to say whether it has a queen at all. A bit of everything in this one.
Bring a Lid: The Great Mite Count Mishap of April 2026
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.
The Bees Knew. (The Science Just Caught Up.)
A new research paper reveals that honey bees may be running their own viral surveillance system. We break down what recapping behaviour means, why resistant colonies do it better, and what Bee Girl thinks it sounds like (spoiler: a sick bay).
The Secret Lives of Varroa Mites (Or: How Bees Are Way Smarter Than We Give Them Credit For)
A Bee Happy Honey Deep Dive Okay, so Mum here. I recently sat through a lecture by Professor Stephen Martin about varroa mites, viruses, and how bees adapt to both. And friends? My brain is officially melted. In the best possible way. I walked in expecting the usual doom and gloom about colony collapse and … Read more
Think Before You Treat: What We Learned About Chemical-Free Beekeeping (And The Possibly Terrible Decision We Made)
Right, so full disclosure before we go any further: this is our first year keeping bees. Our FIRST year. We got them in spring, we’ve been learning as we go (with approximately zero idea what we’re doing), and we’re currently in our first winter praying we haven’t killed them all — and nervously second-guessing our … Read more