Introduction
As we reach the end of June a spell of hot blustery weather is buffeting the garden, flattening tall flowers and drying up nectar in the lime trees that started flowering this week. Rosebay willowherb is flowering early and following the pattern of other plants such as bramble that has been in bloom here for a few weeks now which is unusual. I’m keeping an eye on stores and will be cautious about harvesting more honey this season. Getting 54 lbs average per colony in spring is a first for me and I shall be happy if that is all that I harvest this season.
The BroodMinder sensor tells me that the native dark bee colony waiting to requeen is maintaining a steady brood nest temperature of around 34 °C. I an expecting this to rise a bit when the new queen starts to lay around 9th July.
I’m happy with all the colonies apart from Hive 5 that’s been grumpy all season and now I’ve discovered that the virgin queen got up into the supers through the queen excluder and produced drones. I haven’t found her yet and this is my challenge for next inspection so wish me luck with that one. More on that when I have solved the problem.
Book Review
I’ve enjoyed reviewing the latest book that Princeton University Press sent me. It is the ideal present for someone you know who already loves bees or wonders why you do. You might remember that I reviewed Laurence Packer’s previous book: https://www.beelistener.co.uk/honey-bees/bees-of-the-world-book-review/
Beepedia: Review.
Title: Beepedia: A brief Compendium of Bee Curiosities
Author: Laurence Packer
Illustrator: Ann Sanderson
Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2025
ISBN: 7980691262383
Cloth Cover, 163 pages
Price: £11:99
Beepedia: A brief Compendium of Bee Curiosities by Laurence Packer is a pocket-sized collection of interesting, quirky and entertaining facts and folklore about bees. The author is a leading world expert on bees and has published several book including Bees of the World: A Guide to Every Family. Packer is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Melittology at York University in Toronto, Canada. This attractive small book has a mauve clothbound cover with a bee embossed on the front and has been beautifully illustrated throughout by science illustrator Ann Sanderson.
Beepedia reads like an A-to-Z encyclopaedia featuring alphabetical entries on many varied topics including pollination, bee behaviour, life cycles of solitary bees, physiology, biology, reproduction, haplodiploidy, and bees in history and religion.
This book has been written for a wide readership. Everyone is intrigued by bees and wants to know more about them since so much attention has been focussed on these important pollinators in recent years, and awareness raised about protecting our environment and the insects that we rely upon for food security. The writing style is friendly, humorous, authoritative and easy-to-read. Discover who Slim Harpo is and why he features here, and why Napoleon Bonaparte chose the bee as his emblem. How do the mechanisms for determining sex in bees work? It is all here. There is a reading list and a classification table for bee taxa at the back of the book.
Beepedia can be dipped into at leisure and enjoyed, or used to find specific information for study or article writing. It is the ideal source of bee quiz questions it you are making one up for your beekeeping club or pub quiz night. I’m going to carry my copy about and read it while I’m waiting for appointments.
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Ann could you please tell me why you will be cautious taking honey off? I don’t understand and don’t want to leave my bees short?
Hello Patricia, I didn’t explain that clearly in the blog. Well it is all to do with one’s location, geography, weather and local environment. Where I live in the north of Scotland we have had an unusually good spring season with perfect weather conditions for a great nectar flow. I took off a large amount of honey and still left the bees with stores. However, since then we have continued to have much warmer weather than usual and the plants are flowering at least two weeks earlier than usual. Bramble (blackberry) doesn’t usually start flowering here till late June early July and I first saw flowers three weeks ago. I keep a close eye on forage as part of beekeeping management. One of the things I worry about is the season being over earlier than usual before the bees have had time to store enough for themselves.
Interestingly, my new BroodMinder sensor also indicates the days when there are good nectar flows, and very little at all, which tallys with my own reckoning for that parameter.
I also keep a close eye on stores in the hives. I need to feed my observation hive bees this morning as they have no stores. Admittedly they swarmed last week and took a lot with them, but they cannot replenish stocks so well as it is hot, dry and windy and the nectar is drying up. I also noticed that they were throwing out some drone pupae which tells me that they don’t have enough stores.
So, it depends upon where you live in the world and what is happening with the weather and outside environment as well as inside the hive. Perhaps conditions are different for you and you will get a good crop of summer honey with enough to harvest. I hope so.
Best wishes,
Ann