Articles

Queens: Collaboration and how to make it easy on yourself and your bees – by Karl Colyer
Articles

Queens: Collaboration and how to make it easy on yourself and your bees – by Karl Colyer

Nick Mawby
14 October 2020

Last year, I did several splits including splits of all my favourite breeder colonies in mid-August. It was a slight gamble where I live in Cheshire but the weather was fair and the outlook very similar. Roger mentioned that I was out of action from last September (2 months to get walking, a year to pass a medical to get my driving licence back and lots of mobility issues in between). The rivers around me flooded while I was in hospital and many of my bees and colonies were literally swept away.
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Articles

A Native Dark Bee Project

Nick Mawby
18 July 2015

Margie Ramsay reports on a project reintroducing A.m.m. to a reserve in Scotland. Update July 2015 In 1905, just before the First World War there was a 20 year long bee plague called Isle of Wight disease which was considered by many, including bee breeder Brother Adam, to have eradicated…

Articles

Honey bee conservation

Nick Mawby
12 November 2014

In order to compensate the dramatic losses of honeybee colonies that we see globally for many years now, beekeepers try to restore their apiaries by importing colonies or queens in the hopes that those survive better than their previous bees. Such imports increase the level of introgression with local honeybee…

Native Honey Bees
Articles

Native Honey Bees

Nick Mawby
7 September 2013

It is fairly certain that the Dark European Honey Bee, Apis mellifera mellifera, has been native to mainland Britain since before the closing of the Channel Landbridge, when sea levels rose following the last Ice Age. They became isolated and adapted to the different conditions they found themselves in.