Alan Wade In the 1950s an eminent group of American apiarists collaborated to present a coherent approach to spring hive management. They realised that the processes of honey bee population buildup, swarm preparation and queen […]
Alan Wade Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the true. In MemoriamiAlfred Lord Tennyson – […]
Alan Wade Much can be learnt from close inspection of brood combs. That is quite all apart from examining brood for the telltale signs of disease. What do we look for when we open up […]
Alan Wade In this episode, we delve deeper into the biology of the giant honey bees, magnificent insects, but emphatically fearsome creatures. Here we review the defining features of the known giant honey bees. With […]
Alan Wade The Apis dorsata group are the whoppers of the bee kingdom: they have the largest body mass, the longest and largest stings, by far the largest venom glands and, to boot, one extra […]
Alan Wade First and foremost Don Peer knew how to produce honey. As Miksha recallsi: One of the legendary beekeepers of western Canada, Don Peer, a Nipawin beekeeper with an entomology PhD, once told us […]
Alan Wade, Jenny Robinson and Peter Robinson In May 1967 Sergeant Pepper’s lonely hearts club band hit the number one spot on the Top Forty charts: Beatlemania was rampanti. The 2002 arrival of small hive […]
Alan Wade What do bees use to reorganise themselves when they are dropped off a frame outside the hive or the hive topples over? How do bees maintain cohesion when migrating as a swarm? Why […]
Alan Wade As in other animals, there are two types of glandular chemicals that regulate honey bee behaviour: primer pheromones and releaser pheromonesi. Primer pheromones act at a physiological level, triggering complex and long-term responses […]
Alan Wade, Des Cannon and Dave Flanagan In an unlikely tale of rivers of honey, we recently stumbled across two extraordinary beekeepers. One of them turned out to be Dave Flanagan, now a helpful author. […]