Alan Wade Hives with two queens In Part I we explored the ‘The one colony – One queen principle’, the universal condition of the honey bee colony. That two or more queens might be introduced […]
Alan Wade All together altogether We often take for granted that bees work cooperatively and then it would seem of their own volition? We would be quite surprised were we hive a swarm only to […]
Alan Wade Polistes chinesis 47 cell nest (above and below) from Jerrabomberra Wetlands Polistes humilis from Fogg Dam NT August 2018 In Part I, we briefly examined the origins of advanced eusocial behaviour amongst ants, […]
Alan Wade The one colony – One queen principle One of the fundamental operating tenets of any honey bee colony is that it will support only one queen, an innate characteristic of the eleven or so […]
Alan Wade In the two previous blogs we’ve visited autumn closedown. Trouble is this year, any boxes of stickies that have been put back on hives for clean up were promptly refilled. Take the illustrated […]
Alan Wade Robert Banker an apiarist to emulate In the mid 1970’s, Robert Banker, a major collaborator in the revision of the standard text The Hive and the Honey Bee, vice-president of Apimondia and the […]
Should you prevent swarming? While many natural beekeepers advocate allowing bees to swarm, and there is perhaps some merit in allowing them to do so [see Tom Seeley’s Darwinian Beekeeping Seeley-2017-Darwinian-Beekeeping-An-Evolutionary-Approach-to-Apiculture], there is a very a […]