Claire Waring suggests some important considerations for aspiring beekeepers in this article extract from the January 2025 issue of The Country Smallholder magazine…
January is the time for New Year resolutions – at least making them. It would appear that many are made in a fit of enthusiasm but most last only a matter of months – or even weeks or days!
Maybe your 2025 resolution is to start keeping bees. That’s great, but this isn’t something that you can just abandon when other things come along to demand your time or interest. It doesn’t matter if you don’t go back to the gym – only you lose out – but it does matter if you walk away from a colony of bees.
‘But bees are essentially wild and can look after themselves’, I hear you say. This is true, but only to a certain extent. Since the arrival of the parasitic varroa mite in 1992, bees have needed help from man to survive. The mites feed on the bees’ fat bodies and transfer virus particles around, with this infection generally what kills the colony.
BEES IN THE ENVIRONMENT
And it is not only the bees’ welfare you need to consider but their place in the environment. Bee colonies reproduce by swarming. The old queen and approximately half the bees leave the hive and cluster together nearby before heading off to a new nest cavity. Depending on colony size, the next virgin queen(s) to hatch also leave(s) the hive with more bees.
These swarms can cause great consternation to neighbours and considerable inconvenience if the chosen nest cavity happens to be their chimney.
This article extract was taken from the January 2025 edition of The Country Smallholder. To read the article in full, you can buy the issue here.
