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Spent a lovely few days playing with candle moulds and jarring up a small remaining bucket of OSR honey which the good folk of Co Antrim have been asking for. It does sell out very quickly and the requests keep coming so good to know should we get a repeat crop next year. Candle wise the abelo...

I Have a feeling that I followed that piece in May and promptly lost a swarm. My first time trying the method. I love the "Apiarist" site and may have read something out of context but I remember retrospectively slapping my palm to my forehead and thinking "Doh, queen cells noo". Learnt my...

Oh thank you! Trust me, camera angles are everything lol. Fess up - I had major barney time with a neighbour who is a considerable distance from the hives due to frasse. I've never had angry bees here - no issues with stinging but wow I experienced a nutter hive this summer at another site -...

My rather soggy north sloping quarter of an acre is a long, thin rectangle with the house plonked 3/4 way to the north. It's about 600' above sea level backing onto the Belfast hills. The garden was established nearly 60 years ago by my garden mad parents. Now, I HATED gardening but in the last...

My thanks to you all. I think this is a limited list which they have to pick from in order to perhaps avail of funding. We're some 800 ft up and pretty cold/ windy. My understanding is that they are beef farmers so this would from their point of view, be to contain livestock. I will pass on...

My local farming family (hills above Belfast) has kindly hosted a few hives for me this list year. It's quite a bleak spot and quite frankly an emergency "third" spot but I'm nevertheless grateful for it. They are very interested in the bees and are about to choose new hedgerow planting for next...

That's a mad amount of compost. Whew. I DID consider asking neighbours for their food waste but I think they are already of the opinion that I have very strange hobbies/ life style! It's very much decking and tarmac round here with the occasional designer pot at a door. Depressing to realise...

I've had several disasters in that vein some time ago. I remember Charles Dowding warning about it. It's just not worth the risk to me. I'm on a much smaller scale but have found a hot bin excellent for making compost quickly. I decant the finished batches into more conventional compost bins...

I live 5 minutes walk from a zoo. Some 20 years ago, my neighbour's small child came running into her kitchen screaming, "Mummy, mummy there's a teddy bear in our tree!" Turns out Sheila and Rory the resident red pandas had made a break for it and one had traversed the fields to our gardens. The...

Bumbles will seek out mouse holes to nest in. Apparently they can detect the UV signature of mouse urine and use that to track a potential home. We have a lot of them doing this and thus nesting in banks, under hedges and this year, in my "no dig" raised beds! Badgers blooming wrecked several of...

I'll second that. My castle suit has lasted me well - I literally can't fault it. It's the velcro over those zip areas that's the Icing on the cake. It looks and feels very secure.

It works best for me in bad weather/ when not much of a flow on. If it's bountiful and sunny out there, they can be v slow to clear a super down but conversely I've seen them suck it dry literally overnight. Teeny gap and I think leaving a few frames out and separating them a bit might help too.

Wow and that's why I like beekeeping so much Malcolm. Mental and physical exercise. Don't you just "love" a challenge? I've cancelled my magazine subscriptions and now spent my happy retirement mornings reading posts like this. Free and more entertaining/ educational reading. Love it. Can't...

They are beautiful mountains, said to be the inspiration for Narnia (C.S. Lewis being a Belfast boy). I'd forgotten about "Are you right there Michael" being a Percy French song. You brought back a poignant memory of my dad (a beekeeper back in the day) singing it around the house. Nice.

James where on EARTH do you get your skills and energy from? If they were buyable I'd be ordering. I'm loving reading all your posts. Ingenuity to the nth!

Ooh shock horror! C S Lewis AND Percy French are spinning in their graves. I'm showing my age I realise.

Thank you for going to the bother of penning that. What a fab tale! Hopefully it will inspire others to share how they got bitten (stung?) by the lovely madness that is beekeeping.

Gorgeous moth. I saw them in France last September and thought I was seeing things. Truly special.

Ah memories of our wonderful if slightly bonkers zoology lecturer Dr Gotto at QUB in the 80s. He was posted to several exotic locations whilst in the RAF (WW2). His lecture anecdotes included putting his arm on a Portuguese Man o' War to see if the reaction was as bad as his text books said...

Ah what a coincidence lol. I've just given basically the same advice a few days back to a fellow Norn Ironer who posted on the Next Door App here. I did advise to proceed with caution due to the fire risk if attempting a cool smoking. It does sound likely to be a specialist job but phew...