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Hi there! I too am an apicultrice (in Picardy) with 3 hives in my third season! A huge flow of honey despite the drought conditions (hooray 9.5 mm rain last night, first rain for over a month!!) as we are between a huge forest and the plain with sunflowers (smothered with bees) and buckwheat. I...

Ice cold in Alex. Best film ever.

The bees are collecting pollen on the hellebores on the warm (16°) New Year's Eve here in Picardy

With icing sugar and orange juice.

Yummy! I love nonettes but I prefer the glazed version!

A most interesting read Mikael, thank you. I would like to go to 50% and then 100% honey winter feeding. Would it be a good policy to jar up only, say, 50% of each extraction and to set aside the other 50% for winter feeding in the apiary? That way, if the year is bountiful, one can see the...

Why are beekeepers treating with Oxalic Acid now? I'm a novice so please put me right! I understood that OA is only effective when there is little/minimal/no brood, as the so called phoretic mites (who are piggybacking on the bees and so not reproducing and easier to kill). Before OA treatment...

Absolutely! I'm in Northern France and my colonies have hardly put their noses out for 7 weeks to forage. There are Asian Hornets hunting outside each colony all day long. I've put cages over the entrances, I've put out lots of traps (white wine, stout and sweet syrup), I go regularly (though...

Here in France many of us have seen this "new" European Hornet hunting behaviour, becoming like these terrible Asian Hornets. AHs pick off in the air like sparrowhawks, EHs pick off static bees. It is generally thought that the drought and lack of nectar has forced the EHs to modify their behaviour.

Than you for your thoughts. I've already put out wine/beer/syrup traps (filled with corpses immediately! ) and now putting on anti hornet cages. But as he says in the videos, we have to live with them now, which means most importantly, keeping colonies as strong as possible.

I live in Picardy in Northern France. We are experiencing a plague of AHs right now and I have 5 or 6 hornets outside the entrance each hive, picking off bees in flight, as you say. They are very sinister and behave like remote controlled drones. They wait, hovering, facing outwards for incoming...

I live in Picardy in northern France and began beekeeping in 2021. Last year's season was very cold and dry. This year is hot and very dry! Which has meant a huge invasion of Asian Hornets for the past couple of weeks, with 5 or 6 hornets hunting in front of each of my 3 hives, all day long. It...

Loads and loads of them here (Picardy, northern France ) plus the increasing numbers of marauding Asian hornet lurking in front of my hives, pouncing on the bees......

Could it be a mustard crop for soil stabilsation and green manure? I live in the north of France and ours doesn't flower until April...