The Beekeeping Prespective

One of the most fascinating things about honey bees is that a colony is never truly the same colony for very long. We often speak about hives as though they are stable fixed systems  this colony, that queen, those genetics ,but in reality a honey bee colony exists in a constant state of renewal. Individuals are continuously dying, emerging, replacing one another and reshaping the colony from within. Change is not an exception in honey bees. It is the normal state of things. And because insects reproduce and turn over generations so quickly compared to larger animals, evolutionary pressures can act on them remarkably fast. Small shifts accumulate continuously. Every brood cycle creates opportunities for variation, adaptation and selection.At the centre of this system stands the queen, but she is not the sole genetic architect of the colony. A queen mates with multiple drones during her mating flights  a strategy known as polyandry. And this changes everything. Insid...

Beekeepers, Stop Blaming the Bees and Start Looking in the Mirror!!! One thing I have noticed in modern beekeeping is how quickly we blame the bees for problems that often begin with us. But how often do we stop and seriously ask: what exactly did we do before the problem appeared?Because if we are honest, many colonies are simply reacting to the conditions we create around them.Take aggression for example. A colony gets defensive during inspection and immediately people rush to say:  “Requeen it.” But nobody asks whether the hive was opened during cold weather, heavy wind, nectar dearth or storm pressure. Nobody asks whether it was already the second or third inspection of the day because the beekeeper forgot equipment, wanted to show the bees to friends or decided to try a new trick they saw online the night before. Bees are not decorative pets. You cannot repeatedly disturb thousands of highly organized living creatures under stressful conditions and then act shocked...