Monthly Archives: December 2016

All Beekeeping is Local Beekeeping, Even in the 19th Century

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I may occasionally post a photo from a book when I read something that’s relevant to my kind of beekeeping or my approach to beekeeping. Here’s a good example taken from The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture (1947 edition). I think it’s from page 488, somewhere in the Ls:

This is great. I believe it’s from the original edition of the book published in 1879. So even way back then, they knew more than most new beekeepers do today, that all beekeeping is local beekeeping. When I hear someone tell that this is the best way to feed my bees, or that’s the best way to inspect my hives, I ask myself, “Where do they keep bees?” If the answer isn’t in exactly the same climate where I keep my bees, then I make sure not to take it as gospel. That little piece of knowledge has served me well over the years.

It’s also led me to pretty much disregard most of what I hear from any organisation or person who pretends to speak with authority or goes out of their way to give advice or gives advice with exclamation points at the end of every sentence. Not that it stops me from doing things, way too many things, that I shouldn’t do (I can’t help myself), but learning how to recognise and filter out all the bad advice is such a wonderful place to be. It allows me to put more trust in my own experience and my own mistakes.

Birds & Bees

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I often see small birds like these pecking away at dead bees around my hives in the winter.

It doesn’t seem to take long for the birds to realise where the bees are.

Usually see the birds swoop down from the trees, flitter from one bottom entrance to another, grab a bee and fly back up in the trees to eat it.

In this case the bird flew to the top of a hive instead. According to the University of Delaware (PDF):

“Various types of birds such as shrikes, titmice, kingbirds, swifts, martins, thrushes, mockingbirds and others may eat honey bees. They consume very few bees and most bee colonies can suffer the occasional loss of a worker bee to a bird.”

It’s never been a problem for me.

Beekeeping With a “Flir One for Android” Thermal Imaging Device

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August 2019 Introduction: I fooled around with a Flir One For Android thermal imaging device for about three years. It’s not a device for beekeepers on a budget. I doubt I would have picked it up myself if I didn’t get it as a birthday gift. I wouldn’t call it essential for the kind of backyard beekeeping that I do, but I have to confess that I got in the habit of using it often in the winter, even though the battery doesn’t last much longer than five minutes on a typical freezing Newfoundland winter day. It doesn’t give me the most accurate thermal images of bees, but it provides an indication of whether or not the cluster is big or small, dead or alive, or dying. I don’t have to tap on the side of the hive and listen to the roar of the bees to see how they are doing. I don’t have to listen carefully with my stethoscope. Typically, I plug the device into my Android phone, turn everything on and then run out to my hives and take as many photos as I can as quickly as possible before the battery dies. I don’t think it ever lasts more than 10 minutes. I have my doubts that the built-in battery was designed for cold places like Newfoundland. Here are some sample images and video to give an idea of how it played it out for me.

An example of using the Flir One in the dark:


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