Over the last few years, we’ve kept a working relationship with a past Welsh Photographer of the Year, the film maker and photo-journalist Joann Randles. This is because Joann is superbly talented at her day job, capturing moments of time, but it’s invaluable that she is a beekeeper in her own right (and keeps a hive of her own bees in one of our apiaries). Over the years Joann has taken a number of beekeeping

Thursday was a clean-up day. A couple of dozen brood frames passed through the wax steamer, yielding a couple of kilos of good if dark propolis tinted wax. Unlike the honey/pollen stained yellow variety that most people are familiar with, brood wax is much darker and less sought after – except by carpenters who have used it to stain wood and create varnishes for centuries. With a little patience and several filtrations (through fine cloth),

Because bees use chemical scents (called pheromones) to communicate information, including threat and alarm, a few cool wafts from a Beekeeper’s smoker confuses this mechanism and keeps the colony more compliant. This smoking action doesn’t stress the bees, who quickly return to normal once the Beekeeper has moved on.–––––––#localbusiness#welshbusiness#beefacts#bees#beeswax#beekeeping#beekeeper#localhoney#honeyfacts#rawhoney#rawhoneybenefits#honeybees#nature#farmlife#carmarthenshire#Wales#welshhoney#beehealth#climatecrisis#pollinator#savethebees#sustainable#natural

Hint, it may not be where you’d think. The question of the origin of the honeybee wasn’t really clear until the arrival of modern science. We knew that bees as a group arrived on the scene (in what is now Africa) during the Cretacious, some 140 million years ago, the product of a pro-veggie schism among wasp like carnivores. Later, very much like humans in fact, some bees spread out of Africa, in two distinct

According to the Independent Newspaper (22/11/22), research in Canada has shown that taking two spoons of unprocessed raw honey daily can reduce levels of dangerous LDL cholesterol. The study found that honey promoted the development of sought after high-density lipoproteins and improved inflammation. These finding are good news for people with a potential for type 2 diabetes, heart disease or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. According to the article. researchers at the University of Toronto analysed

If you’re read a couple of these recent blog posts, you may have seen that honeybees often communicate essential information to each other using chemical signals called pheromones. Here’s a case in point. Yesterday I used a little smoke to calm a grumpy hive (while I gave them back an extracted honey super to clean) . A little later I noticed bees pointing their posteriors out of the entrances (there are 3 on this hive),