Hi, I’m a beekeeper in Surrey looking after around 8 colonies. As well as being a bee slave I also make most of the hive equipment I use and you can find the some of the plans on the site.

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My Beekeeping

I have been keeping bees for around 18 years. Coming through the Winter with 5 colonies (no losses this year!) and this has now grown to 8 through expansion and a swarm. I am now focussed on trying to get a reasonable honey crop. I use mainly 14 x 12 National equipment but still have some of the standard BS National hives I started out with. My bees are in 2 locations just over 2 miles apart but have different foraging habitats – one is urban and the other is in a rural setting alongside the River Mole.

Articles

General information on what to think about if you are getting started on beekeeping as well as articles on apiary management. I try and rear my own queens using grafting and and a Cloake board. For managing Varroa I use a homemade vaporiser and drone trapping. Go to Articles

Plans

Asection with the main plans that I use for building some of my hive equipment.I have built other equipment, such as a solar wax melter, oxalic acid vaopriser but not got around to uploading the plans. For the completed equipment articles go to Plans

Blog

Coming into the 2018 season I have decided that I would try and keep my beekeeping blog updated over the course of the season. I will post about my successes and failures as well as add to the articles and techniques section. So far the season had a slow start with a very wet Spring holding back the bees’ activities. Now Summer has arrived early with a heatwave, but the bees are certainly taking advantage of the warm temperatures and long days and filling up the supers.