There’s a myth I’ve heard a few times, that bees shouldn’t be able to fly as their bodies are too big for their wings. Obviously, this isn’t the case as we see bees flying all of the time, so what’s going on? This myth is so pervasive that it’s the opening shot of “The Bee Movie” from 2007…but in all honesty that doesn’t surprise me as that movie gets so much wrong about honeybees, the main thing being that all the workers are female, not male as depicted in the film! But the

Spring is upon us, with the snowdrops, crocus and daffodils out and cherry blossoms about to bloom. Inside the hives the population is still entirely female, the singular queen with her many thousands of female worker bees raising the brood (baby bees) and boosting the food stores after a long and wet winter. Within the next month or so, the queen will start laying male eggs and the adult drones emerge 24 days later. One of the first drones of the year Drones have an interest

One of the most frequently asked questions I get asked around this time of year is “what do the honeybees do over winter?”. They do a kind of hibernation: as the days get shorter and the temperature drops, the honeybees mostly stay in their hive keeping warm. If they have brood (bee larvae) then the internal temperature of the hive will be around 35°C, but in December when the days are at their shortest, they may enter a broodless period where they’ll allow the temperature to