Carol Thompson

My perspective as a newbee, that may be of use in your information gathering. I just finished my first year as a hobby beekeeper, though I spent years before attending a beekeeping workshop, an AFB course, beekeeping association educational meetings, access to others' hives, and lots of reading. ( I wanted to be able to look after my bees properly once we moved to a bigger property). Sadly, both my hives have died off this Winter, and fortunately I learned enough to be able to work out that they got knocked back too much by varroa in autumn, despite treatment, an episode of queen loss, and

I'm a first year beekeeper, started with two top bars, both housed by collected swarms. Had to shut one down recently and integrate the field bees into my other hive. Had to do it as the colony was too small to get through Winter (laying workers, and three failed attempts to requeen, and varroa, did it in). I was so sad to have to do that. Learnt a lot though. I have Bayvarol in my other hive at the moment, and due to take it off soon. Will combine that with wintering down, because I don't want to be moving bars and breaking propolis seals too much. I did just buy an oxalic vaporiser

I have a nice story about honey gifting. I used to work in a Council call centre and we would get calls from residents about bees that had swarmed and settled on their properties. We had a list of beekeepers that were interested in collecting them, who were happy for their numbers to be given out. (We also tipped the beekeepers off about bees on council land. We were supposed to log for the pest control contractor to deal with the council land swarms, but always tried to get the bees collected by a beekeeper in the first instance). One guy in particular was happy to attend even if the bee