To skip the introduction and get right to the babbling, click here.

Articles under this category are written primarily for my beekeeping protegés / mentees. I choose to share them in a public forum in case that they might be useful to other beekeepers. Read the caveats before taking anything here to heart. Often, when one of my protegés has a question, I will reply with a lengthy email or a sequence of texts. When I am asked a similar question later in time, it would be nice to have my old email or text handy so that I don’t have to rethink and rewrite everything. In future years I hope to have new protegés, and some of these answers may still be relevent. Conversely, I learn, almost constantly, that something I have said needs some clarification or refinement. That is to say … I was mistaken or misinformed or I have rethought my previous opinion. Sometimes the entire beekeeping community learns something new from the science that is constantly expanding our knowledge.

The permanent link for this page is https://ferthalangur.spotch.com/beekeeping/bee-babble/ and it is archived in the Wayback Machine.

This page and all the posts in this category have comments available and I welcome discussion that is constructive and potentially helpful to my primary audience. You may also contact me directly.

Caveats and Disclaimers

• Everything here is strictly my personal opinion. These are formed from a synthesis of sources including: reading books and articles, attending classes and listening to presentations, random stuff off the Internet, my own experiences as a beekeeper, conversations with other beekeepers, my vivid imagination and speculation of how things are, and the permutations of my brain at the time that I consider the question.
• These articles are not be pretty, polished or carefully proofread. In some cases they may not even be complete. I will try to include a warning if I got interrupted mid-thought.
• Some of the names will be changed to protect the guilty.
• What is written is definitely subject to change as I learn more. Corrections may be made to the original article or in a later version.
• Caveat Lector! (Reader, beware!). Do not take anything that I write as fact or the “final answer.” Making mistakes is how we learn, and I have made more than my fair share. I am often dismayed at how much personal opinion and misinformation passes for reliable knowledge in beekeeping. At the same time, I acknowledge that I am subject to the same human failings that lead to that mess. Use this as one source of input data. Do more research and analysis before you accept my word.
• When in doubt, ask your mentor for their opinion. If I am your mentor, well … that was your first mistake. 🙂  No … if you are one of my beekeeping protegés, please do challenge me. If I make an assertion ask me why I say something, I should be able to explain why I think so. I might not remember how I got there, but we should be able to explore it further.
• I make no claim that anything you read here is correct, safe for bees or humans, or will work. You choose to believe anything I write at your own peril!
• I write when my Muse inspires me and I have the time to humor her. I often find myself writing article fragments in my head while I am working my bees, building or fixing my woodenwork, etc. If that was all it took to generate a blog post, everything I know about bees would be here. Free time is scarce … and getting scarcer.

Bee Babble Articles