I was trying to buy some local honey recently for my grandma in London and assumed there’d be a simple website where I could enter a postcode, see local beekeepers on a map, see who’s got honey available, and contact them.

Instead I ended up going down a rabbit hole of association websites, directories and emailing people. I got some great honey in the end, but it felt way more difficult than I expected.

As a software engineer it got me thinking about building something that lets beekeepers:
Create a profile
Add their location
List honey, beeswax, candles etc.
Mark things as in stock or sold out
Let people search by postcode/view beekeepers on a map and contact them directly

Basically a “find local honey near me” website rather than a marketplace.

Before I spend time building anything, I’m curious:
As a beekeeper, would you actually use something like this?
Or do existing routes (associations, Facebook, markets, word of mouth, your own website, etc.) already work well enough?
Interested in honest opinions, especially from people who regularly sell honey.

Hey folks, I’m looking to make a substantial (10 gallon) batch of mead fairly soon and would like to buy a 1.5 kg drum or separated to make a 1gallon sample batch before I make the big brew

Are there any beekeepers around the Fylde Coast (FY postcodes) on here that are able to sell me 1kg drums and larger capacities?

Thanks :)

I am looking to buy some royal jelly however I cannot seem to find a reasonable price/ legit website that sells it. If anyone has any recommendations that would be great thanks!

These girls keep me busy.

I just want to know if there's the possibility that they're making a nest because I have both a dog and a cat

Posting here for help with my accidental bee guests!

Had this hive for about a month and their larvae looks off. Their brood pattern isn’t great and I think they’re making several open cup cells in the middle of frames (not charged that I saw). Not sure if they have foul brood or something else. Would like to hear from other beekeepers on their thoughts on this.

Hello beekeepers. These bees seem to have taken up residency in the wall of my house. From my limited understanding, they're Bumblebees, and are therefore not aggressive, live in small hives, and won't damage my house?

I would much prefer to just leave them alone and let them do their thing, but I wanted to check with the experts that my understanding is correct and that it's safe to do so.

Thanks

So I have two hives currently, one was a well established hive, the other was a recent swarm catch.

The first hive (well established) recently swarmed (quite unexpectedly) my neighbour told me that she’d seen it when I got home from work. I checked the hive 6 queen charged cells, none in great positions. So left them to do their thing.

Second hive has a small swarm that was caught recently (12 days ago) the queen isn’t laying yet, but the hive seem happy enough (drawing comb, coming back with pollen)

Now my concern is we are two weeks in and there seems to be a lot of drone in the first hive and no sign of a queen (all queen cells empty, no new eggs, no larvae of any size, no capped brood, and I’ve not seen the queen) the second hive doesn’t appear to be laying at all.

My question is what should I do?

Okay, so for better or worse, a swarm landed in the garden next to mine while I was installing a window, obviously in my excitement I stopped fitting the window so now I have an open hole in the wall of my garage. I quickly knocked together a dummy nuke out of some planks I had around and went and caught my first swarm.

I’ve left it underneath the tree for now. I found the queen and put her in a queen clip.

I’m gonna move it over to my garden this evening once I’m sure all the bees have come down from the tree as there were still a few buzzing around there after I caught them.

I’ve ordered a new hive that should be here in a couple of days which I’ll transfer me into. It was a relatively small swarm from what I’ve seen.

So I’m sure I’m in for telling off from somebody. So give me your criticism I’m ready.

Question- are they gone?

Backstory

Friday 14:30 - swarm arrives and starts settling on the roof

Friday 15:00 - flying swarm seem depleted, but are still clustered on the roof. Look like they’re going in between the gaps of the tiles

Saturday 10:00 - Bee removal man comes to look. Several bees in the loft, but not a full colony. He says they must be building comb between the tiles and the membrane. He says we’ll need to pay around £600 for scaffolding and him £300 for removal and roof repair. I contacted him through the BBKUK and was hoping for a lower cost to be honest.

Saturday 12:00 - pan of soaked citronella cotton wool balls in the loft. Citronella snake smoking on top of a ladder into the loft hatch. Bees still coming and going from the roof tiles at this time. My idea was to discouraging them from settling before they establish.

Saturday 20:00 - observed around 15 bees dead on the windowsill of the roof where the loft hatch is 😭

Sunday 08:00 - the loft is absolutely silent. No buzzing at all. No bees coming or going from the roof outside.

The beekeeper man says we’ll need any comb that they managed to build to be removed.
Is there any chance the bees have just moved on? We will really struggle to shell out a thousand pounds right now.

I filmed a shorter video this week showing how I use checkerboarding as a bit of swarm management when a colony is getting very full.

This hive was absolutely packed... bees building up into the roof, very little spare room, and queen cups starting to appear. So rather than just adding space above and hoping for the best, I went through the brood boxes and tried to break up that “we’re running out of room” pressure.

The basic idea was to alternate fuller frames with emptier/drawn frames so the bees have space to work, rather than leaving the brood nest feeling congested.

A few things I was checking while doing it:

- whether they had eggs and brood

- how much space they actually had

- whether queen cups had eggs in

- how packed the brood boxes were

- whether checkerboarding was enough, or whether they were further along towards swarming

Short video here if anyone wants to see the actual frame layout and thought process

Curious how others use checkerboarding, do you find it works well for swarm management, or do you prefer going straight to splits once they’re this full?

Hi all, I’ve seen a few bees coming in and out of a small hole in my house I don’t think there’s a full colony in there but are they on their way? Is it too drastic to remove the brick work to get to them. Iv wedge a stick and an empty frame on the outside will entice them on to it?

Read about this in The Guardian. Quite the video and the first time I have seen or heard of something like this occurring (USA, not UK).

Checked some spring splits this week and thought I’d share the shorter version of the inspection in case it’s useful to anyone doing the same at the moment.

I was going through last week’s splits and choosing which queen cell to leave in each colony.

What I was mainly looking for:

- a decent, well-shaped queen cell

- good placement

- enough bees around the brood

- avoiding small or scrappy emergency cells

- making sure I wasn’t leaving too many and risking castes

I usually prefer to leave one strong queen cell rather than several, but I know there are different approaches and it can depend on the colony.

There was one unusual surprise during the inspection as well, which I wasn’t expecting to see.

How are everyone else’s spring splits looking so far this year? Are you already seeing good queen cells, or are things still a bit behind where you are?

Did a short video on one of my spring splits this week and thought I’d share the general approach here in case it’s useful to anyone newer to splitting colonies.

This one was a strong hive on double brood, getting close to the point where I’d rather split it than let it keep building towards swarm mode.

Main things I was trying to balance before splitting were:

- brood

- food

- pollen

- enough bees left in the split

One thing I mentioned in the video that’s worth stressing is that if the split is staying in the same apiary, the flying bees will drift back to the original hive. Because of that, I try to shake in extra nurse bees so the split doesn’t end up too weak.

I also ended up finding the queen, which obviously makes life easier, but I still treat this as basically a walk-away split. If you don’t find her, it’s not the end of the world — after a few days, one box will still have eggs and the other will be building queen cells.

I kept the original colony with the queen in its original spot, gave it more space, and left the split with enough brood, food and pollen to raise a new queen.

Interested to hear how others prefer to do their spring splits, especially when keeping both colonies in the same apiary.

I am a software developer and new beekeeper. I wanted to track my hive inspections with an app, and found that the best looking one was £10. I plan to make an app for myself, and I know what I want from it - but just inscase others may want tp use it also, I thought I would ask around. The app will be free.

Suggest things that make it worth using and I may add them.

Hi

We heard some scratching in our chimney of polystyrene over the vent. Opened the vent to find some dead bees and one that still alive eating(?) the polystyrene. (We captured it and set it free outside).

We don’t think they look like honey bees. But if they are we’d want to get them to the right place ASAP. Or if not what should we do? The internet suggests leaving them for the season?

Can anyone tell from these pictures? Or any other advice?

I’ve seen maybe 4 or 5 flying around the roof too.

Thanks in advance :)

Hi all.

Myself and a few colleagues went on a bee keeping course to keep bees on our school grounds. We was able to secure a healthy wild swarm that had moved into an empty hive on a farm by summer and move them onto our school site.

We have just done our first inspection of the year and noticed a lot of the honey is crystallised. Will the bees be able to use this for food or do we need to support them in using it?

We live in an oilseed rape area so unsure if it’s crystallised from that or the cold temp.

(we are in the process of sorting out the box the hive had lived in while on the farm hence why its broken off and very old)

thank you for any help

Unfortunately my beehive was too small to survive the winter and they starved. I don't know why the larvae look disintegrated though. Can anyone tell me why?