Be Like Bees

23/12/2025

Merry Christmas to everyone, hoping you have a safe and happy time with family and friends.
If you happen to receive a gift of bees for Christmas, I'm only a phone call or message away 🤩🌸🐝

22/12/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/1ANHczBKMK/

21/12/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16LpgzUVYv/

A follower had a question about uncapping brood—and some people think bees only do it because of wax moth issues.
That’s not true at all! 🐝

When bees uncap brood, they’re doing it for lots of reasons—to inspect the little ones, manage moisture, regulate temperature, and yes, to check for disease or other problems in the hive.

So how do the brood survive all this? Here’s the amazing part:
🐝Careful inspection: Bees are super gentle and precise. They only uncap to check on the brood or adjust conditions—so healthy larvae usually aren’t harmed.
🐝Re-capping: If the brood is healthy, the bees put the wax back quickly, protecting it from the environment and keeping the temperature just right.
🐝Hive temperature: Bees constantly regulate the hive’s heat. Even if brood is temporarily exposed, surrounding bees cluster around to keep it warm.
🐝Moisture control: Bees remove excess moisture before re-capping, which helps prevent disease or mold.
🐝Hygienic instincts: If the brood is sick, the bees remove it—this might sound harsh, but it protects the rest of the colony.
Bee Haven 2025
Basically, honey bees are like tiny, highly skilled caregivers—they inspect, adjust, and protect so the healthy brood thrives and the colony stays strong!

19/12/2025

Look what I found 😍
Nestled in the peanutty shape cell is a tiny queen larvae. It is swimming in a lake of royal jelly.

19/12/2025

Thanks Cat!

Whether you are feeding dry sugar, candyboards, or syrup, it is important to choose the correct sugar. Choosing the wrong sugar can make your bees very sick and result in poisoning or nosema. So, which one should you use?

19/12/2025

17/12/2025

Fun photos from my very basic phone.

15/12/2025

Calendula in bloom close by the hives. But no bees 🤔 Must be something more tasty elsewhere. 🌻

11/12/2025

Split is buzzing away on this fine sunny day.

04/12/2025

Lessons from the Beehive
The Collective Brain (How a Colony Thinks Like a Single Super-Organism)

Here’s a truth that still blows my mind every time I open a hive:

A honey bee colony doesn’t just act like one creature —
it actually thinks like one.

Not metaphorically.
Not poetically.
Scientifically.

A colony is a super-organism, meaning tens of thousands of bees function like the cells of a single body, each with specialized roles, feedback loops, and decision-making systems.

And here’s where it gets deep:

🧠 The hive has a “distributed brain.”
No bee — not even the queen — knows everything happening in the hive.
But together, through pheromones, vibrations, heat, and behavior, the colony forms something like a group intelligence.

It’s not chaos. It’s coordinated instinct.

🔥 1. Temperature regulation = homeostasis

Nurse bees heating brood

fanners cooling the hive

water collectors adjusting humidity
= the hive keeps a perfect 94–95°F for brood.

Just like your body maintains 98.6°F.

🍽️ 2. Food flow = digestive system
Foragers bring nectar.
House bees process it.
Wax producers store it.
Bees even “digest” pollen through fermentation.

The colony literally eats as one.

👑 3. Queen pheromone = hormones
Her scent regulates everything from
brood rearing
to worker behavior
to swarming decisions.

She’s less a “ruler”… and more like the colony’s endocrine system.

🌐 4. Consensus decision-making = cognition
When choosing a new home or deciding to swarm, scout bees “vote” using waggle dances.

More dancers = more support.
Stronger vibration = louder vote.
Unanimous decision = action.

It’s democracy wrapped in biology.

💛🐝 Beekeeper Wisdom:
The hive teaches us that strength doesn’t come from one individual doing everything —
it comes from everyone doing their part, communicating clearly, and trusting the collective.

Lesson from the bees:
You don’t have to carry the world alone.
Great things happen when we share the load, tune into one another, and move with unity.

28/11/2025

Actually true, especially that people are happy to pay a pest controller who will make a temporary fix but not a beekeeper who will solve the problem. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16YBnag12T/