Author Archives: Emily Scott

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About Emily Scott

I am a UK beekeeper who has recently moved from London to windswept, wet Cornwall. I first started keeping bees in the Ealing Beekeepers Association’s local apiary in 2008, when I created this blog as a record for myself of my various beekeeping related disasters and - hopefully! - future successes.

Winter at last?

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Emily Scott

Last weekend brought a surprise – snowy rooftops. The white stuff melted fast, but the chilly air remained. Down at the apiary the ground was hard and all was quiet, with no bees flying. When the bees are tucked up, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments

New LASI oxalic acid research published

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Emily Scott

A comment by the lovely Amelia from afrenchgarden.wordpress.com on my last post led me to look at the University of Sussex’s Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) website. I was dismayed to see a new press release, ‘Scientists determine how to control … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 22 Comments

An unusually warm winter for the bees

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Emily Scott

Happy New Year everyone! December here in London was unusually warm, with a high of 16°C (60.8°F) recorded at Kew Gardens. This has caused the bees to go through their stores faster than usual and also encouraged them to go foraging … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 24 Comments

The things people want to know about bees

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Emily Scott

I’ve been looking back at the web searches people used to find my blog during 2015. The most popular was ‘honeyflow’, with ‘honey flow’ and ‘honeyflow.com/commercial’ also in the top 10 (the last demonstrating that some people prefer to enter urls into search engines … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Royal Jelly – a story by Roald Dahl

Posted on December 5, 2015 by Emily Scott

If you’ve ever read Roald Dahl’s short stories for adults, you’ll know they’re very different in tone to his more famous children’s books. My mum had both his Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch collections and I re-read them quite a few times … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee biology | Tagged | 35 Comments

Tucking the bees in for winter

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Emily Scott

It has taken a while to come, but at last we have proper see-your-breath-in-the-air, see-the-sparkling-frost-in-the-mornings cold. The kind of cold that stops honey bees flying. I walked round the apiary yesterday and the hives could have been abandoned, so quiet were … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 20 Comments

A visit to the country… with bonus bees

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Emily Scott

Last weekend brought a perfect start to November. An appropriately misty October 31st was followed by a sunny Sunday, showing off the dew glistening on the enormous spider webs hanging from the scaffolding outside our house. To take advantage of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 23 Comments

London Honey Show 2015

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Emily Scott

Today I went to the fifth annual London Honey Show at the Lancaster London hotel. The Show includes the honey competition, talks and stalls to visit. This was the first year it’s been held at the weekend rather than a weekday evening. It seemed … Continue reading →

Posted in Events, Honey | 16 Comments

‘The Bees Knees’ – notes from a talk by Dave Goulson

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Emily Scott

I went to see bumble bee expert Dave Goulson speak recently at a London zoo lates talk. Security guards escorted the audience through the darkening zoo to the B.U.G.S (Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival) House, giving us glimpses of graceful pink flamingoes … Continue reading →

Posted in Events | Tagged | 13 Comments

Stamp art competition – we have a winner!

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Emily Scott

The winner of the fd covers limited edition art print competition (see my previous post), chosen at random, was Barbara Maddock! Congratulations Barbara. To enter the competition, you needed to leave a comment telling me either your favourite thing about … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments