Spare a thought for …

… the long-suffering partners of beekeepers.

The idioms fishing widow, golf widow, or football widow are well known, although possibly a little sexist for this day and age. They refer to the abandoned spouse, left at home while the husband enjoys himself.

Use of these idioms ignores both the rise and rise of women's football, and the continuing fall in the marriage rate (now below 50%).

The term golf widow dates back to ~1890, although the general form of 'something' widow — as in California widow (meaning a woman abandoned by her husband during the Gold Rush, from ~1850), or grass widow (from 1529; a woman living apart from her husband {{1}}, though the etymology is more interesting; originally the term meant an unmarried woman with an illegitimate child) — are older.

'Beekeeping widow' is not one I've heard used, and a web search for it largely turns up discussion of spiders (black and false widow) in hives {{2}}.

Perhaps this is because beekeeping is practised by similar numbers of men and women?

I've tried to find some dependable numbers on this, and failed. There's a post featuring a heady mix of misogyny, politics, and religion on this topic in the Beekeeping Forum, though it provides relatively few insights into the male/female ratio of beekeepers 😞.

In my — very limited — experience, I see more male beekeepers in the audiences of my talks, but the organising committees of the associations who kindly invite me are often predominantly female {{3}}.

Furthermore, the younger the average age of the audience, the more likely there will be similar numbers of males and females.

So 'widows' is definitely inappropriate, and 'spouse' is also wrong (because of both the decline in the marriage rate, and the lack of any implied 'abandonment').

However, whatever the terminology, the partners of beekeepers have a lot to put up with … assuming that they are not themselves beekeepers.

And, if they are, they'll be familiar with the 'issues' described below 😉.

Home is where the heart is

Fishing-, golf-, and football widows (or, presumably, widowers) are 'abandoned' by their partners because the activity takes place remotely.

Beekeeping is different because, although some aspects might be remote, a lot of it happens at home … and that's when problems can arise.

Even if there are no hives in the garden, and all the bees are safely tucked away in distant apiaries, hobby beekeeping involves a lot of related activities that are usually conducted in and around the home.

This can lead to friction.

Not always of course, but sometimes.

Particularly if the partner is overly fussy or house-proud beekeeper is a single-minded, unthinking, or selfish individual.

Before embarking on a tour of the potential 'issues' I should emphasise that, although The Apiarist is very much written from a personal perspective, the following post was compiled after extensive discussion with other beekeepers. I'm grateful to them for highlighting the issues they have experienced as I had absolutely no idea that any of these things were a problem and, where appropriate, the solutions they have proposed.

As we slide gently into 2026, perhaps addressing some of these can be incorporated into my your New Year's resolutions?

Space, the final frontier

It's frequently said that the National hive is too small for the more prolific strains of honey bees. There are a number of solutions including the dreaded (by me) 'brood and a half', double brood or 14 × 12 boxes.

Alternatively, you could invest in the world's most popular hive type, the Langstroth, and benefit from the huge range of variants that exist; 8, 9, 10, 12, or 13 frame boxes, in shallows, mediums, or deeps … so much for compatibility 😉. At least some of them are bigger than National's.

Whatever the size of the brood box, you'll also need supers for honey production.

And a spare hive, or at least a nuc, for swarm control. Plus some more boxes to store spare frames, unless you create some sort of crafty racking system for the shed or the garage.

Perhaps that should be a couple of nucs? They are always useful. And you'll need some more boxes to build a bait hive from.

Most of those boxes will be unoccupied for much of the season. They need to be kept somewhere. As do the buckets for honey storage, the jars, the extractor, and all the other 'essentials' {{4}} that are involved in beekeeping.

It's a high volume activity.

Of course, hives are designed to be weatherproof, so the spares can easily be stored outdoors. Although unoccupied by bees they will still probably smell of bees, so you'll inevitably attract a few visiting scout bees, and wasps in a bad season.

And, by few, I mean potentially hundreds … or, if the scout bees lead a swarm to the stacked spares, thousands.

This might be a problem for some … just sayin'.

If you live rurally, with several outbuildings, or the space for a shipping container (or two), then storage is a non-issue. But most beekeepers don't have that sort of luxury, so space can become a bit of a issue.

It's not just storage space either. Working space, when extracting or jarring honey, or cleaning and drying the extractor and buckets, encroaches on just about everything living space.

All of which means that a beekeeper needs TARDIS-like accommodation, extraordinary tidiness, or a very understanding partner.

Most beekeepers I've talked to take advantage of the last of these, but fail dismally at the first two 😉.

Putting the bee into beesuit

Apiary hygiene is important.

The hive tool(s) live in a Clip Lock™️ sandwich-type box filled with washing soda, stored in the apiary, underneath a hive stand.

The gloves are disposable long-cuffed nitriles, providing excellent dexterity coupled with more than adequate sting protection.

Everything not sheathed in nitrile is either unimportant, impervious to stings, or covered by a beesuit or jacket.

If you're anything like me (and you're hopefully not), the front of the suit gets smeared with propolis during my “don't demonstrate it like this during the beginner's class” frame handling when inspecting colonies.

I'm not sure quite how this happens, but it does. And it's obviously worse on hot days when the propolis is extra-gooey.

These are often the days when I spend long hours in the apiary, at that time of the season when the most disruptive hive manipulations are necessary.

If you're shaking through a brood box to harvest nurse bees for mini-nucs, performing a shook swarm, splitting a towering cell raiser into 3-frame nucs, or hiving swarms, you will inevitably be surrounded by a lot of flying bees.

Most return to somewhere-or-other … probably the original hive, or one nearby. However, others settle on convenient surfaces, such as your shoulder, or the wrinkles in your beesuit where the veil joins the jacket.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

You return to the car, wriggle out of the beesuit (turning it inside-out in the process) and dump it in the boot, before returning home for a beer.

In the interests of good apiary hygiene you add the beesuit to the pile of washing destined for the machine.

Later, long after you've forgotten the maelstrom of bees surrounding you earlier, your relaxing beer is disturbed by some intense swearing and clearly expressed views on precisely what your partner thinks of you, your hobby, and your damned bees!

Oops!

Car trouble

All beekeepers using out apiaries should have a capacious, sturdy, and reliable vehicle.

The 'bee-mobile'

A Toyota Hilux is a popular choice, especially if you require off-road capabilities {{5}}, though the space in the bed is a bit limiting in the four-door variants. Alternatively, a small van is ideal, and I've often looked longingly at a VW Caddy Cargo, particularly in the 4motion (4WD) variant. Lots of space, more comfortable and more economic to drive than a Hilux.

The bee-mobile can be left piled up with the empty supers, spare frames, clearers, the box of combustibles for the smoker, the smelly smoker itself, and the 101 other items needed (almost never) in the apiary.

So, when you need to go to the apiary, you're ready … wagons roll!

However, like most beekeepers, although I own a capacious, sturdy and reliable vehicle, it's also used for trips to the coffee shop, to take the dogs to the vet, friends to the airport, or (😱) to go shopping.

And almost all of these trips are incompatible with the empty supers, spare frames, clearers, the smoker/fuel … and all the rest.

Actually, I've been informed that all of those uses are incompatible with several cubic feet of beekeeping equipment 😞.

And that's before you consider the unintended additions to the car that beekeeping brings.

Those smears of propolis (again), as the stacked supers slide about during travel, or the inconspicuous drip (or three) of honey left behind after transporting the summer honey harvest for extraction.

And the odd stray bee.

My bees are now on the other side of the valley, not the other side of the country, and I cannot justify two vehicles {{6}}, so I have to be on my best behaviour.

Here are three tips to make things a little easier:

• Boot liners. You can get these for most cars, ideally a custom-fit for your vehicle. Make sure they're rubberised, so they can be wiped clean … or jet washed, as appropriate. Usually jet washed.
• Use Correx roofs underneath supers to catch any drips during transport. For a measly £1.75 you can save yourself a whole world of pain 😉. I've used these for years, and they've stopped a series of rather grubby cars from dirtying my valuable combs of honey.
• A super-sized 'Really Useful' box should accommodate everything you need for a trip to the apiary, perhaps excepting the smoker and the spare supers/clearers etc. This makes emptying the car easier and quicker … and loading it again for the next trip to the apiary.

Waxing lyrical

I don't make candles.

I've either tried and failed, or tried and not enjoyed it enough to do it seriously.

But mainly the first of these.

However, that doesn't mean I've avoided problems with leaving unwanted wax around the house.

No siree!

Been there, done that, got the scars.

Other than the odd small wax lumps ground into the carpet, or blocking the sink, or — 'How on earth did it get there?' — in the washing machine (it was from rinsing the scrim bag from the Speidel hydropress 😉), the two main 'issues' I've encountered are:

1. When using a hot air gun to uncap supers you generate a fine spray of tiny molten wax globules that can travel far and wide. Not metres, but further and wider than you'd think. Cover your clothes appropriately, and make sure both the floor and the walls of the extraction room are protected. I use acres of thick polythene, and sticky rolls of gaffer tape to create a 'safe space' to work in. I suggest you do too.
2. Dirty saucepans. I try to remove unfinished fondant from colonies as they go into the winter. I think it acts as a heat sink, and would prefer they used their stores and/or stay huddled together in a semi-torpid state waiting for the weather to improve {{7}}. Almost always, there are small patches of wax on the remaining fondant where the bees have built comb, or at least started to. Mixed 1:1 by weight with water, and converted to syrup, this fondant is perfect for feeding to colonies early the following season. However, when heated, the wax melts, floats to the surface and forms a distinctive — and tricky to shift — tidemark around the saucepan. There are two solutions; the first is to clean the pan with washing machine powder, which is abrasive enough and contains strong detergent activity to shift the wax. Alternatively, use a saucepan dedicated to bee work or, better, the largest — and cheapest — slow-cooker you can find {{8}}.

A sticky situation

Honey is wonderful stuff. A jar of nicely-labelled honey is a perfect snapshot of a week or two of the summer past. Golden, sparkly and delicious. It's (rightly) highly valued and makes a fantastic gift, or an opportunity for scrumptious self-indulgence.

But, getting it from the comb to the jar creates all sorts of opportunities for spillages, drips, drops, leaks, and oozes, any one of which might easily escape detection by the beekeeper.

And often does.

But it's unlikely to escape the detection of your partner 😞.

I refer you back to the acres of polythene and yards of gaffer tape … protect your working area … and your relationship.

Holiday blues

I don't want to be ageist, but the beekeepers I meet (virtually) during Zoom talks, or those I've learnt from in person, are generally … in the prime of their lives.

More or less 😉.

The majority of them are unlikely to be restricted to taking holidays during the times when the schools are off. Rather than sit on sweltering crowded beaches surrounded by screaming kids, they can pick and choose their vacation location, and its timing.

For those of us in the (regularly) dull, wet corner of North-Western Europe, the more southerly European destinations can be too hot in midsummer {{9}}.

Anyway, that's when our dull, wet corner is a bit drier and brighter, so why leave?

Instead, May or September are better. Still dependably warm and sunny in Italy, Spain, or Greece, but more likely to be 'changeable' in Blighty.

And therein lies the problem.

Arguably the two busiest times of the beekeeping season are May and September.

In any normal year, May is when beekeepers expect swarming to be at its peak. Rigorous weekly inspections are needed, and more frequent apiary visits might be required to check bait hives, move colonies, or do any number of other things that should have been remembered during the weekly visit 🤦.

Beekeepers keen on queen rearing will also be particularly busy during May.

So, not May then.

And September is often equally manic, but with a different focus. There's the summer honey to harvest, the miticides to apply, and the hives to bring back from the heather moors.

No, no, no … not a chance, September is out as far as holidays are concerned.

The ideal holiday time for a beekeeper and partner is midwinter. Assuming the hives are heavy and safely strapped down, you can take a month away and not feel guilty … or risk missing something vital with the bees.

Of course, this is after you applied OA during a broodless period before the winter solstice …

New Zealand is a good choice.

The weather is good in December, you've got time to travel there and back, and — coincidentally — their beekeeping season is about to reach its peak. If you're lucky you could visit some friendly Antipodean beekeepers and learn how they keep their bees, or even help out for a few days during the pohutukawa honey harvest.

No?

Skiing perhaps in January, or a long weekend somewhere very local during the 'June gap'?

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Monopolising the conversation

Everyone is interested in bees.

Clearly that's an exaggeration, but lots of people I meet have something to say about them.

Is it because I raise the subject in the first place?

No, at least, not always 😉.

Sometimes it's because they ask what all the boxes are in the garden, or why the work surface is decorated — Jackson Pollock tries encaustic painting? — with wax spots.

Or whether the [add badly swollen extremity of choice here e.g. wrist, ankle, nose] hurts?

Alternatively, knowing I'm a beekeeper, they might ask “How are the bees?”, or “Has it been a good season?”, or even “Is it true that local honey prevents hayfever?”.

Obviously, any one of the last three questions can take an age to answer, and all three (it's not unusual) might write off the morning.

Hence, 'monopolising the conversation' 😉.

Don't get me wrong. I'm delighted when non-beekeepers have an interest in bees. However, if it's the postman, or chimney sweep, or they're here to see someone else in the house, they really have other priorities than chatting to me about my bees.

It's sometimes better to just hide in the shed and build frames.

One thing that always surprises me is the proportion of people — currently non-beekeepers — who have previously kept bees (often unsuccessfully), or who are interested in starting to keep bees.

Perhaps this is one reason it ends up being a topic of conversation.

Another are the regular features on 'celebrity' beekeepers in the press. You'll be familiar with these, the Instagram-friendly 'grip and grin' image of an immaculately coiffured 'name' wearing a dazzlingly white (or fashionably pale lilac) beesuit unadorned with sweat stains, propolis, holes, or mud. The accompanying title will inevitably include the words 'sweet', or 'honeyed', or some garbage about saving the bees.

Jealous? Moi?

No, but I can't help but think that if this is the perceived image of what beekeeping is like, it explains the large number of people I meet who used to keep bees.

I never see an article in the press featuring a dishevelled, sweaty, late middle-aged beekeeper, in a grubby beesuit, wincing with back pain, searching in vain for a queen they dropped in the grass, accompanied by the title “What? No honey? Again?”

Anyway, I've again wandered off-topic.

Happy New Year … may your bait hives be tenanted, your supers heavy, your queens fecund … and your partner happy 😉.

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Notes

The barista is back on duty. With thanks to readers who unsuccessfully attempted to Buy me a Coffee over the last few weeks.

{{1}}: Rather than one abandoned in favour of mowing the lawn.

{{2}}: And page after page of indigestible AI slop of course 😞.

{{3}}: I suspect the term 'organising' is the clue.

{{4}}: Many of these things are not essential — though that's not what the Thorne's catalogue implies — but that doesn't mean you won't build, buy, make or borrow them.

{{5}}: Or need a 50. cal. machine gun for any purpose.

{{6}}: I've tried.

{{7}}: There are also some interesting observations made recently about midwinter fondant transiently boosting colony activity and brood-rearing (neither of which are really desirable), something I might tackle in a future post.

{{8}}: But remember 'Space, the final frontier', these large volume items create their own problems.

{{9}}: And, with climate change, it's going to get worse.