“Keeping a diary” seems to be something that most people have done, in one way or another, at some point in their lives. It’s usually as angst-ridden teenagers that we scribbled down incredible insights (hands up those who admit to identifying ever-so-slightly with Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole, aged 13 and three quarters). Those diaries were always supposed to be secret, but as we got older we didn’t have the time or inclination to retain the habit. Perhaps social media, with its instant access and global reach, has replaced the traditional form of diary-keeping, but there is definitely still a place for old-fashioned observation in the world of beekeeping. Fictional diaries such as ‘The Diary of a Provincial Lady’ (E M Delafield) and ‘Diary of a Nobody’ (G&W Grossmith) are amusing and tell a good story, dealing as they do with the comings and goings of ‘ordinary people’, whereas Samuel Pepys’s Diary and Daniel Defoe’s ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ are informative and useful in helping us understand life in a definite place and time. The ‘diaries’ or records kept by scientists are even more so, and this is where the link with beekeeping comes in.
When you start your beekeeping life, you may only have one or two colonies and so it will be fairlyeasy to remember what’s going on, when and where. Having said that, we have been known to mis-remember things e.g. which queen bee is in which hive, even when there are only two of them! As time goes on, and as the number of colonies rises, remembering becomes more difficult, and so we urge people to get into the habit of record-keeping right from the start. Records are not just for checking what you did last time you did a hive inspection, but they are essential when you want to look at performance – colony build-up, productivity (bees and honey), resistance to disease etc.
