Tue 05 May 2026
Healthy Bees Heavy Hives
At Love SToke Church
Lysander Road Meir Park Stoke-on-Trent ST3 7TW
STEVE DONOHOE
Steve Donohoe is a UK-based commercial beekeeper, writer, and editor with over a decade of hands-on experience managing bees for health, resilience, and sustainable honey production. He runs Walrus Apiaries, operating multiple apiary sites in Cheshire, and is widely known for his evidence-based, practical approach to modern beekeeping.
Steve is the founder of The Walrus and the Honey Bee, a widely read website and media platform exploring honey bee health, forage, genetics, and real-world beekeeping decision-making. He is also the editor and regular contributor to Bee Farmer magazine, the journal of the Bee Farmers’ Association. His talks combine practical field experience with critical analysis of current thinking on topics such as honey production, queen quality, varroa management, forage planning, and the trade-offs between different beekeeping systems.
Steve is particularly interested in how management choices, genetics, and environment interact to influence colony performance over time. Steve’s writing and talks are known for being clear, honest, and grounded in lived experience rather than dogma.
He has written two books: Interviews With Beekeepers (2018) and Healthy Bees Heavy Hives (2024 - with Paul Horton).
Talk Summary
This presentation distils practical, commercial-scale beekeeping experience into a clear framework for improving honey yields without losing sight of bee health or beekeeper goals. Drawing on contrasting operations—from smaller-scale to highly migratory systems—it shows that more honey is a choice, not an obligation, but one that requires deliberate decisions about genetics, management intensity, forage, and economics.
The core message is that average honey yield per colony can be a useful measure of progress, provided it’s interpreted sensibly. Strong, healthy colonies with good queens, low swarming, and effective foraging sit at the heart of productivity, but weather and forage availability always play a major role.
The presentation explores how genetics and queen quality set long-term potential, while nutrition, colony management, and timing deliver short-term gains. It also highlights the importance of reducing stress, controlling varroa effectively, and planning forage and harvesting well ahead. Overall, the message is pragmatic and empowering: maximise honey only if it suits your aims, but if you do, success comes from aligning bee biology, forage, and management into one coherent system.
YouTube: @stevedonohoe
Web: www.thewalrusandthehoneybee.com
