I started keeping bees around 8 years ago now. I bought my first bees at an auction on the Wirral run by the Liverpool Beekeepers Association. I didn't get a nuc (kind of a starter box) but a full hive's worth, for £130. I well remember driving them home with Steph the next morning through the Mersey tunnel, both of us suited up and feeling cool and ridiculous at the same.

Each year since has been full of new discoveries and adventures, but this year I've decided to broaden my horizons and try a few things I've been meaning to engage with but still haven't. Moving the bees to specific nectar crops is number 1 on the list. From my garden in Dunblane, where I had 4 colonies at the beginning of the year, some of my bees will this year visit crops of oilseed rape in May, field beans in June and the mountain heather in July/August. Pictured above is my best colony at the rape, which is just coming into flower.

A new study by Rob Brooks in Biology Letters shows that the attractiveness of men with facial hair varies according to the frequency of bearded men. The same bearded face is rated as more attractive when shown alongside faces which tend to be clean-shaven compared with when shown alongside the same faces that tend to be bearded - if this translates to real life (and why wouldn't it?) this is an example of frequency-dependent sexual selection. He comments in the Telegraph that the recent increase in beardedness means we may be reaching 'peak beard'. Unfortunately Keith Flett, in the same Telegraph article, misses the point in dismissing the study - the findings would be unaffected by differences in why individual men wear beards. Mine, for example, is part of a cunning strategic aim to look 'more professorial', but if it makes me more attractive that's a definite bonus.