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  "description": "What's hot, and what's not? ",
  "path": "/the-apiarist-in-2025/",
  "publishedAt": "2025-12-19T16:51:31.000Z",
  "site": "https://theapiarist.org",
  "tags": [
    "visitor counter",
    "Alphabet",
    "bodge it",
    "privacy policy",
    "Peter Steiner's iconic 1993 New Yorker cartoon",
    "swarm control",
    "science",
    "Mad Honey",
    "bestseller from Jodi Picoult",
    "Mad honeyThe science, art, and practice of sustainable beekeeping ... so much more than honeyThe ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "The nucleus method",
    "Timing is everything",
    "Mad honey",
    "The ultimate hive stand?",
    "Demaree swarm control",
    "making bees",
    "swarm prevention",
    "DWV in spiders",
    "AI-generated 'slop' increasingly dominates the internet",
    "my copyright",
    "flouted",
    "brace yourself",
    "Queen fumbling",
    "Queen fumblingYou should learn from your mistakes or — in this case — mine. What to do with your feet when mishandling queens, how to retrieve the queen from a full box of brace comb, and (What? You want more?) comments on setting up and siting bait hives.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "Judgement Day",
    "Judgement DayIn the apiary, every day is Judgement Day. Good judgement involves ample information, some insightful interpretation, and understanding. Bad judgement involves a lack of information, guesswork, wishful thinking and sentimentality.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "Apiaries",
    "ApiariesApiaries provide the stage for the little dramas of beekeeping. Sometimes tragedy, sometimes comedy, but always memorable. What features are needed, and what should be avoided, in a good apiary?The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "The memory of swarms",
    "The memory of swarmsMore on collecting and hiving swarms, their memory, how and when to treat them for mites, and a Citizen Science survey of whether swarm absconding might be due to scout bee activity.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "Hives of horror",
    "wasps",
    "Hives of horrorStings should be the exception, not the rule, when inspecting colonies. Are your bees are aggressive and, if so, why? How to handle them to minimise aggression, and make inspections enjoyable, not a battle for survival. And no, aggressive colonies are not more productive.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "sponsors",
    "How to: the shook swarm",
    "How to : The shook swarmThe shook swarm is an efficient method to transfer a colony to fresh comb and simultaneously minimise the Varroa mite levels in the hive. However, there are some important considerations that must be taken into account to ensure success.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "More slow release oxalic acid goodness",
    "BeeMusings",
    "More slow-release oxalic acid goodness?Slow-release oxalic acid strips activate honey bee immune responses — is this a good thing?The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "The queen cup-sized rabbit hole",
    "The queen cup-size rabbit holeNot all plastic queen cups that look the same perform the same, and different commercial plastic queen cups can profoundly affect the success of queen rearing. Do the dimensions of the cell cup influence the size of the resulting queen?The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "Swarms and queens",
    "Swarms and queensObservations on scout bee activity and waggle dance accuracy, multiple swarms in a bait hive and preliminary results rearing ‘bigger, better, queens’ using oversized 3D printed queen cell cups.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "Slow-release oxalic acid strips",
    "Slow-release oxalic acid stripsSlow-release oxalic acid formulations provide the main thing missing from this excellent miticide — residual activity — so repeat applications are not needed.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)",
    "talks to beekeeping associations",
    "2026/27 winter season",
    "contact me",
    "MagicPages",
    "FAQ",
    "here",
    "tags",
    "regular sponsor-only content",
    "becoming a sponsor",
    "Buy me a Coffee ☕️",
    "comments on my portable queen cell incubator"
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  "textContent": "Historically the last post here before the Christmas holiday has been about _“what's hot, and what's not?”_ on _The Apiarist_.\n\nThis makes two audacious assumptions:\n\n  1. That _anything_ to do with beekeeping could be considered 'hot'. Think about those ill-fitting beesuits, the pervasive smell of smoke (or thymol), and the response most civilians have to 25,000 flying, stinging, insects. 'Hot' might be seriously over-egging things. However, lower your expectations. If you assume 'hot' means _popular_ — as in pages viewed, posts read, or comments left — then there may be a little mileage in the _“what's hot, and what's not?”_ subtitle of this post. Which brings me to the second assumption …\n  2. That I have the fine-grained statistics that separates the _'Massive!'_ from the _'Meh'_ , or can distinguish between _'opened and deleted'_ from the _'read and enjoyed'_. There **_is_** a difference.\n\n\n\nDecades ago, at the dawn of the internet, you'd often see a visitor counter lurking in a webpage footer. If you reloaded the page, the number would increment.\n\nRemember these?\n\nThe most popular pages on a website were the ones with the highest counts. Right?\n\nWrong.\n\nDecades ago — minus about 3 days — things like browser cache's, content delivery systems, cookies, and a host of other things appeared that made counting page visits a non-trivial exercise.\n\nAccompanying them came bots, spiders, page-scrapers, indexers, and a plethora of non-human visitors, wanted and unwanted.\n\nGoogle Analytics cuts through all this; it counts page visits, it distinguishes between bots and beings, it tracks you from page to page (and _everywhere_ else 😞), and it uses all that to generate colossal profits for Alphabet from targeted advertising.\n\nHowever, since I'm reluctant to use a product from a company that pays less tax than I do, I have to use other means to determine which of my weekly scribblings has resonated with _you_ , the readers of _The Apiarist_.\n\nAnd this is somewhat complicated by the shift ~20 months ago from an online-only format to a newsletter-based blog for _The Apiarist_.\n\n### Received ≠ opened ≠ read ≠ enjoyed\n\nFor the non-mathematicians in the audience, ≠ means _'does not equal'_.\n\nIf you have signed up as a subscriber (_Thank you!_) you'll probably receive the weekly newsletter. Whilst I can tell which newsletters are _never_ received (because the email address is wrong, or the inbox is full {{1}}), there's no totally-foolproof way to determine if the email was opened, and — assuming it was — read.\n\nAnd that's still a long away from working out whether the recipient found it interesting, informative, entertaining, or useful.\n\nSo, like my DIY, I bodge it. Rather than sell my soul (together with my first _and second_ born children) to Google … I accept the deficiencies in the numbers, and use proxies where I can that indicate whether the content on _The Apiarist_ is valued.\n\nAll other things being equal, if a post is more popular, the content is likely to have been _'interesting, informative, entertaining, or useful'_.\n\nIt's an imprecise science, but after a career as an imprecise scientist, I'm well qualified to do things like this 😉.\n\n⛄\n\nWhen reading this post, __visitors__ are readers who view the website, __subscribers__ are those who receive the emailed newsletter (and who might view it __only__ via email, or who may also visit the website), and __sponsors__ are those who pay to ensure __The Apiarist__ appears at all (and may again read posts as emailed newsletters or on the website {{99}}).\n\nDuring 2025, _subscriber_ numbers increased ~20%. A respectable increase, and not dissimilar to the last few years. As a consequence, I now send out in excess of 150,00 newsletters annually.\n\nOf course, I'm under no misapprehension that all are read … but the best figures I have indicate that ~60% are at least opened (range ~40-72%, depending upon the topic and the time in the season).\n\nHowever, one thing I can _reliably_ count is how many people follow links within the newsletter to _other_ sites, either things I've written, or to other stuff on the internet. On average ~10-12% of subscribers follow links {{2}}.\n\n_Sponsors_ — who are also increasing in number 😄 — are much more likely (~80%) to open the newsletters they receive, and ~20-25% of them follow links within the newsletter. I don't find this surprising; they're also more likely to engage with comments.\n\nSponsors are due a particularly big _Thank You!_ , as it is their contributions that ensure the lights stay on, and the disks remain spinning … without them, you'd have to make do with some regurgitated AI slop from somewhere else (on which, more later).\n\n🎅\n\nThe privacy policy explains the data collected by the website and what it is used for.\n\n### Visitors\n\nWhere do new subscribers and sponsors come from?\n\nSome from personal recommendation. Posts now carry an _“if you found this interesting”_ sharing 'thingy' at the end of the post, like this:\n\nShare this post: \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\nHowever, the majority arrive from Google, or similar, web searches. Interestingly, Google's slice is decreasing (now just over ~50%) as AI-driven searches increase.\n\nDepending upon the stage of the beekeeping season (remembering that most visitors are from the Northern Hemisphere) 20,000–60,000 visitors a month view _The Apiarist_.\n\nInevitably some of these will be bots not beings, but the page counts I trust use a variety of tricks to exclude anything that lacks a pulse.\n\nPeter Steiner's iconic 1993 New Yorker cartoon\n\n'Pulse' I can manage, distinguishing between dogs and sentient humans is currently beyond me.\n\nSo, taking all that into account, this allows me to work out — at least in general terms — what's valued by readers (whether subscribers, sponsors, or new to the site).\n\n### Why does this matter?\n\nThe main reason is to justify the effort put into the writing, and to ensure that what is written usually benefits the reader.\n\n3,000+ words a week takes several hours to write. None of it is regurgitated by ChatGPT, and lots of it involves additional reading around the topic to make sure the content is relevant, as correct as I can make it, topical and reasonably comprehensive.\n\n### Why not write less?\n\nBeekeeping, despite being simple in principle, is _difficult_ in practice.\n\nConsider a post on swarm control … a simple instruction to _“leave only one queen cell”_ is easy to write, but leaves unanswered the inevitable questions, like:\n\n  * Which queen cell? Open or closed? Where on the frame? Which frame?\n  * Why only one queen cell? What if the queen gets eaten on a mating flight?\n  * What is a queen cell? Is it the same as a swarm cell?\n  * What happens if I leave more than one? And what if I leave one open and one sealed?\n\n\n\nCan you answer _all_ those questions in a sentence or two?\n\nAnd the science (which underpins a lot of the posts) is not only complicated, but is also often tricky to present in a way that's _accessible_ to non-scientists.\n\nHoney bees are fascinating and well-studied insects, and beekeeping ignores huge swathes of what we now know about them.\n\nI try to make a small contribution to improve that situation.\n\nAll of which means that posts tend to contain caveats, additional explanations, either/or scenarios, qualifications that involve the weather, or the latitude, or the time of the season, or the abilities of the beekeeper … _i.e._ more words.\n\nI enjoy the writing, but if it wasn't read, I'd do something else with my time.\n\nAnyway, enough preamble, what have been the most popular posts on _The Apiarist_ in 2025?\n\n## Top of the posts\n\nThe first thing to remind you of is that there is a _'back catalogue'_ of ~600 posts dating back to about 2013.\n\nA few of these are perennially popular.\n\nSometimes this is because they _remain_ entertaining, informative, timely, or insightful.\n\nOr, like Mad Honey, because they have the same title as a bestseller from Jodi Picoult, and seem to offer an irresistible _mélange_ of sweetness, hallucinatory psychoactivity and medicinal properties.\n\nBut predominantly the hallucinatory psychoactivity.\n\nMad honeyThe science, art, and practice of sustainable beekeeping ... so much more than honeyThe ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\nThis post is too old to have a summary, but if it wasn't, it would mention rhododendron.\n\nInevitably, visits to some pages in the back catalogue wildly outnumber the number of times something published last month has been read. That's not comparing like with like. Particularly if the recent post was only sent to sponsors.\n\nIn _reverse_ order, the five most popular posts with _visitors_ were:\n\n  * The nucleus method (1.5% {{3}}): my favourite method of swarm control. Minimal amounts of equipment, highly dependable, and very adaptable. I don't know why more beekeeping associations don't teach this instead of the Pagden method. In particular, I think it's a lot easier for new beekeepers to comprehend. What's more, in discussions with beginners, they agree 😉.\n  * Timing is everything (1.9%): a post on the development cycle of honey bees. A proper understanding of this underpins all successful swarm control and queen rearing methods. If you can understand the timings, you can work out many things about the colony from first principles.\n  * Mad honey (2.1%): last year this was the second most visited page on this site. It would have been higher than third this year had I not got sick and tired of people generously offering me adverts to place on the page. In August, I buried it behind the paywall so it's now only available to sponsors. Despite this, I still receive irregular emails from mad honey producers who have _'read the page with interest'_ and wondered if I could host backlinks to their extensive range of mad honey products {{4}}. Er, no.\n  * The ultimate hive stand? (2.2%): one of my few blatant 'clickbaity' titles, with the question mark indicating my scepticism. However, it _is_ a good hive stand, particularly on uneven ground. New scaffold jacks — used for the adjustable legs — seem to have rocketed in price recently (though probably not in response to increased demand due to this post), but they are still available secondhand if you search.\n  * Demaree swarm control (3.9%): a post dating back to 2019 … or 1892 if you consider the original method. This was supposed to be updated this year. That didn't happen, largely because my goal of making bees this season meant swarm prevention and control were largely unnecessary (and I forgot 😉). Although the title states swarm _control_ , it is of course a swarm prevention method, and is tagged as such. Lookout for a rewrite in 2026. Perhaps.\n\n\n\n## The top posts of 2025\n\nThis is the first full year when new posts have been 'delivered' as newsletters. Since the first post (on DWV in spiders) appeared on the 2nd of January, there have been 65 posts. Thirty were for sponsors _only_ , with 19 for subscribers and 16 with no access restrictions.\n\nI've lost count of the number of words I've written this year {{5}}. The website software (Ghost) provides an indicative reading time for posts, and these total 854 minutes for 2025 … that's over 14 hours.\n\nIf you've read them all, ~~my commiserations~~ well done 😄.\n\nThe number of 'free' posts (_i.e._ accessible without any form of subscription) will likely be reduced in 2026 as AI-generated 'slop' increasingly dominates the internet.\n\nI see no point in writing freely-accessible stuff only for it to be scraped up by AI bots, rehashed, mis-cited and regurgitated {{6}}, at the same time as my copyright is flouted.\n\nIf the AI bubble doesn't burst first, I expect 2026/27 will see increasing amounts of _useful_ internet information being restricted to subscribers (whether paying or not), _irrespective_ of the topic. The only exception will be sites supported by intrusive levels of advertising, something that will never appear here (ditto paid endorsements).\n\nI already pay for podcasts and weekly/monthly writing on non-beekeeping topics that are of interest, and expect this to continue/increase.\n\nAnd, if the AI bubble _does_ burst, brace yourself. If Oracle defaults on its debt, all bets are off, and I'll probably be working again to fix the huge hole in my pension 😞.\n\nI won't have time to write _anything_.\n\nAnd now, back to the popular posts … normal service is resumed.\n\nSince sponsor and subscriber numbers continue to increase I've selected the most popular posts on the basis of the _percentage_ of recipients who opened the post, rather than absolute access counts.\n\n### Posts for subscribers {{7}}\n\nThe top five, again in reverse order.\n\n  * Queen fumbling (69%): Learn from your mistakes or, in this case, mine. A post that wasn't restricted to mistakes I've made with queen bees. Like posts on _The Apiarist_ , I've got a huge back catalogue of errors to ~~entertain you~~ recount.\n\nQueen fumblingYou should learn from your mistakes or — in this case — mine. What to do with your feet when mishandling queens, how to retrieve the queen from a full box of brace comb, and (What? You want more?) comments on setting up and siting bait hives.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\n  * Judgement Day (70%): How to make good decisions when beekeeping. Working with incomplete information, improving the information you have, and the consequences of getting it wrong (which looks suspiciously like more errors 😉).\n\nJudgement DayIn the apiary, every day is Judgement Day. Good judgement involves ample information, some insightful interpretation, and understanding. Bad judgement involves a lack of information, guesswork, wishful thinking and sentimentality.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\n  * Apiaries (70%): Apiaries provide the stage for the little dramas of beekeeping. Sometimes tragedy, sometimes comedy, but always memorable. What features are needed, and what should be avoided, in a good apiary? A post for beginners, written when I was searching for new apiaries.\n\nApiariesApiaries provide the stage for the little dramas of beekeeping. Sometimes tragedy, sometimes comedy, but always memorable. What features are needed, and what should be avoided, in a good apiary?The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\n  * The memory of swarms (70%): Swarms that deliver themselves to bait hives never abscond {{8}}, but the same is not true of bivouacked swarms that are hived. Why? These were my thoughts on the topic, and an attempt at collecting some data to support or refute them. I'll discuss this in more detail in the next month or two, but hope to get more data in the 2026 swarm season.\n\nThe memory of swarmsMore on collecting and hiving swarms, their memory, how and when to treat them for mites, and a Citizen Science survey of whether swarm absconding might be due to scout bee activity.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\n  * Hives of horror (72%): I was stung more by wasps than bees this year. And I was stung by very few wasps. The continued popularity of this post (and similar ones) suggests that many beekeepers struggle with aggressive colonies. _It doesn't have to be like that!_ These were my views on how to inspect them, how to avoid them, and a one-word summary on the increased productivity of aggressive colonies.\n\nHives of horrorStings should be the exception, not the rule, when inspecting colonies. Are your bees are aggressive and, if so, why? How to handle them to minimise aggression, and make inspections enjoyable, not a battle for survival. And no, aggressive colonies are not more productive.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\nIt's notable that these posts all appeared between April and June (inclusive). The engagement by _all_ readers is higher at this time of the year, reflecting the fact that at least 90% of the readership is in the Northern Hemisphere.\n\n### Posts for sponsors\n\nAnd now, the same treatment for posts written for sponsors of _The Apiarist_. As before, in reverse order.\n\n  * How to: the shook swarm (82%): A great method to combine with midseason miticides (if needed), or to quickly move a colony to fresh comb. Disliked by some beekeepers as it's _“Hard on the bees”_ , which I think is nonsense. It might be hard on _a few_ bees, but — done properly — it's usually _very beneficial_ for the colony.\n\nHow to : The shook swarmThe shook swarm is an efficient method to transfer a colony to fresh comb and simultaneously minimise the Varroa mite levels in the hive. However, there are some important considerations that must be taken into account to ensure success.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\n  * More slow release oxalic acid goodness (83%): One of the new BeeMusings posts {{9}} which are intended to be 'short and sweet', this one describing elevated immune responses in bees exposed to VarroxSan-like oxalic acid in glycerol mixes. This might not be a good thing.\n\nMore slow-release oxalic acid goodness?Slow-release oxalic acid strips activate honey bee immune responses — is this a good thing?The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\n  * The queen cup-sized rabbit hole (84%): A slightly flawed study, but one of the most enjoyable posts I researched this year. If you thought all plastic queen cups were similar, think again … _“If it**looks** like a JzBz cup, is the **size** of a JzBz cup, and the **volume** of a JzBz cup … it still might not be as **good** as a JzBz cup.”_ … and that's before you consider the increased larval acceptance rates in queen cups with thicker rims.\n\nThe queen cup-size rabbit holeNot all plastic queen cups that look the same perform the same, and different commercial plastic queen cups can profoundly affect the success of queen rearing. Do the dimensions of the cell cup influence the size of the resulting queen?The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\n  * Swarms and queens (84%): A discussion of scout bee activity and waggle dance accuracy (with relation to finding your bait hive), together with my first results on rearing queens in 3D printed cell cups.\n\nSwarms and queensObservations on scout bee activity and waggle dance accuracy, multiple swarms in a bait hive and preliminary results rearing ‘bigger, better, queens’ using oversized 3D printed queen cell cups.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\n  * Slow-release oxalic acid strips (85%): The popularity of this post reflects the continuing search by many beekeepers for effective _Varroa_ control. VarroxSan is currently not licensed in the UK, but testing shows that the product shows good efficacy, a lack of toxicity and does not accumulate in the honey supers.\n\nSlow-release oxalic acid stripsSlow-release oxalic acid formulations provide the main thing missing from this excellent miticide — residual activity — so repeat applications are not needed.The ApiaristDavid (The Apiarist)\n\nIn contrast to subscriber posts, those sent to sponsors show almost no seasonal variation in terms of open/read rates. These are the beekeepers who need their fix of bee and beekeeping information _whatever_ the time of the year.\n\nI know the feeling 😉.\n\n## Talking the talk\n\nI've given 20 talks to beekeeping associations in 2025. I've had some great questions during the Q&A sessions afterwards, and attempted to provide appropriate answers.\n\nInevitably, sometimes I can't _“think on my feet”_ (despite the fact that I'm usually sitting in front of a camera and microphone), and — only later — remember something important I should have included in my response. A few of these things will be woven into posts in the coming months.\n\nDefinitely not thinking on my feet\n\nI'm reducing the number of talks I give in the 2026/27 winter season, and 25% of the 'slots' are already booked. If your association wants a talk on one of the topics I offer, then please contact me.\n\n## Future changes on _The Apiarist_\n\nThe move (in April '24) from WordPress to Ghost absolved me of ~90% of the system maintenance involved in running this website. This is now more-than-ably handled by Jannis who runs MagicPages, the hosting company for _The Apiarist_. If there are access issues _not_ covered in the FAQ, then it's probably an 'upstream' event neither of us have much control over, but which (amazingly) Jannis can usually fix.\n\nAny global problems are typically recorded here, and — if they are — I won't understand them 😉.\n\nNevertheless, there _are_ subtle fixes and tweaks periodically introduced to the website.\n\nThe indexing has recently been upgraded, and access to individual posts is highlighted using a traffic light system on the index pages; yellow for subscribers, and blue for sponsors.\n\nThe traffic light system …\n\nThe short-format _BeeMusings_ posts were introduced, but have turned out to be tricky to write (1000 words or 5 minutes is a bit short to do even the briefest topic justice). I've now realised I need to fix the indexing on these (or ask Jannis to 😉), and expect them to now be approximately monthly.\n\nI'm exploring some other minor changes to the newsletter, largely so that subscribers are more aware of the sponsor-only posts (which they otherwise don't see).\n\nI'll complete the 'tags' page to make things a bit easier to find, though tag-based searches only account for a few thousand visits per year, so it's low(er) on my list of priorities.\n\nOther than that it's a case of _steady as she goes_.\n\nI won't be writing _more_ posts … I need to squeeze in some beekeeping to have something new to write about.\n\n## Happy holidays\n\nIt's two days until the winter solstice. Sunset, currently hovering around 3:38 pm, will then start to get later. There's still a lot of winter to get through, including the majority of the cold bits, but it's a start.\n\nBefore long, the oft-postponed preparations for the season ahead will become _very_ _obviously_ overdue, and then — always sooner than I think — it'll be time to start opening hives and putting into practice my winter scheming.\n\nIn the meantime, I'm busying myself with some advanced {{10}} DIY for next year's queen rearing, while trying hard to ignore the 3 kg of honey that leaked from a bucket in the honey warming cabinet 😱.\n\nWhatever you are doing over the holidays, have a good one 😄.\n\nIf you want to avoid the AI 'slop' that increasingly contaminates beekeeping websites then please consider supporting __The Apiarist__. Sponsors ensure the continued existence of the site, and receive regular sponsor-only content. ChatGPT has never opened a hive or marked a queen, so why trust its judgement when seeking information or entertainment on the science, art, and practice of sustainable beekeeping?\n\nYes please … sign me up as a sponsor\n\nShare this post: \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## Notes\n\n~~The barista at _Buy me a coffee_ appears to be on strike. I've had several emails saying that cards are declined, or postcodes are rejected. It's nothing personal, _my_ cards are declined as well. I've emailed their technical support and been met by an echoing silence. _Hello! Is there anybody there?___~~\n\nMy barista appears to have returned to work …\n\nIf you've enjoyed reading __The Apiarist__ , please consider becoming a sponsor. Alternatively, since my late-night writing is fuelled by caffeine and cake, you can help offset my outlay on these __essentials__ by pressing this button. __Thank you__ 😄\n\n\n                            Buy me a Coffee ☕️\n                        \n\n{{1}}: Both of which — if repeated — result in the address being automagically removed from the list of recipients.\n\n{{99}}: Where these little popup footnotes are **much** easier to read.\n\n{{2}}: Newsletter links look a bit weird, like this `https://theapiarist.org/r/92c40918?m=1fb87f0d-78be-46d3-870c-c0569e50f010` … which helps the software determine which link was followed.\n\n{{3}}: The number in brackets indicates the percentage of overall page views in the last 12 months. In addition, I'm excluding visits to the website homepage.\n\n{{4}}: Since these are never _sponsors_ , they cannot have read the page in the first place … would you trust an advertiser who tells porky pies?\n\n{{5}}: Or, more accurately, didn't bother counting them.\n\n{{6}}: If you want an example of how bad it can be, have a look at the garbage here … errors in the third sentence, and nonsense by the second paragraph … with _The Apiarist_ cited as a source 😞. It's an abomination (and I note the author has now hidden it behind an “are you human” checker … _oh the irony_!!). That site, one of about a dozen very similar ones (generated using similar prompts and templates), contribute nothing original to beekeeping. For another glaring example, see the comments on my portable queen cell incubator. I don't want to waste my time correcting ChatGPT's incorrect interpretations, or provide additional things it can bastardize.\n\n{{7}}: Though sent to sponsors as well, of course.\n\n{{8}}: At least, that's my experience. YMMV.\n\n{{9}}: Which, I've just discovered to my horror, appear to be incompletely indexed. I will fix this ASAP.\n\n{{10}}: Advanced for me, probably not for you.",
  "title": "The Apiarist in 2025",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-14T22:55:48.396Z"
}