Listen to this newly emerged, virgin queen bee. She is piping or chirping to any other queens in the hive, to try to establish dominance. #bees

In addition to around 200k conserved #Genizah fragments Cambridge University Library also has a crate of tiny scraps and crumbs. One of the scraps has now been identified! lib.cam.ac.uk/genizah-fragme…

New #Genizah Q&A with Dr. Nick Posegay on Christian Arabic Bible fragments and revealing his favourite film to boot: lib.cam.ac.uk/genizah-fragme…

A nice frame of brood. #bees

Just received my author’s copy of this wonderful “Colophon Reader”. Gorgias Press and the editors George Anton Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke did a great job. The whole volume is also available online in #OpenAccess: degruyter.com/document/doi/1…

Bees are undertaking a loft conversion. Time for another super!

Survey for beekeepers - please help 🙂 - one of our team's MSc students, Vidhi Jain, is exploring the mental health benefits of beekeeping - could you spend 5 minutes to fill in this questionnaire please? Thank you so much! forms.gle/g9R82KagAennzE…

I don’t know what everyone else has in their swarm catching kit, but mine has a pillowcase and a wire coat hanger. #bees

Have you visited Special Collections Cambridge University Library recently? Please take a few moments to give us feedback on your visit via our survey: uniofcam.libwizard.com/f/CUL_User_Sur…

This small Bible preserves a lost section of the famous ‘Aleppo Codex’, one of the oldest Masoretic Bibles, produced in the 10th c. and redeemed from Crusaders after the fall of Jerusalem in 1099. This page comes from our new book, 'The Illustrated Cairo Genizah' (link in bio).

Banded demoiselle damselfly on the river Cam

Here's the end of Isaiah from a parchment #Hebrew Bible with writing by 3 scribes. The colophon on the right notes the year was ~925 CE, and the text uses the Tiberian vowel system, which may make this the oldest dated Tiberian #Bible? Anyway it's in our new book (link in bio).

Proofs always seem to turn up when we have the least time to be proofing... Keep your eyes peeled, this will be out in open access this autumn!

We somehow wrangled papers from 18 current and former members of the Genizah Research Unit, including its founder, Stefan Reif (he was my current age when he founded it in 1974). Also Kim Phillips who can't be tagged in photos.

We just received the first copy of our new book! It is LARGE and it looks SO GOOD. It's a limited print run, but you can pre-order now at the link in my bio (£45/$60). They should ship in the UK in late Sept. and the rest of the world in Oct. #newbooks #geniza #manuscriptmonday

The shades of #Cambridge #honey

This is an autograph draft of the 'Mishneh Torah' in the hand of its author, Moses Maimonides. The text is Hebrew, but a later hand (or Maimonides?) added Arabic in the margin. It's in a collection that was once nearly burned to save space. It's also in our new book (link in bio)

Is there a better feeling than opening a box and finding it full of copies of your book? #books #bees #beekeeping