Today I got a message about a “feral” bee hive from a former resident at a nearby property. They are moving cross country and it is obviously not practical to move the hive with them, and they are concerned that the hive get a good...
This year has been record breaking (well, my record) and I’m pulling a second harvest from my little neighborhood apiary. I’m struck again how the nectar and pollen that bees collect serves as sort of a record of what plants came and...
A long weekend of hard work extracting, bottling and labeling honey at my small apiary. This has got to be the earliest I’ve ever processed honey before, but if the hives get any taller, I’ll have to use a ladder. I’m...
After chatting with another keeper, and I have to say… I’m starting to warm up to the variant “long” version of the Langstroth hive. Seems friendly to keepers struggling with high/heavy stacks of the traditional layout...
Saw a post on the neighborhood community group about a large presence of bees. Usually this is yellow jackets or just a particularly tasty garden… but not this time! Swarm captured! Very gentle ladies and very cooperative. A few scouts and...
I am fortunate enough to live in an area where neighbors are extremely supportive of beekeeping; alerting keepers to mosquito treatment/spraying, swarms and eagerly purchasing local honey. Recently, I was asked about bee friendly planting and...
Nice weather and covid-19 social distancing, meant time for an inspection of the hobby hives in the backyard. The lighter hive is actually quite busy inside, they’re just so much more sedate than the other hive that I took it for a bad...
Just some close up of a few of the girls foraging in the yard full of weeds and wildflowers that I optimistically call a “lawn”.
Well, it has been an unexpectedly long season. I like doing my harvest all at once because of the amount of repeated work (and subsequent clean up). This year the ladies just kept making honey at such a rate, that it was really hard to choose a...
Every year I sell my excess honey (and boy is there a lot) from my “hobby” hives. The neighbors are super supportive and always eager for the harvest. One challenge I do have, is that I work full time and coordinating being home when it is...
Weather and schedule cooperated for hive inspection this morning. I’ve been leaving the hive to its business during the first part of the “flow” (period of heavy nectar flow in a region when bees produce most of their honey), but really needed a...