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...
I’m no graphic designer, but I’m also no stranger to the Adobe suite of products, so I decided to try my hand and creating some custom labels for my personal honey, as well as for some of the Honey Co-Op keepers that I’m working...
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”.
Bees actually need quite a bit of water, particularly in hot environments. However, they aren’t terribly discriminate about where they get it and can end drinking from treated swimming pools and bodies of water that are treated against pests. I...
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...
One of the more frustrating things about taking up a hobby that has been around as long as beekeeping, is that there is a tremendous amount of anecdotal and “traditional” information. I’m not saying that there isn’t some...