Did you know bees get just as thirsty and exhausted by heat as you?

If you keep bees or even if you just want to be a good neighbor or a thankful gardener, it’s easy to give bees a source of water.

Many pollinator species have suffered serious declines in recent years. Unfortunately, most of our landscapes offer little in the way of appropriate habitat, forage, and housing. Even the most beautiful gardens are not always healthy ecosystems for pollinators. Design choices, plant selections, and maintenance practices can make a huge difference in creating your own healthy […]

(scroll down for video) Summer time seems like such a great time of year, but if you are a honey bee you favorite time of the year is really in the spring time. Why? Because there is more forage than all the honey bees in the area can possibly collect. In fact it is such […]

The following is an excerpt from Keeping Bees and Making Honey by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum (F&W Media, 2008). This spectacular book offers an in-depth profile of nature’s most effective pollinator and covers all aspects of modern beekeeping, including where and when to get your bees, different types of hives, how to harvest and […]

Cranky Bees. They are one of the worst nightmares of a beekeeper. Cranky bees are not enjoyable to keep. They have aggressive tendencies and are overprotective of the hive. Often when you have cranky bees, you will be unable to get near the hive or you will get stung. Sometimes these bees chase you for just […]

Congregating bees on the front of the hive is called bearding and new beekeepers often panic at the sight. Bees can mound themselves up in layers or form a single layer on a large area of the front of the hive in a reaction to conditions within the hive. Methods that new beekeepers often try include […]

GRIT Editor in Chief Hank Will shares an extremely humbling experience and the visual beauty that accompanies a heart-shaped swarm.

Bees are expensive and you don’t want to lose the swarms that come off your hives and hopefully catch others to increase your population. For an investment of about $25 in materials with scrap wood, paint, flashing, and lemon grass oil, I ended up with three additional hives with very little effort.

If you want to increase your chance of successfully attracting a swarm, you can add an attractant to your bait hive. Lemongrass is very similar to the queen bee’s scent. Honeybees find the mixture of lemongrass and beeswax irresistible. Lemongrass Swarm Lure Recipe Yield: 3 ounces Ingredients 2 tablespoons beeswax 1/4 cup olive oil 40 […]