Please enjoy July’s Video to Buzz About!   Please enjoy this video of a lecture given by Jamie Ellis at the 2014 National Honey Show entitled “Addressing the Sustainability of Beekeeping in the 21st Century”.

Catching a Swarm Sponsored By: Brushy Mountain Bee Farm Shane Gebauer, president of Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, demonstrates how to capture a bee swarm with the Hipps Swarm Retriever and install it in a super. Knowing how to catch a swarm is important both for capturing new swarms you want to add to your beekeeping […]

To a new beekeeper differentiating a drone from the queen can be a little confusing. I remember the first time we did a hive inspection with our first colony. It was after we not-so-gracefully dumped our package bees in the new, empty hive and sealed it up for two weeks hoping we did everything right. […]

Story and photos by Jennifer Sartell An adult bee’s diet is primarily made up of three types of food. Honey, Nectar and Pollen. In this post, we will discover how each of these food groups provide essential nutrient to a bee. Nectar Where does nectar come from? Nectar actually begins in the leaves of plants. […]

Last year I wrote an article on the ten most common mistakes I see new beekeepers make. The continued popularity of this article and the high volume of mistakes I see beekeepers make has prompted me to write a sequel! So, here are five more beekeeping mistakes I hope to help you avoid. 1. Poor Record Keeping Not […]

Moving colonies successfully and gently from one hive to another takes planning and good bee math.

It might be a weird subject to read about, (it was even weirder to research) but the reproductive practice of the honey bee is a fascinating thing!   All bees begin life as an egg. Fertilized eggs will grow to be female bees and unfertilized eggs will become drones (male bees). The queen has control […]

A honey bee is approximately a half of an inch long. Though tiny, it is made up of many complicated and interesting parts. The honey bee is one of the most streamline designs of any creature. Each part is tailored to a specific purpose, and does that purpose well.     The body of a […]

This is my first summer keeping bees in straw hives called “skeps.” Come follow my journey!