Claire Jones

  Beehive art is becoming more and more popular in the bee yard. Painting hive bodies a boring white was the norm when I started beekeeping 20 years ago. Fast forward to the present and everyone is trying to outdo themselves with wild and beautiful designs decorating the bee yard. Art and beekeeping? Great combination […]

I am experimenting with different varieties of handmade soap and I recently made some citrus soap bars. They turned out great, so I want to share this variation using a base of gentle olive oil soap with beeswax. I call it Beeswax Citrus Soap. Beeswax softens and protects skin from environmental elements and is naturally nourishing, antibacterial, and anti-allergenic. […]

Attracting bees with the right plants is important, but what about inviting them to make a home nearby with attractive ready-to-move-in housing? A custom condo became my project in the winter for solitary mason bees and other native bees of all kinds who come knocking on my door for a place to lay their eggs. […]

Good raw unpasteurized honey tastes very different from the plastic clover honey bear that you purchase at the supermarket. I compare it to processed cheese vs. a homemade varietal cheese. Honey bears are simply an accumulation of many types of honey that have been mixed together, heated, and made into a homogeneous mixture which lacks […]

Tired of buying compressed smoker fuel, I looked for alternative fuels that would work better and were available around me. I have used pine needles before, but after some research I found oodles of natural materials ripe for the picking in my backyard. The variety of materials that you can use is only limited by […]

Why the smoker? A necessity for preventing bee stings, even more than wearing your trusty bee suit, the smoker disrupts the bees’ normal cascade of defense when they perceive a threat. Smoked bees will flee from the source of smoke (you!) rather than advance in a defensive reaction. The result is less flight and stinging […]

Winter survival of honeybees is one of the most common topics of discussion I have with people curious about bees. With extremely cold temperatures hitting most of the East Coast, this issue has come up again and again. A healthy full-size colony with an adequate supply of honey and a healthy queen can survive extreme […]

  If you tell your friends and neighbors that you are growing a “Bee Bee” tree for your bees, they will probably think you are kidding! A magnet for pollinators of all kinds, it is a a great small tree, also known as Korean evodia (Evodia daniellii or Tetradium daniellii). Unknown outside of horticultural circles […]

Swarm season!! It will be here before you know it and are you ready? It is still winter and you aren’t doing a lot in the bee yard. But there are things that you can do to get ready for swarm season in the spring. If you keep bees, you more than likely will have […]

Here in the mid-Atlantic in Maryland, we have had a mild winter with at least a dozen days since early December above 50 degrees. That means flying bees looking for early spring/late winter nectar and pollen in the landscape… and they are coming up short. Unless you plan ahead and plant perennials and trees that […]

Have you often thought about keeping bees but were discouraged by the high set-up costs? Frugal beekeeping is possible if you cut some corners. The price tag can cause sticker shock to anyone who looks into buying equipment and bees, keeping many potential beekeepers from jumping into this highly rewarding hobby/small business. Most people are […]

When to Feed Bees Feeding bees is all about stretching the food stores so that bees don’t starve from lack of nectar, especially during the cold winter months. Feeding bees is essential at different stages of keeping bees.Newly installed bee packages also need a boost of sugar water until they get their house in order. As a gardener […]

Christmas shopping just got easier after making a batch of my lavender honey-scented body butter. Easy to whip up in a couple of hours, this body butter is a smooth emollient welcome on winter parched skin. And what better way to put to use the beeswax & honey that I gathered from the hive this summer? […]

As a beekeeper for over 20 years, I have accumulated pounds of beeswax as a welcome product of my hives. A substance formed by insects, it is simply amazing that it has been used for millennia, even found in the tombs of pharaohs, caulking the ships of Vikings. Think of it as the duct tape […]

The iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin anchors the famous “Unter den Linden”, Under the Linden Trees, which bees flock to when they bloom Beekeeping, especially urban beekeeping, is picking up steam and buzz! When I first attended my “Beekeeping Basics” class put on by the local beekeepers club twenty years ago, older men in coveralls […]