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Ask 10 beekeepers the best way to remove bees from honey supers and you’ll get eleven answers. As with anything else, every beekeeper has their preferred method for accomplishing any task. In this post, I’ll examine how to remove bees from the super so the honey can be harvested. When a hive is opened, bees […]

The first warm, sunny day in early spring when the temperature reaches 45° to 50°F (7° to 10°C) is a great time to pay a visit to your apiary. This first visit of the year involves primarily a quick check of the hives, simply to make sure they are still alive. A trip to see […]

Mason bees, also known as orchard bees, are docile pollinators that are easy to keep and provide a myriad of benefits for the pollinator community. In nature, mason bees build solitary nests with mud in hollow reeds, woodpecker holes, or other small openings. To keep mason bees, all you really have to do is provide […]

Modern beekeepers commonly wonder what to do with all the beeswax their hives produce. Thankfully, the possibilities are endless, from holistic and decorative uses to various homemade health and beauty products. Learn how to make beautiful, useful gifts with Petra Ahnert’s book, Beeswax Alchemy (Quarry Books, 2015). This excerpt offers a recipe for a Solid Lotion Bar. […]

Visiting more than 2 million flowers to produce a single pound of honey, bees are some of the hardest workers on our planet — and quite possibly nature’s best cosmetologists. These wondrous winged creatures pollinate about one-sixth of the world’s flowering plant species and about 400 agricultural plants, and from their hard work springs forth […]

Particularly useful in orchards, mason bees (also called blue orchard bees) can visit hundreds of flowers per day. They don’t make honey, but they collect pollen for nest holes where they lay eggs, and then plug the holes with mud. They look like small blue-black flies, and they rarely sting. The bee larvae and cocoons […]

If you’re like me, when it comes to adding livestock — or any animal for that matter — to your home, you relish the research. It’s fun to flip through literature and find the breed, species, or whatever the subspecies (also called ecotypes) may be called that jumps out at you and finds its way […]

The Polar Vortex landed a blow to the Midwest where Five Feline Farm is located. Many of the beekeepers in this area report a significant loss of colonies over the harsh winter. One beekeeper described opening a hive to find bees appearing frozen in place. The entire colony dead. Our losses are not confirmed at […]

Bees are one of the most important insects to us. Not only are they great garden pollinators, they maintain biological balance and recycle soil nutrients. Learn all about bees — from their appearance to the many unknown North American Species in Bees, Wasps, and Ants (Timber Press, 2010) by Eric Grissell. The following excerpt was taken from […]

  Honey is as sensational as it is sweet, but if you thought that honey-making was the only work occupying bees inside that hive, think again. A mind-boggling array of insect activities is creating amazing honeybee products right under our noses. And our noses themselves even benefit, since some of these products can be used to treat […]

I’ve found that herb gardeners are rarely solitary folks absorbed in pursuing perfect plants. When working in the garden, they often trail a friend or neighbor, sharing volumes of knowledge. They’ll pluck sprigs with abandon, encouraging visitors to “sniff this — taste that — please take this one home. My seeds came up so well […]

If you’ve been dreaming about beekeeping for awhile and want to make a go of it this year, early February is the time to get started. It’s easy to place an order for bees from your local beekeeping supplier, but March is the last month to do it. There are so many great reasons to […]

Sometimes it is necessary to feed honeybees through the winter, which can be accomplished by using one of several methods. That is the position we find ourselves in here on Five Feline Farm after two colonies have struggled through the fall with apparent robber bees. A colony of honeybees needs anywhere from 30 to 60 […]

Two years ago we added bees to the Chiot’s Run Family. We picked up 10,000 ladies from Dave, a local guy who sells them. He knows what he’s talking about — these were the hives in his front yard. On our way home, Mr. Chiot looked at me and said, “This has the makings of a horrible […]

Honeybees work. They work all spring and summer to store up enough pollen and honey for their colony to survive the winter. However, sometimes, their best efforts are not enough and they can end up starving to death if their supplies run out. As you have read, in the early spring and late fall when […]