In my experience, most new beekeepers are worry worts. They spend a lot of energy fretting over their bees, but mostly they focus on the wrong things. Read on to find out what you can stop stressing out about! 1. Cooling the Hive  Honey bees like to keep their brood nests between 90-97F (32-25C) degrees. […]

As I write this our golden retriever is barking at a car turning around in the driveway. He’s letting me know that someone is here. I tell him “Good boy,… okay, that’s enough.” and pat his head. Still flustered and huffy, he obeys begrudgingly. He quiets down and lays in his bed, ears pricked and […]

  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 […]

I’ve written other posts that talk about plants you should add to your yard to attract and support bees, but never have I seen anything like this! We planted a sunflower field on our land this spring and opened a U-Pick section of our farm where people can come and cut a bouquet, visit with […]

How to “Read” a Frame from Your Hive On Sunday, we checked our hive to see if our queen had begun laying eggs in earnest yet. The honeybees had clearly been intent on demolishing the pollen patty I had made them a week and a half ago, so that was a good sign. When we […]

Moving from Beetle Blasters to Beetle Jails: Small Hive Beetle Management Small hive beetles are a pest and a terrible nuisance, but as we learned oh so painfully, they can destroy a weakened hive if they become established and do as they are wont to do:  reproduce prolifically.  I’ve never had a sadder (or more disgusting) […]

What is robbing? When I wrote this in July, my area’s (southeast Georgia) nectar flow has stopped and all that is available to the bees is some pollen. With foragers going out and returning empty handed, or finding nectar that is sub-par, I find that my hives get a little hot this time of year. When […]

  What are you doing for National Honey Bee Day this year?  It’s coming up soon. Share your own plans or events in the comments section below. August 19, 2017 is officially “National Honey Bee Day” in the USA. Every year around the country, bee clubs and bee lovers gather together for education, outreach, fun […]

When other beekeepers observe me working my hives, I often get comments about how gentle I am with my bees. I make a conscious effort not to crush any bees, but until recently, I did not realize how abnormal this was. Unfortunately, all you have to do is get on YouTube to see how most beekeepers […]

Honeybees, in a sense, reproduce on two levels. There is the actual reproduction of single bees; the mating of the queen, egg laying and rearing of young. This is one kind of reproduction. But there is also the reproduction of the hive itself. Without swarming, the first beehive in the history of time would still […]