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.

Bees get hot just like humans do. Be prepared to support them during extreme heat by taking a look at water, ventilation, nutrition and helping to make sure they have easy access to these. If you don’t, your beekeeping experience may be less enjoyable.

In this episode, Hilary Kearney of Girl Next Door Honey teaches Charlotte French and Zach Foley  about catching a swarm. She also goes into detail about her business as a beekeeper.     Our Guest Hilary Kearney is a full-time beekeeper in her hometown of San Diego, California. Her business Girl Next Door Honey provides educational opportunities for hundreds […]

Harvest Your Honey On this episode of Keeping Backyard Bees podcasts,  Charlotte Brunin and Robert Riley meet with Becky and Steve Tipton to discuss all this honey including how to harvest from a Langstroth Hive.       Our Guests: Becky Tipton and her husband, Steve, own Country Creek Honey and have been producing and selling honey for […]

Maybe you’ve heard people talk about siting your yard for bees. If you’ve looked into beekeeping online for any amount of time, there’s a good chance you’ve come across this topic. Let’s cut to the chase – siting your yard means picking where you’re going to set up your hive. It’s an important first step […]

Beekeeping is a fascinating hobby that is enjoyed by thousands of people across the world. Beekeepers come in all ages and from all backgrounds. Almost anyone can become a beekeeper and you can keep bees almost anywhere. Are you considering embarking on the road to becoming a beekeeper? If so, you are in for an […]

Beekeeping, especially urban beekeeping, is picking up steam and buzz. When I first attended a beekeeping basics class put on by the local beekeepers club 20 years ago, older men in coveralls dominated and the joke was that the average age of a beekeeper was “from 57 to dead.” As a younger woman in the […]

Our first experience with beekeeping was attending a one-hour presentation at our community library. It was the first time I spoke to a beekeeper and, if anything, it calmed any reservations we may have had and upped our enthusiasm to the point where we went home and ordered our first hive. We are living proof […]

My beehive died again this year. The death of this hive marks the third year (and the fourth hive) that I’ve failed to shepherd one through the winter. I have attended multiple beekeeping classes and workshops, a mentoring session, and read several books on beekeeping. I am by no means a novice. For the last […]

There is conventional beekeeping in Langstroth hives. And then, there is beekeeping a wholly “other way.”

Markus Imhoof outlines many of the problems facing beekeepers today in his book More Than Honey: The Survival of Bees and the Future of Our World, which Imhoof had originally produced as a documentary. His slant is strongly pro-bees and anti-pesticides and, in conjunction, anti-commercial agriculture. In particular, I found his interviews with a large […]

For Northern beekeepers, it is way past the time to prepare for winter, but in the southeast, we still have 90° F days and the goldenrod is finally in full bloom! The weather this year has been a complete downer with it raining almost every day from 03 June until 09 September and then Hurricane […]

In most ways, it’s a great time to be a beekeeper. The mystery surrounding the increase in bee mortality has brought beekeeping into the public eye. We are celebrated, fawned over and sought out for guidance. Some even tout us as environmental heroes. But with all this attention also comes criticisms. So, how can we address and […]

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 […]

The interior of a hive is a wet, warm, stifling environment. Should we put our opposable thumbs to use and take over temperature control?