We were sad to have our hive swarm at the end of the season this year, but there were a few benefits to that experience. One of the most important is feeling prepared for next season, and knowing the signs of a coming swarm. Additionally, we were able to harvest the...
If you do not have a beehive but want to attract pollinators to your garden, or if you have a hive and are trying to keep your bees well supplied, planting flowers and vegetables that appeal to bees is a wonderful thing to do. This can help to ensure the future of the...
If you keep bees you are going to get stung once and awhile. What you might not know is that relief from bee stings is available from some unlikely sources.
If you do get stung, first make sure that you extract the stinger and clean the area. Removing the stinge...
When keeping bees in a top bar hive, you need to check on them regularly and make sure that the hive is in good health. Top bar hives require some more attention than the Langstroth variety because the bees may start making comb in a manner that makes it difficult to...
Once your bees are settled into their new hive, they go to work in earnest on building comb. Not all bee comb is going to produce honey, in fact when a colony starts to make comb it is primarily brood comb. Brood comb is where the queen bee lives and lays her eggs, w...
Sometimes when a hive of bees arrives at your homestead, things don’t go as smoothly as planned. In theory, your queen will come in a small container within the hive, and you simply remove the cork from the end and leave the candy blocking her escape hole. The time i...
Making sure that your bees have easy access to the right food is critical to how your hive will settle in and enjoy their new home. New bees will eat a 1:1 sugar and water mixture. The easiest way to mix the sugar and water is to boil the water and then mix in the eq...
Our bees have finally arrived! Thankfully, installing bees is an easy and simple task, so if you have a hive putting the bees into it should be a breeze.
Believe it or not, bees usually ship through the US Postal service. They will arrive to you in a wood and wire b...
Top bar hives are single story frameless beehives. We got our design to build one from Gold Star Honeybees (along with our first order of bees). Our beehive build started with lumber and is quickly turning into completed hives, in preparation for the bee’s arrival in...
We all know that bees pollinate flowers which lead to plants producing the fruits and vegetables we eat, and that bees also create honey which is a delicious addition to many fruits or a sweet treat raw. But there are several bee facts you learn as you start to consid...
