30 Tuesday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, management, queens
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Quite a few commercial beekeepers replace queens every second year. It’s a scheduled event, sort of like a birthday. Half the hives will get a new queen in 2017, the other half in 2018, then back to the first group again. But hobby beekeepers may be able to watch their bees more closely, allowing a […]
Read more here: Good Queen; Bad Queen — Bad Beekeeping Blog
29 Monday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey, recipe
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There will be a lot of grilling going on today. Here are two slightly different recipes for Jezebel Sauce from Southern Living Magazine. The first recipe uses honey.
This sweet-and-spicy sauce is delicious served with pork tenderloin and grilled chicken or as a dipping sauce for fried shrimp. It also makes a great savory spread for biscuits or roast beef and turkey sandwiches.
The complete recipes can be found HERE (with honey) and HERE (without honey).
28 Sunday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey, honey bee behavior
As the nectar flow draws to a close, the girls diligently forage for the last of their key nectar and pollen sources, storing away the goodness to be turned into honey. Few tulip poplar and black locust blooms remain, and those that do, are vulnerable to wind and rain. Now that the danger of frost […]
Read more here: Waiting on Honey — settlingforbees
27 Saturday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, food, honey, recipe
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Those that have been reading my blog for a while know that I cannot resist chicken wings. I wanted to try another Asian style chicken wing, so this is a cross between honey sriracha and orange chicken. I made these fairly mild because my son can’t handle the heat. But if these were just for […]
via Sweet and Spicy Chicken Wings — Joann’s Food For Thought
24 Wednesday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping
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Old tattered wings – reflection on one bee’s life. The unceremonious end of a honey bee.
More at: This Old Bee — Prime Bees – College Station Bee & Honey Farm
23 Tuesday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping
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Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are all part of what is termed a superorganism. Superorganisms are defined as a social unit of Eusocial animals, specialized labor is divided up, and the individuals can not exist outside of the group on their own for any extended period of time.
Continue at: Eusocial Insects —
19 Friday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, forage
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Source: The joys of buckwheat
During these late summer months in East Tennessee, we typically think there is not much available for the bees as far as sources of nectar and pollen.
That doesn’t have to be the case.
If you have any kind of a garden (or just an open area), buckwheat can provide great benefits for your bees and your soil. Buckwheat can be sown at any time during warm weather. Ideally, it takes three to four weeks to come up (sometimes longer, depending on the weather), and produces a small white flower that the bees love.
When the blooms die back after a couple of weeks, the buckwheat will re-seed itself and if there is enough warm weather and rain, it will come back. These cycles will continue until the first frost.
The bees make honey off of the nectar from the buckwheat flower. This is honey that you can harvest or that you can leave on the hive to reduce the necessity of winter feeding.
The best results for an initial stand of buckwheat are to clear the soil, sow the seed and then do a light till. If possible, do all this before a good rain.
Buckwheat has a morning nectar flow, and that’s when you will see bees working it. They don’t work it in the afternoon.
Besides being good for bees, buck-wheat is good for the soil. It prevents weeds, supports beneficial insects and returns a lot of nitrogen to the ground. So, if you have a patch of garden or land and want to do something for your bees, plant some buckwheat.
Key words: buckwheat, garden, bees and buckwheat, re-seeding buckwheat, growing buckwheat, source of nectar for bees, butterflies and buckwheat
Source: The joys of buckwheat
17 Wednesday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping
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I always knew bees pooped but have really only researchedphotos of unhealthy bee poop – you know, the stuff you keep your eyes out for during hive inspections. I also was very aware they tend to defecateoutside the hive on their “cleansing flights”, but it wasn’t until I left my bees in an observation hive for a full day and a half before letting them out that I realized how seriously they take this colony rule.
Let me start by disclosingthat the bees had plenty of air, food, and were covered up so they weren’t in the light – I’m not a monster.
I had packed up a recently split hive since they were small and I could fit almost all the bees into the small observation hive. When it was time to put them back in their nuc, I decided to sit down and slowly movethe bees and enjoy…
View original post 280 more words
16 Tuesday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, sideliner
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What’s the right job for you in the bee industry? How to identify and grow your business.
via Growing Your Bee Business to Sideliner Status — Prime Bees – College Station Bee & Honey Farm
15 Monday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, nectar flow
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Beekeepers, like farmers, still look outside in the natural world to gauge how to manage their honey crop. Black Locust blooming is a beekeeper sign to super up their hive for excess honey to harvest.
via Honeybee NectarFlow-Black Locust Trees — The Garden Diaries
14 Sunday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, management, mites, pests, varroa mites
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As the managed honey bee industry continues to grapple with significant annual colony losses, the Varroa destructor mite is emerging as the leading culprit. And, it turns out, the very nature of modern beekeeping may be giving the parasite the exact conditions it needs to spread nearly beyond control. In an article published yesterday in […]
via How the Varroa Mite Co-Opts Honey Bee Behaviors to Its Own Advantage — Entomology Today
13 Saturday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey, recipe
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As I’ve been editing the third edition of The Body Rejuvenation Cleanse manual spring showed up here in north west New Jersey. I’ve been inspired by Traditional Chinese Medicine to honor spring as Liver/GallBladder time, which is ideal for detoxifying and strengthening the internal organ system. Doing The Body Rejuvenation Cleanse is a great way […]
12 Friday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping
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I skipped town this weekend. There was a lot going on around the farm. We are smack in thimble of spring planting, the heavy spring nectar flow, house construction deadlines…. But I carelessly left town in pursuit of the elusive queen. Her royal highness of the hive, mama to all, queen big booty. Despite the 40,000-60,000 […]
continued here: NC Born & Bred — buck naked farm
10 Wednesday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping
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Starting out, the first two or three years, it seems easier, safer, and more financially prudent to simply buy queens from the association prior to making spring splits. If you have 2 or 3 hives that need splitting it’s not too costly and ensures a greater degree of success to buy the queens and make splits installing the purchased queens. It almost always results in a good outcome.
Then, if your bee fever grows, you start to have more colonies and at some point the check for those queens adds up to serious cash. Cash better saved for other beekeeping toys. Additionally, aren’t we suppose to be selecting breeding stock and rearing queens that survive our climate and the mites? Plus, allow me to drop that cool word, it’s “sustainable.”
I’ve been resistant to rearing my own queens for the past couple years although I know I should have been. I’m not quite sure if I’m just lazy, busy with other bee projects, afraid, or just not interested in queen rearing. But, at last, it’s time.
I’m not sure if my eyes are good enough anymore for grafting. I thought about buying some of those jeweler’s or watchmaker’s glasses. But then I’d also be buying more dedicated queen rearing equipment as well. Cell punching helps and I’m waiting for a friend to offer a class (hint) which may convince me to adopt his preferred method. Anyway, pretty much all the grafting methods neccessitate multiple boxes, transfers, more bee stuff and can be a bit pricey. Simplier (non grafting) equipment like the Nicot or Jenter systems are still a bit pricey.
On the other extreme is the walkaway split, making sure the queenless split has larvae of appropriate age and allowing the bees to make an emergency queen. Additional methods of cell crushing can be added to improve the outcome but making multiple walkaway splits is a bit scary too. I’m a little OCD and looking for a little more control and perhaps even better outcome.
So, remembering the low tech methods of our forefathers, and with a mind to keeping costs at a minimum, I decided on using one of the throwbacks like the Miller or Hopkins methods. A mentor once suggested the Hopkins method to me and it sounds easy enough and promises to raise more queens than I’ll need. Basically it involves taking a frame of appropriately aged larvae and placing it horizontally over a densely populated queenless split. It’s low risk as well, if all goes poorly, such as a sudden change in the weather, the worst that can happen is I re-unite that split with their parent colony. So that’s what I’ve decided to attempt this year. Another adventure in beekeeping! Here’s a picture of the 2″ shim I’ll be using to place the frame over the colony. Also a link to click on if you’re interested in reading more about the Hopkins method of queen rearing. http://beesource.com/point-of-view/jerry-hayes/the-hopkins-method-of-queen-rearing
08 Monday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping equipment, equipment
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The Scottish philosopher wasn’t talking about beekeepers, but he might as well have been. The quotation goes on something like “Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all”. Which pretty neatly sums up the beekeeper who has lost his hive tool in the long grass.
Conducting a full inspection without a hive tool is a a thankless task. You can’t crack the crownboard off (unless it’s a sheet of heavy-duty plastic), propolis acquires the adhesive properties of SuperGlue and your fingers become clumsy, fat, bee-squashing sausages as you try and prise the frames apart.
Read the full article at: Hive tools — The Apiarist
07 Sunday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, beekeeping history, honey bee behavior, honey bee biology, season, seasons, swarms
A Facebook friend’s post this week told how a large honeybee swarm had taken up residence in an empty hive on his property. All on its own! He’d left the hive out all winter, “seasoning it with lemon grass every month,” (rubbing lemon grass into the wood), and the day before saw a scout bee […]
Continued here: In the Spring a Not-So-Young Woman’s Fancy Lightly Turns to Thoughts of Bees — florasforum
06 Saturday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, honey, recipe
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ingredients: 50g quinoa, ca. 150ml alpro coconut drink (click here for details), apple, some honey and cinnamon directions: – rinse quinoa well with hot water in a fine-mesh strainer because the seeds are very tiny – bring quinoa and coconut drink to a boil and let it simmer for about 15 minutes – cut the […]
04 Thursday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, hive inspections, inspections, management
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Hive inspection is not only fun, but necessary! Once you reach a certain number of hives, it is almost impossible to remember what hive was in what shape. I have seen people use colored tags on hives to indicate the need to add supers or to feed. I have seen people scribble in notepads. I […]
03 Wednesday May 2017
Posted in beekeeping, pests
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Wax moths have been one of my biggest challenges as a beekeeper, they’ve caught me out a fair few times. In my first season I listened to some advice that moths weren’t attracted to honey supers because they didn’t have the scent of broad in. That cost me stack of supers. Last year I…
via Wax moths – an unlikely environmental hero. — The Beehive Jive
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