Swarms are natures way for honey bees to reproduce and expand. If the season is good and a beehive’s population has grown, a single colony can become overcrowded. So much so that bees start to have difficulty understanding whether or not there’s a healthy laying queen in the hive. So the queen decides to find…
Honey production naturally slows down in the autumn. Most beekeepers harvest the honey crop and leave enough food stores for the bees during the coming months. But sometimes bees may have trouble building up their reserves. In this situation bees need a helping hand you will have to feed your bees in the fall. After…
Modern beehives make the beekeepers job easier. There are a number of different types available, but they all work on the same principle. Hives are designed to allow us to raise bees for the production of honey and for pollination purposes, in a non-destructive manner. Mostly constructed from wood, they literally include hundreds of different…
If you haven’t paid much attention to bees before, you may only see them as a nuisance during your summer barbecues. But keeping bees can offer a number of benefits. So what are the benefits of keeping bees? Are you debating whether beekeeping is a hobby you want to get into or not? Here are 14…
A busy bee is a happy bee! When worker bees are out foraging they are pretty single minded – they want food! When nectar is flowing nicely then honey bees are satisfied. But at certain times, food is hard to find. In this kind of situation you can end up with bees robbing other colonies….
OK… So you’ve been inspecting your beehive frames for a while now, and you can’t help noticing that frames with brood cells look darker in places. After a while, and certainly after your first season of beekeeping, you’ll see that some cells become dark. With time they may be almost black in color. There can…
Once your beehive is full of honey bees it gets pretty tricky to paint it! So painting beehives is something you need to consider before you set up and install them. It’s the kind of thing a new beekeeper can easily overlook, and you need to plan ahead and allow enough preparation time. I don’t…
If you have ever opened up a hive for inspection only to find some sticky wax comb in places that you didn’t expect, then you have already experienced burr comb. Burr comb is also known as brace comb or sometimes bridge comb. So what is Burr Comb? Burr comb is wax comb which bees have…
Sometimes beekeepers need to relocate their hives. Perhaps the original location was a bad choice, or you simply want a better situation for hives during a cold winter. Once a hive is established, bees learn its location and know how to find their way home. So how do you make sure your bees don’t get…
One of the most unnerving ideas for new beekeepers (me included) is the possibility of getting stung. As a beekeeper you’re in close proximity to your beehives on a regular basis. But you also have to consider other people moving around your hives. Neighbors, friends and family obviously need to be taken into account. This…
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