Matt joins Eric to answer Beekeeping for Beginners questions on this show. What equipment to buy, how to buy honeybees, where to put beehives in your yard, what kind of beekeeping suit to buy all answered here. what kind of beekeeping suit and beekeeping veil is good? what kind of frames should i use in [...]
This winter feeding sugar cake recipe is an alternative to making fondant to feed your bees. From what I read in beekeeping magazines and online forums, it seems many people are moving to simple cakes of sugar, an alternative to sugar candy, which is a pain to make. We use these cakes in our winter [...]
Winter is coming. Just before the October storm that dumped 20″ of snow here, I went out to our two beeyards and got the beehives ready for winter. The biggest danger to beehives in winter , i think, is condensation. Humidity builds up inside a warm hive, hits the top of the hive, which is [...]
You’ve signed a two-year lease on what? Have you taken full-moon-French-leave of your senses…again? I can tell…She, Who Must Be Obeyed, is intrigued with the idea of my going into business for myself. “Well…technically I’m extending my Melissa Bee Farms business into new areas, opening new markets, joining the green revolution,” I counter. “Besides, last year we [...]
We requeened this honeybee hive last month, and the bees are almost a pure yellow-gold color, its wild. This queen is a hybrid Italian honeybee queen that we bought from Warm Colors Apiary. Right now the Goldenrod is blooming, and there is still clover in the fields, plus around here we have late season woodland [...]
we did a beehive inspection last week and found the new honeybees to be in good shape. they have started to fill up their new frames with honey. this honey will stay in the hive to feed the honeybees through the winter.
Want to know the basics of how to raise honeybees? what kind of beekeeping equipment you need to buy? what kind of beekeeping veil to buy? where is the best place to put beehives? Listen to GardenFork Radio for a Beekeeping 101 , the basics of raising honeybees. The idea for this honeybee beekeeping show [...]
We just shot another of our Beginning Beekeeping aka Beekeeping 101 videos and I wanted to show you how we water the bees. One of our two beeyards is near a vernal pond, and a stream not far away, but I’m all about making it easy for the bees, so I put out some water [...]
We have a real bear problem in our town with bears, and bears really like to tear apart beehives. So to hedge our bets, we decided last year to start a second beeyard in another part of town. Our second beeyard is near the center of town, right next to the cemetery. The honeybees and [...]
I’ve heard from more than one person, be them beekeepers or just people who think they know something about honeybees and beekeeping, that you should only use cane sugar to feed your bees sugar syrup in the spring or fall. I haven’t read this in any of my beginning beekeeping books, nor was it mentioned [...]
We are feeding our bees a 2-1 sugar syrup with fumagillin and essential oils to get them ready for winter. I think this tray type feeder works best. You can fill it with 2 gallons of syrup. The two partitions allow you to feed 2 different types of feed at once if you want. I [...]
I wear Carhartt work pants. Whether I am in the city or in the country, I’m wearing Carhartt’s black canvas work dungarees. ( I do own one tan pair ) Yesterday, we worked the bees, our plan was to powder sugar the bees to treat for varroa mites, and add new grease patties for tracheal [...]
We are going to start a second beeyard at another farm. We wanted to have a second beeyard as a hedge against the chance that a bear will destroy our existing hives.
Our hives in their current location are surrounded by a traditional electric fence, three strands, and is part of a larger electric fence to keep beef cattle in their pasture. Bill, who owns the farm where our hives are, thinks the local bears are already aware of his electric fence, and have not tried to get to our beehives.
We pulled the inner cover on our biggest hive, and it was not easy this time. The honeybees had sealed it pretty tight with propopolis, a waxy resin that bees collect from trees.
