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 [...]
All the hives we have lost have been in the late winter – early spring due to condensation. This year I am determined to eliminate condensation from our hives. Here is a beginning beekeeping how-to video on how we made and use an insulated inner cover for winter on top of our beehives and why [...]
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 [...]
I built some honey bee swarm traps, or bait hives, to try to capture any bee swarms that came out of the beehives in our beeyard. Swarm Traps, or Bait Hives are basically boxes you place around near your bees, offering them as convenient homes for new bee swarms. The bait hives – swarm traps [...]
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 [...]
When raising Honeybees you need to check on the bees and the beehive during the winter. Part of our beginning beekeeping how to videos, here we check on a hive after a winter snowstorm.
One of Eric’s beehives crashes, and then we segue to traffic roundabouts, which reduce car crashes. Then Near Space cameras and a DIY Broiler Fired pizza oven from Mike Senese. We hope to get Mike to Skype into the show soon. Call with your questions or comments: 860-740-6938
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 [...]
In this video, we talk about ways to Bear-proof beehive. The largest danger to our beehives are bears. They are very common here in NW CT. We read an article on bear proofing one’s hives in Bee Culture link here, by Ross Conrad, author of Natural Beekeeping, and have used a few of the bear [...]
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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.
