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Not many things match a beehive swarm in terms of amazing nature. One of my beehives swarmed and I was lucky enough to be on the roof while it was happening. Watch the video: This beehive swarm is from a new package we installed this spring, which is unusual. I made two huge mistakes while…
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A winter beehive inspection can be either a good thing or a bad thing, here’s a video I made about how I check a beehive in winter. Winter Beehive Inspection Rules Only do this if its warm enough. If its above 40F, its ok, but warmer is better. Open and close the hive real fast….
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Here’s a homemade bucket bee feeder I made to feed the honeybees sugar syrup. Watch the video and then step through the photos below. I like the bucket bee feeder because you can feed the bees sugar syrup in the early spring and fall without having to open up the beehive. Our other sugar feeder…
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Here is the oxalic acid varroa mite treatment I use on our honeybees. I’ve used a few mite treatments in the past, tried the varroa resistant queens, one year I did the hands off method, and the oxalic acid mite treatment is the best thing I’ve used so far. This is based on my use,…
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After trying several kinds, this beehive winter wrap works best for me. Its easy to put on, and I can re-use it every year. It makes winterizing beehives easier, and the honeybees make it through winter. Beehive Winter Wrap How To: Insulating the beehive is the first part of winter prep. The second and third…
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Here’s how to put together an insulated inner cover for your beehive without having to buy a new cover or build one. I learned this method from Phillipe at MudSongs.org , he has some great info on his beekeeping site, very down to earth. An insulated inner cover reduces or prevents condensation in the beehive…
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The mountain camp method of feeding your bees sugar during winter is the best way I’ve found so far to provide bees with an emergency food source. For whatever reason, honeybees may run through their winter food stores, and need additional food to get through the tough winter months. The mountain camp method provides this…
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Here’s a video on how we harvest honey using an uncapping roller. This extracting tool has saved us a lot of time, say goodbye to capping knives. Previous to my friend Rick telling me about this cool too, we would use a capping knife to cut open all the honeycomb to harvest honey. This results…
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A beehive knocked over by wind or a bear or storms is not fun. Here’s how to prevent your beehives from being knocked over. I recently got a call from my friend Bill, saying that one of our beehives was knocked over. Normally, a beekeeper would stress about this, I didn’t, watch the video to…
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A Hive Inspection is just that, you are checking out the beehive to see how its doing. Part of our Beekeeping 101 Video series, today we are doing a hive inspection of a nuc we installed this spring. This bee nuc had a late start, as did all our bees, because spring came late. Note…
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Getting honeybees ready for winter, aka winter beekeeping preparation, is one of those things that can fall off the list for beekeepers, probably not a good thing. I believe if you just leave your hives as is, most will perish. Below we have several videos on getting honeybees ready for winter, but first of all,…
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Clear Cloudy Honey with our how to video. Crystallized Honey can be easily decrystallized, watch Eric show you how. Why causes cloudy honey? The most common reason is temperature. The honey has been stored somewhere and the honey temperature eventually lowers enough to crystalize. The moisture content of the honey also causes cloudy honey. How…
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Make a DIY Bee Vacuum. Usually a beekeeper can just shake a swarm of bees into the bucket and walk away. Every now and then, however, a vacuum is the only way to get the bees. In this short video, Rick shows how he constructed a bee vacuum for less than $25.
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Another of our Beekeeping 101 videos on how to do a winter bee inspection. Links to more beekeeping videos at end of the post. This time we open up the beehives in late March to show us feeding bees in winter. Keeping bees in areas with snow and winter, you will want to add sugar…
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I found these supersedure cells, sure sign of a queenless beehive, yesterday. Supersedure cells are a beehive’s way of raising an emergency queen. Something has happened to the queen, either it died, or the workers killed it because it was injured or not laying well, and the honeybees are raising a new queen. There were…
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Just a short “bonus” video from Rick this morning on Easy Native Pollinators. He’s been guarding his dill and fennel patches in the front yard from the Perfectionistas’ in the neighborhood (and inside his own house) all season long. The result is this somewhat seedy but extremely prolific butterfly habitat, a Motel 6 for Monarch…
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Solar Wax Melter plans here. Rick built this DIY solar beeswax melter out of a cooler and stuff you probably have in your garage. Beeswax is made by the honeybees, and when you harvest honey, the cappings on the cells of the honeycomb are cut off, and you can save these wax cappings, melt them…
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Honey bee swarm capture, or bees swarm rescue, or hiving a swarm caught on video. Capturing a honeybee swarm is a neat experience. Bees swarm in the spring, and then they move to a tree limb to start looking for a new home. This is when we can capture the swarm. This honeybee swarm was…
