Featured Stories
Wax Moth Treatment to Help Your Bees Win the Battle
Add to Favorites All hives, even healthy ones, will have wax moths. I didn’t understand this when we first started beekeeping. I thought that if we were good beekeepers our …
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OAV: How to Treat Varroa Mites
Add to Favorites My wife and I took a beginning beekeeping class before becoming backyard beekeepers. We learned about wax moth treatment and how to manage ants in beehives. We …
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What You Can Learn from the Beehive Entrance
Add to Favorites One of the most anticipated jobs for the beekeeper is doing a hive inspection. This is when you get to look into the hive and be assured …
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Catch and Release Powdered Sugar Roll Varroa Mite Test
Knowing what a hive’s mite load is can mean the difference between a hive surviving the winter in a healthy state ready to tackle the next honey season and an almost guaranteed untimely death from the viruses and diseases contributed to high varroa loads.
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Why Did My Bees Leave the Hive? What is NOT a Swarm!
Cartoons and movies give us an (incorrect) idea of what swarming bees look like. So when the time to ask questions came up in my first beekeeping class, I asked, “Why might my bees leave the hive?”
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How Long Should I Feed Bees in Spring?
When a hive is starting out in the spring, do the forager bees consume and share some of the nectar they gather with the “house” bees and store the rest that they don’t need for their survival? And is that the reason that
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11 Must-Have Beekeeping Supplies for Beginners
When our son first decided he wanted to keep bees and we started looking at beekeeping supplies, we learned pretty quickly that starting beekeeping can be pricey. Since we are really not the kind of people to rush out and drop a lot of money on a new found hobby we had to get creative.
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How do I Configure My Top Bar Hive?
If your top bar hive opens on the side (cold-way configuration, like a Langstroth), putting the empty brood frames right in the center will work fine.
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When Should I Perform the First Mite Check and Treatment?
A key time for getting a jump on varroa is when the colony is broodless, since any mites present will be in a phoretic state rather than hiding inside capped brood.
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Why Did My Newly Installed Bees Make a Queen Cell?
Mary writes … Today was inspection day and I found what appears to be a queen cell … yikes!
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