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Countryside Magazine Contributor
Articles by Countryside Magazine Contributor
What’s Better? Buying Bees or Catching Swarms?
Add to Favorites By Ed Dane – Is buying bees better than catching bee swarms? It is if you buy nucs. There are several ways to start beekeeping. Most beginners start …
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The Varroa Mite: Know Your Enemy
Add to Favorites By Josh Vaisman – Honey bees currently face three difficult challenges to their survival — a lack of quality nutrition, ubiquitous pesticides in the environment, and the …
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Fascinating Queen Bee Facts for Today’s Beekeeper
Queen bees are fascinating and sophisticated creatures. Before starting your honey bee farm, there are some queen bee facts you must know in order to be a successful backyard beekeeper.
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What Happens When the Queen Bee Dies?
Raising honeybees is a challenge. One day your hive looks good and a few days later you wonder if it’s going to live.
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Bee Bucks – The Cost of Beekeeping
Keeping bees isn’t free and so I’m often asked, “What is the cost of beekeeping? If I’m looking to start a honey bee farm, what is the expected initial investment?” Let’s find out together!
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Starting Beekeeping: Find a Beekeeping Mentor
Mentoring is a traditional way for beekeepers to teach people starting beekeeping about tending bees. However, finding a mentor, someone who is both knowledgeable about hive management and interested in teaching you, can feel difficult, especially if you don’t know anyone who keeps bees in your area.
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The Importance of Winterizing Beekeeping Equipment
Add to Favorites By Alexis Griffee, Florida Winterizing beekeeping equipment, while the hive sleeps, avoids problems when the weather warms up. As the cooler weather rolls in, our thoughts on the farm …
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Emergency, Swarm, and Supercedure Cells, Oh My!
I remember seeing the queen in our first ever hive and thinking to myself, “I’ll never find supercedure cells since I’m going to do all I can to keep her alive forever.” Of course, that’s not the reality of beekeeping.
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Natural Bees Comb Building: Boon or Bust?
The construction of natural bee’s comb is a wonder to behold. Festooning bees clasp legs to form hanging chains, a behavior many beekeepers describe as measuring, and set to work building hexagonal cells using wax flakes they excrete from abdominal glands and shape with their jaws. Each bee appears to work independently, yet somehow cells built by many bees working on different areas of comb come together seamlessly.
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A List of Plants That Attract Bees
For thousands of years, bees have been helping feed people, but now in the face of an onslaught of chemicals and disease, they’re in need of a helping hand. One course of action you can take is growing plants that attract bees.
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