Hives & Equipment
Beekeeping with the Warre Hive: The Original Homestead Beehive
By Ernie Schmidt, Washington – Beekeeping with the Warre hive, for me, is the easiest way to care for bees. The Warre beehive was developed specifically to be a homestead hive. …
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The Importance of Winterizing Beekeeping Equipment
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 often drift to …
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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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Flow Hive Review: Honey on Tap
I never thought that I would be keeping bees. In fact, my healthy fear of them as a child had me spending warm summer days indoors and sprinting away from …
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Frugal Beekeeping with Used Beekeeping Supplies
When our son first told us he was interested in starting beekeeping, one of the things we were concerned about was the cost of beekeeping supplies. We had to spend quite …
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Moving Beehives: What You Need to Know
When you first got interested in starting beekeeping, I know you did tons of research and thinking about where to put your hives. But sometimes things change and you need …
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The Basics of Making a Bee Hotel
Even though we have several honey bee hives on our property, our strawberries were not getting pollinated. After a bit of research, we learned that strawberries aren’t a favorite of …
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What’s in Your Beekeeping Smoker?
When our son first started keeping bees I had no idea what a beekeeping smoker was used for or what to put in the smoker. The smoker is really a …
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Top Bar Beehives vs Langstroth Beehives
Not long after our teenage son started raising honey bees, a family friend built him a top bar beehive with an observation window using beehive plans from a homesteading book. It was …
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Make a DIY Honey Extractor
A honey extractor is usually one of the last pieces of equipment that a beekeeper gets after learning how to raise bees. Starting beekeeping can be pricey, but there are some ways to …
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