Featured Stories
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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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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Beekeeping Calendar April/May
Add to Favorites A guide to Beekeeping in the Northern Hemisphere. Loving Hive Highlights? Download other helpful resources in this series! CLICK HERE to get your pdf!
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Installing a New Queen Bee to Change Genetics
Changing genetics (and achieving diversity) can be achieved by installing a new queen bee or “requeening.” Is this the solution to better overwintering in the Northeast?
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Who is the Queen Honey Bee and Who is in the Hive with Her?
The honey bee hive is a busy place where every bee has a job. The hive consists of the queen honey bee, the drones, and the workers. Part of learning how to raise bees is learning what role every bee fills.
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Preparing for The Queen Honey Bee
There is a decision to be made when starting beekeeping and ordering bees: do you want the two-pound or three-pound hive? You will only get one queen, but how many worker bees do you need right off the bat? That depends on your hive in your honey bee farming project.
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What Does a Caught Swarm Need to Thrive?
I just caught my first swarm by placing a deep hive body on top of a very active swarm on a low brush pile. When I got the deep back to the yard, I installed a frame feeder and a top feeder as well as a pollen patty. I inspected the hive yesterday afternoon, and it is packed out with bees (maybe 5-6 lbs ).
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Why Do My Colonies Keep Swarming?
I have three hives started last year and all three swarmed in the last week. Now, they are swarming again — the same colonies. Why do the same colonies keep swarming every few days?
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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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Will a Swarm Survive Cool, Rainy Weather?
Bees swarmed yesterday from our hive. They are in one of our fruit trees. Today it has been raining all afternoon with temps in the high 40s to 50. Is the swarm able to survive in this weather?
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