Featured Stories
Light a Smoker
Smoking a beehive allows a beekeeper to work in the hive in relative peace. That’s the reason for the smoke.
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Why Are There So Many Bee Droppings on the Outside of my Hives?
I am an urban beekeeper in Cleveland. We over-wintered our bees in two deeps. The bees largely remained in the top box all winter. We have had a cold wet, snowy spring. I have been noticing bee poop pretty much all over the outside of the hive.
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How Wide Should an Entrance Tube of an Observation Hive Be?
In the past few years, the number of electronic devices for beekeepers has mushroomed. I’ve frequently been asked to test these new devices, so I have quite a bit of experience with them.
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Can You Keep a Queen from Leaving with a Swarm?
Is there a type of hive that allows the queen to stay isolated from the rest of the swarm? No hive is designed to separate the queen from the other bees.
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Nosema Disease in Honey Bees
Nosema is a serious disease of honey bees caused by a microsporidian. A microsporidian is a type of single-celled fungus that reproduces by spores. The nosema organisms live and reproduce in the honey bee midgut where they steal nutrients and prevent digestion.
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How do I Keep Bears Away from My Beehives?
Once a bear learns the location of a beehive, it will keep coming back for more. So the best defense against bear predation is avoiding them in the first place.
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How Bees Communicate with Pheromones
Honey bees are eusocial, meaning they live in highly complex social colonies, with multiple casts and tens of thousands of individuals of overlapping generations.
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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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Why Do Bees Washboard?
When bees washboard, they space themselves on the surface of their hive then they plant their four rear legs in place and use their two front legs to step forward and back in a rocking motion while they lick the surface. Sometimes a colony will washboard for a day or two, but at other times it may continue for weeks.
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What’s Wrong with my Homemade Fondant?
Beekeepers add vinegar to fondant recipes under the mistaken idea that you need to invert the sucrose for the bees. This is not true. Most nectar is mainly sucrose, but the instant the bees ingest it, their saliva breaks it down into glucose and fructose.
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