experience

My Honeybee Farming Project Year One
November 27, 2022 · · Beekeeping 101

With all our research and questions before obtaining our first nuc, uncertainty reared its ugly head as we ventured into our honeybee farming project.

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What To Know As Spring Unfolds Into Summer

If April is the beekeeping equivalent of planting time, then May is when our efforts start to germinate.

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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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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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5 Tips for Starting Beekeeping

Will you utilize the most commonly used hive style, the Langstroth beehive or do you fancy yourself a top bar or Warre beekeeper? For protective equipment, you could use a veil, a jacket with vail, or a full body bee suit – which works for you? Location of your hive can impact your bees based on sun exposure (summer v. winter), wind exposure, accessibility, proximity to neighbors, and so on.

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How to Talk to Vegans About Honey & Bees

I have yet to meet a beekeeper—commercial or hobbyist—who doesn’t adore his or her bees. There is a beauty and a romance to beekeeping that begins with the sun, and, if you are lucky, ends in a bonanza of the best tasting honey you have ever known.

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It’s Harvest Time

Extracting, or the honey harvest, is going to befall almost every beekeeper if their efforts are successful and the site of those activities can vary from a garage or the family kitchen to large facilities specifically designed and built for handling the harvest.

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Successfully Installing Packaged Bees

Packaged bees have become an annual addition to many beekeeping operations, so the skills you learn successfully installing them the first time will be repeated in the years to come.

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Flow Hive Review: Honey on Tap

Add to Favorites 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 …

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