American foulbrood is a destructive disease affecting honeybees in North America. Your hives need to be monitored for this disease at all times. This diease spreads when larvae becomes infected by ingesting spores from their food. The larvae will eventually die from the disease. How America Foulbrood Spreads American foulbrood is highly contagious and easy […]
What is Chalkbrood? Chalkbrood is a disease caused by a fungus (Ascosphaera apis) that affects in honeybee brood. It is usually seen in spring when the weather is still cold. There can be several reasons for bees to become infected but I feel that stress on a hive is one of the main reasons we’ve […]
When honey crystallizes, it is called granulation and it’s a natural process by which honey turns from a liquid to a solid sate with a granular composition. We usually explain this process to our customers as it is not understood by the average consumer. Many consumers will assume that honey will crystallize due to poor […]
Background Information During mid-summer you may often find different kinds of cells in the brood chamber. There is capped worker brood, bumpy drone brood, and you may occasionally come across swarm or supersedure cell. Both swarm and supercedure cells are a natural part of the way things work in a hive. However, the beekeeper needs […]
The cloak board queen rearing method is an great way of making many quality queen cells. It uses a queenless box technique as a starter and a queenright as a finisher. The great part about this is that it’s all done from the same hive and no queenless starter hive is required. No queens are […]
Starting and Finishing Queen Cells The starter/finisher method of queen rearing and cell building uses the natural instincts of the bees. The queenless starter uses the emergency mode to start lots of cells and then the queenright finisher uses the supercedure impulse of the bees to finish the cells. We will discuss the roles each hive plays in […]