When you inspect your hives, you should record the hive numbers to keep track of which hives you’ve inspected. This will help keep track of your progress. Before you begin, observe the bees’ entrance and see if there is lots of activity. If you see many bees coming and going, it’s usually an indicator that […]
Inspecting your Hives with Purpose Inspecting beehives is a job that should be done ever 3 weeks in summer especially during peak swarm season. Bees can make swarm cells within 16 days so you want to check swarm risk hives more frequently during that time. This is a great swarm prevention technique but it’s not […]
Why Smoke Bees? When you do a hive inspections, you might consider smoking the bees. Smoke masks the alarm pheromones from the guard bees enabling the beekeeper to inspect the bees without aggressive defense from the bees (aka stinging). When you smoke bees, they will act like there’s a fire close by and start gorging […]
Why Paint? We have a tradition of painting our supers and since we’ve never had any issues with paint, we continue to do so. We acknowledge that many beekeepers wax dip their equipment. I will not argue one way or the other because there are many advantages to wax dipped equipment including the killing of […]
When you are planning on grafting, that it is important for you to have all the necessary tools and equipment with you. I have found it best to put all the material is together in a small tool box and I take it with me whenever I’m planning on grafting. While this is not necessary […]
‘In order to produce 1 pound of honey, 2 million flowers must be visited. A hive of bees must fly 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey. One bee colony can produce 60 to 100 pounds of honey per year. An average worker bee makes only about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.‘ […]