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The latest buzz from our apiaries.
Tutorial (4) – Buying Bees
Our previous article provided some guidance on the essential equipment you will need to keep bees. Now it’s time to talk about the bees themselves. As a new beekeeper you have a number of options available to you when it comes to getting honeybees for your new hive....
Tutorial (3): Beekeeping Equipment
There is no end to the various types of beekeeping you can purchase for your beekeeping hobby. Beekeepers are constantly inventing new gadgets to simplify beekeeping, and the bee supply companies are more than happy to peddle them. In this article we will take a...
Tutorial (2): Scaling the Beekeeping Learning Curve
Honeybees are complex creatures. To keep them successfully you’re going to need to spend a fair amount of time learning about their biology as well as the equipment and techniques you’ll need to master in order to successfully be a beekeeper. The good news is that...
Tutorial (1): So you want to be a beekeeper?
You’ve probably been hearing a lot about disappearing honey bees through the media. All of this media attention given to the plight of the honeybee is causing a lot of people to become interested in beekeeping. Some of them are jumping in and becoming hobby...
Honey For Your Holidays!
Whether you are looking for stocking stuffers or putting together your own homemade gift baskets, we have a variety of all natural hive products that your more discerning loved ones will be sure to appreciate during this Christmas season. Do your favorite holiday...
Super Crazy Bees!
Beekeepers, like bees, tend to have a language of their own. To the non-beekeeper, or newbee, the technical jargon beekeepers use can become rather confusing. The other day when speaking to a non-beekeeper, I casually mentioned we were out the day before "supering"...
Wrong Hive!
This past Saturday I was reminded once again on how fragile the world we live in is, and in particular, how quickly things can go wrong in the apiary. I had just cracked open the cover on the last hive I intended to split in our home apiary. It was a robust Italian...
Spring = Busy Bees
Spring time is the busiest time of the year for beekeepers here in Michigan. Beginning in March we go through our apiaries and cleanup any dead outs (e.g. hives that didn't make it through the winter.) Once again, we were fortunate this year in that we only lost...
Cabin Fever
Winter was late in coming this year, but once it arrived you couldn't miss it! This morning I was reading the weather outlook in the Michigan Farm News (written by Jeff Andressen the meteorologist with the MSU Extension) and if they have it right, the recent upper...
It’s a Drones Life!
Winter was long in coming here in W. Michigan. We still had some very temperate sunny afternoons in November. On one of those afternoons I visited one of our apiaries to see how the bees were faring. There were a few bees flying, gathering water from a nearby low spot...
Swarm Craziness
Swarming season is in full swing here in W. Michigan. Friday morning while working in our own apiary I witnessed a couple of swarms taking off, even though our colonies have all been split. Some have been split into three, but that didn't stop those old queens from...
Beautiful Day in the Apiary!
Today we had a unseasonably warm spring day, so we headed over to our bee yards to see how they were doing. We were able to check for laying queens and making sure each colony has enough stores to get them through the next 4-5 weeks. The bees were taking advantage...
Spring 2012 MBA Conference
Once again we're down at Kellogg Conference Center on Michigan State University's Campus. We're here for the annual Michigan Beekeepers Association Spring Conference. This year the crowd seems larger than ever, and if you don't get a seat in the breakout sessions 30...
Successful winter … at least so far!
Today we had a warm though windy day, giving us the opportunity to pop some covers and see how the bees wintered. We were quite happy with what we found. So far all of our colonies are alive, though March is can be a challenging month for the bees as stores start to...
Wintering Bees in Michigan
12/20/19 Update: You might want to look at our more updated article on wintering bees in Michigan. It's that time of the year again here in Michigan! In recent days we're starting to spot a few snow flakes floating in. The past couple of weekends we were busy...
Late Summer, Early Fall Requeening
More beekeepers are beginning to advocate late Summer and early Fall requeening of colonies. The rationale for this is based on a variety of reasons. The more convincing arguments are 1) a young queen during late Summer / early Fall will lay more prolifically,...
Beekeeping in South Africa
On a recent trip to South Africa I had an opportunity to check out the beekeeping situation there. The Honeybadger Beekeeping Equipment provider in Pretoria is an outfit that keeps and sells bees, sells honey and beekeeping equipment and also provides beekeeping...
Backyard Queen Rearing
Last year we attempted to raise our own queens via grafting and didn't meet with much success. The only way we seemed to be able to raise our own queens was to simply split in the Spring and make sure the queenless side of the split had young brood to raise their own...