Last weekend was fairly mild, so I decided to take advantage of the nice weather to open up the hive and check on the girls. From the outside, I’ve been watching them bring in pollen and everything was looking hunky-dory. Read more…
In addition to honey, a beehive can provide other goodies like wax, pollen pellets and propolis. With a top bar hive, you get wax when you harvest the honey. In a Langstroth hive, the honey is spun out of the Read more…
The word beekeeper implies that in keeping bees people are saving them, almost as if they’re taking in orphaned babies who can’t care for themselves. It seems to me that bees are not really kept. They certainly keep me in Read more…
We’ve had quite a long stretch of cold weather for Colorado. Going into the last stretch of sub-zero weather, I wasn’t sure that the bees would make it. Once again as Diana has to keep reminding me, I worry too Read more…
Worry Wart I was chatting with one of Don’s colleagues at a holiday party. As many of the people at this party are employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, worry is a frequent topic as it Read more…
One of the worst things for me about keeping bees is killing them or watching them die. The first bee I killed was just after I started my hive when I wanted to be sure I wasn’t allergic to bee Read more…
On Friday it was near 60 so I took the opportunity to add a cake of fondant (“bee candy”) to the hive. The nice thing about a top bar hive is you can open up only the portion of the Read more…