I sometimes get messages from groups asking me to share something they have posted or an event they are hosting that may be of interest to our beekeeping community. Recently I was contacted by Hannah Miller with DIY Gardening because she thought her posting on how gardeners can help bees may be helpful. After taking …
Category: Tips & Tricks
Various tips, tricks, and suggestions that I’ve found helpful over the years.
Getting Ready for Winter: Wind Control
My bees are on a farmer friend’s property and there’s no natural wind break on the north side of the hives, so I need to do a couple of things to protect them. I can’t erect a wind break because it’ll create obstacles for my farmer that he doesn’t need so I just use Lowe’s …
Getting Ready for Winter: Food
In mid-October, we went through hives and moved brood down, food above the brood, and open frames on the far edges of the hive (if there were any empty or mostly empty frames). By mid-October, a lot of the queens were winding down on laying eggs and it wasn’t unusual to see small patches of …
Sugar Shake Reminders
Sometimes when you are getting ready to do a sugar shake, it’s hard to remember exactly how many bees you need to be sampling and what the threshold is. Bee buddy Eliza Hudson helps her students at the Montessori School out by first marking the correct measuring cup with a mark on top (this is …
Bees on the Inner Cover
When you open a hive, often you will find a good number of bees on the underside of the inner cover. You can prop the inner cover next to the hive or put it in the grass, but the bees on the cover may end up crawling through the grass and, if you don’t have …
Packing My Bag
I wear an inspection jacket when I’m in the bees and I always keep a couple of things in the pockets so they are handy. I made elastic straps (garters) that I use on my pant legs to keep the bees from crawling up my leg. You can also just tuck your pants in your …
Notes in the Bee Yard
In July 2013, I attended the NCSBA Summer Conference at Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst/Southern Pines, NC. One of the presentations was by Dr. Larry Connor presenting on Resource Management. Somewhere I have my notes from that conference, but the thing that stuck with me was his discussion about writing on the tops of the hives instead …
Bee Food Made Simple
My friend Eliza teaches at the Montessori School near by and they have bees. This being North Carolina, there are parts of the year when you pretty much have to feed your bees. Eliza came up with this easy way to help her 5th grade beekeepers know how to make sugar syrup for the bees. …