I am amazed how often my honeybees find their way into conversations. People are fascinated with them. They love hearing about the charming society of bees and learning how they can help in the effort to “save” the bees. Movies about bees have even been block buster hits. Truth be told, bees lead relatively ordinary, […]
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Pesticide Poisoning: A Beekeeper’s Heartache
Editor’s note added April 18, 2023 (below). My heart sank. It was a sight no beekeeper wants to see. Hundreds, if not thousands, of dead and dying bees on the ground outside the entrance of one of my hives. The diagnosis — pesticide poisoning — did not take long. The telltale signs were the quirky […]
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Whoopsie Daisy, Get Busy and Other Things Bees Might Say
We have always known that honeybees are among the most intelligent creatures on the planet. They live in amity with each other, work hard and train for a variety of occupations during their lifetime. New research is revealing them to be excellent communicators as well. Bees “talk” to each other by emitting and receiving vibrations. […]
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Winter Bees
What do honeybees do in the winter? Do they hibernate like bears? Do they head south for the winter and then return north in the spring? Unlike most of their insect cousins who hibernate, honeybees remain active during winter and live in the same abode they did during warmer months. They survive the Winter Wonderland […]
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Crystalized Honey: Is it Still Good?
With snowflakes awhirl and frost on the windows, a cup of hot tea or a flaky baking powder biscuit topped with a dollop of raw honey is a sure means of warming the soul. But, when you reach for your jar of honey, you might discover it has crystalized. Is it still good? Or has […]
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How to Propagate Fall Bee Magnets . . . Colorful Coleus
In cooler parts of the country, like here in Ohio, fall ushers in a dramatic change of the landscape. The first frost brings an end to the life of tender plants, changes in the coloring of trees, shrubs and perennials and a life inside the hive for my bees. For me, the first frost is […]
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Her Royal Highness, the Queen Bee
Though your bee knowledge may be rudimentary, you most certainly know two things about bees. One, they make honey. Two, the Queen Bee rules the roost. But, what does the queen actually do? And how does one become Queen Bee? Do bees appoint the queen? Does she look different than other bees? How many queens […]
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Bring Out Your Dead . . . and How I Became a Beekeeper
People frequently ask me why I took up the hobby of beekeeping. Was it to make honey? Did I want to “Save the Bees?” Or, maybe I wanted to raise pollinators for my vast garden of plants. Truth is, I got them on a whim — so unlike my usual way of conducting business — […]
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