From the category archives:
Today it was beautiful outside. Really clear, and it’s supposed to last for a few days. I guess that would be good swarm weather, eh? (Someone forgot to tell my last swarm when to go…it was horrible when they decided to bail!) My parents called me midday to ask me about the hive I’d installed [...]
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Okay, so when last we left our intrepid beekeeping newbie, she was excited about acquiring a very large swarm as well as the originating hive. Her plans were laid, the game was afoot, her some-other-cliche was going on too. Which is great, except somewhere in there, someone forgot to tell the bees about the plans. [...]
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Today I got a phone call from a lady who had a swarm, and she wanted to know if I’d come get it from her. I said sure, no problem, be there in 20 minutes. Then she asked if I wanted their original hive. Turns out their own Langstroth hive had swarmed, so they knew [...]
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Last Saturday I was a little bit bummed because I’d gotten a call about a swarm, and I missed it. By the time I responded, they’d moved down the list. Someone else did rescue the swarm, though, which is great. Yesterday while I was out running errands, someone else called me about a swarm. They [...]
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It’s a nice day out, so I decided to go and check on my hive. I tend to have a more “hands-off” approach than traditionally the case for beekeepers, though a somewhat nosier approach than some in the Natural Beekeeping trend. That means I open it to look when it’s nice and I haven’t peeked [...]
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I maintain my one top-bar hive “au natural”, meaning that I don’t spray for mites or fungus, and I don’t give them antibiotics or take their honey away and feed them sugar water throughout the winter. This is my first winter with bees, so the learning curve is pretty steep, but we’re getting there. During [...]
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I’ve had a hive of bees now for about 3 months. Wow. Seems like it’s been longer than that, but it hasn’t. I took my first class back in April, got my hive together by May, and got a swarm of bees to take up residence after one failed attempt, and that was in late [...]
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I’ve posted pictures of my Top Bar Beehive before. It’s a lovely creation which my husband made for me out of pine and alder, and for which he created probably the sturdiest, most weatherproof roof in the history of beehives. But it just needed…something. Enter me with my woodburner. Yeah. Now hand me an English/Quenya* [...]
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I don’t remember where I left off on the Saga of the Mason Bees, so I’ll just pick up with today’s discovery. We’d put our mason bee and leafcutter bee houses up on a freestanding board out by the garden, because we had no really good place to put them on any of our buildings. [...]
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There’s a local radio station that plays something called the “Random Report”. And it is random, as is their musical selection. Probably explains why I like the station. Anyway, I’m often given to making random reports as well…and they look something like this: Mint Ice CreamVerdict – Not very much like storebought mint ice cream, [...]
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