From the category archives:
I’ve really enjoyed several of the books I’ve read by Sue Hubbell. She’s a writer now in her 70′s, who was a librarian at Brown University until 1972, when she and her husband moved to the Ozarks to raise bees and sell honey for a living. After they divorced, she stayed on and worked her [...]
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Today was the Solstice, and coincidentally it was warm enough to declare it Hive Day. The bad news is, I woke up with a screaming migraine. The good news is, I took a few painkillers, got an ice pack and went back to bed for a few hours. By the time my headache was gone, [...]
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Today was the first decent-ish weather we’ve had in some time. No rain, and it got up to near 70 degrees. It was overcast (like always), but it was the first spring day of working in the garden in earnest. And since I can dig and plant when it’s drizzling or cool, I decided that [...]
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When I dive into a new hobby, as I tend to do on a rather frequent basis, I don’t usually make a giant study of it. I read a few things, observe a lot, may take a class or two, and then jump. When I got chickens, I took one class, checked out a bunch [...]
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Last week we had some very cold weather, with the chance of snow. Snowpocalypse, if you listened to the news. Right. We never saw any snow where I live, but it did get down considerably cold for a few days. I worried a bit about my smallest hive at that point, but there wasn’t much [...]
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We’ve had a beautiful stretch of weather here in Battle Ground this October. Since I was sick for the last stretch of decent weather, I hadn’t really had a chance to do the final fall check of the beehives before fall, so when the chance came to do a final sweep and harvest, I took [...]
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Lots going on with the bees around the place! A week or 10 days ago, I noticed that my first Top Bar hive (Laure, for lack of a better name) was surprisingly quiet. That was the hive that swarmed weirdly this spring, and has been my most assertive, full hive, so it was a bit [...]
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There’s an old saying… A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly. Well, it’s July 6th, and the bees, they are a-swarmin’. Got a call last night about picking up a swarm in Salmon [...]
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My parents sent me a photo of the swarm I captured in their back yard a few weeks ago. Big glob o’ bees! This is what a swarm looks like, in case anyone wondered. Went out to check the hives today, as I was giving a “tour” of the yard. The newest swarm and the Tragic [...]
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Okay, so never mind about having to coax the bees into their new home. I think they’re my new favorite swarm (don’t tell the others!) They are industrious, and had built about 3″ of comb in 36 hours in their box. They are hardy, and I counted only maybe 6 or 7 dead bees [...]
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