Every few months it seems we see a big news piece make the news cycles on honey bees, and the year started off with quite the headline: A biotech company out of Georgia announced they have been granted a conditional license by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to produce and sell a vaccine for honey bees.  This is the very first vaccine developed for insects. The media ran with it, and if you followed along, you saw that it has been portrayed by many journalists as the savior we’ve all been waiting for to help us “save the bees!” I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the vaccine, so ..read more

Happy winter solstice!! Today marks the official start of astronomical winter.   The winter solstice is so fascinating to me because although it’s the start of winter, it also marks the shortest day of the year, which means each day moving forward we will continue to get more daylight each day! (In some cultures, they recognize the solstices as the midway point of a season.  For example, in Sweden Midsommar, or Midsummer, is celebrated on the summer solstice in June as the middle point of the summer. This makes a whole lot more sense to my brain!) The winter solstice actually te ..read more

Over the last year I’ve come to realize that my favorite part of my job is the creative aspect, such as coming up with new products and designing new labels and packaging.  To help feed that creative need, we started doing a very limited honey infusion available only at the Honey Ranch each month. In the past I’ve intentionally chosen not to do many infusions because raw honey, when harvested and jarred in small batches, shines all on its own, without a need for extra additions of flavors from us.  Our goal is to make sure you get the opportunity to appreciate the natu ..read more

It’s more complicated than you think!! There are a lot of misconceptions, even amongst beekeepers, about how honey is made. (And no, its NOT made from pollen!). There’s a whole lot more to it than most folks realize.   Adult honey bees are fantastic little energy machines that exist almost exclusively on carbohydrates. And where do those carbs come from?  Older bees’ primary nutrition source is the sugars obtained from flower nectar, which is then made into honey.  Foraging bees will visit a flower, and draw up nectar with their long tongue, called a proboscis. These flowe ..read more

Bee sex. It’s one of the most fascinating phenomenons in nature. A newly emerged virgin queen will leave her hive 5-7 days after she reaches the fully-formed adult stage in search of some strapping fellas, known as drone bees. Similarly, once a drone bee is sexually mature, which occurs about two  weeks after he becomes an adult, his days are spent making daily flights to find a lady. Both queens and drones only have one job in the hive: reproduction.   Drone congregation areas (DCAs) are areas where these sexually mature drones gather to wait for virgin queens to arrive for mating ..read more

Close your eyes…imagine you open the cabinet to grab a jar of honey.  What’s it look like? What color is it? What’s the texture? Is it liquid? Is it smooth?  Is it sweet? Part of our work at the Honey Ranch is to get folks to rework what their minds think of when they think of honey.  Most all folks still have yet to really benefit from tasting truly raw and real honey. There is definitely a ubiquitous image of honey in most folks’ minds.  What if I told you honey could be red, or electric yellow, or even almost black in color? That sure, honey ..read more

I’ve done some unusual/cool/crazy things in my life.  I’ve visited all 7 continents. I’ve flown over Afghanistan in a Black Hawk helicopter.  I’ve met with Ministry Level officials in Pakistan.  I’ve visited Antartica to view penguin colonies.   But honestly, some of the craziest stuff I’ve been privy to can be found right in all of our own backyards.  You just have to know where to look.  Today I want to share a few of the nuttiest ways that flowers and bees interact in nature, literally right under all of our noses!   Honey bees can see UV li ..read more

Just over two weeks ago Aidan, Atlas and I stepped off a plane in Austin that had begun 37 hours before (!!!) in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa. (If you missed that news, you can learn more about our trip here.) I’ll be honest, I wasn’t totally sure what to expect, but my personal  goals were threefold:  See baby elephants ()  See baby lion cubs () Learn more about Malawi beekeeping and look for opportunities to share beekeeping best practices and knowledge and create ongoing relationships with beekeepers of Malawi.      #1 and #2 were the ea ..read more

Last month we talked about what steps to take to best prepare your hives for winter, and I promised that this month I would demonstrate how we emergency feed during winter. If your hives do not have enough stores to make it through the winter, finding ways to provide emergency feeding is a must. It’s worth noting that if I assess a hive has enough stores to make it through February, I do not feed that colony. Our normal method for feeding bees carbohydrates through sugar syrup is not usually an option for winter feeding. Honeybees in cluster cannot access the sugar water (plus, can you im ..read more

November and December are my favorite months. I love the smell of spices and cinnamon, the relief of the (finally) dropping temperatures here in Texas, and the twinkling of Christmas lights on a real Christmas tree. And, of course, it’s gift giving season. I’m not a big gift giver: my mom, the biggest lover of gift-giving that ever existed, knows every year I’m going to press her to focus more on experiences and less on stuff. But of all the tangible gifts, food gifts are my absolute favorite. And honey is one of the very few foods that has a storied history of giving around the world.  T ..read more