Add to Favorites Reading Time: 7 minutes The following is an excerpt from “Keeping Bees and Making Honey” by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum (F&W Media, 2008). This spectacular book offers an in-depth profile of nature’s most effective pollinator and covers all aspects of modern beekeeping, including where and when to get your bees, different types of hives, how to harvest and sell honey and beeswax, and even sensational recipes for Honey Cake, Mustard and Honey Salad Dressing, Spicy Chicken Wing Marinade, and more. This excerpt is from Chapter 7, “Gardening for Bees.” Gardening for b ..read more

Add to Favorites Reading Time: 2 minutes By Claire Jones – Many pollinator species have suffered serious declines in recent years. Unfortunately, most of our landscapes offer little in the way of appropriate habitat, forage, and housing. Even the most beautiful gardens are not always healthy ecosystems for pollinators. Design choices, plant selections, and maintenance practices can make a huge difference in creating your own healthy ecosystem. As a garden designer, I use the landscape plan below for many gardens to attract the greatest varieties of pollinators. Mason bee habitats attract poll ..read more

Add to Favorites Reading Time: 2 minutes By Gene Rene– Winter is the time for a beekeeper to prepare for spring! Now is the perfect time to get a jump start on springtime preparations by building equipment like frames. Using a frame jig is an excellent way to build lots of frames and cut your work time down considerably. With all the time you save, you might be able to build another project. If you only have about 50 frames, plus or minus, perhaps a frame jig would be overkill, but if you have to build anything more than a hundred or so, this might be just what you need. I found plans for my ..read more

Add to Favorites Reading Time: 4 minutes Story and photos by: Kristi Cook   I’m not going to lie. Keeping bees is one of the best adult hobbies ever because where else can a grownup play with bugs, carry around fire, and play mad scientist all at the same time? Even better is the built-in fortress beekeepers have for those times we want a little peace and quiet — after all, how many non-beekeepers do you know who are willing to follow a beekeeper into the bee yard unprotected? And, of course, there’s all that luscious honey, too. But before you run out and buy your first set of ..read more

Add to Favorites Reading Time: 4 minutes Here’s a short guide for breeder queen selection: what to look for when assessing and what you can expect along the way. Whether you need one or several, raising honeybee queens is an exciting adventure that anyone can master with some practice. However, raising quality, well-mated queens capable of carrying a colony through the seasons with vigor requires careful attention to a few details. The trick is to determine which qualities are the most important to you and then locate a queen that meets most, if not all, of those items on your wish list. Here ..read more

Add to Favorites Jerry Hayes – I have been in the beekeeping industry for more than 25 years. My goal is to spend some time with you to help you on your journey to starting beekeeping. For those of you who read Countryside regularly to learn from others with the same goals, desires, and aspirations as you, I hope you realize how different you are. You are a subset of the population. Not that the rest of the population is bad, or wrong, they just put their efforts elsewhere and don’t really want to understand how they can make a difference in the fundamental principles of their ..read more

Add to Favorites Reading Time: 2 minutes Barbara from Massachusetts asked: Inspecting one of my hives I found what I believe is Nosema. Is there any treatment now as it’s too cold for liquid? This has been a weaker hive going into winter, but was hoping they would survive. Rusty Burlew answers: Honeybee dysentery is often confused with Nosema disease, so when beekeepers see feces on or near a hive, they automatically think the worst. But several recent papers have reiterated that dysentery is caused by an excess of moisture in honey bee feces. It may occur simultaneously with N ..read more

Add to Favorites Reading Time: 2 minutes John L Sam writes: I live in Maryland where there are many flowering plants and fruit trees. What honey yield can I expect per hive per season? Josh writes: I imagine the bee season in Maryland is somewhat similar to what I experience in Colorado. With that in mind, I’ll share what my honey harvests are like and how it compares to some others. First and foremost, my goal as a beekeeper is to keep my bees alive. Second to that is to be sustainable — that is, to replace any losses in my apiary with my own bees via split ..read more

Add to Favorites Reading Time: 5 minutes Like many beekeepers, we’ve lost bees. Finding dead bees is never easy, and there can be many causes. By Laura Tyler, Colorado My husband and I were out on the town not too long ago when we ran into a beekeeping acquaintance. “How are your bees?” came the inevitable question. So inevitable, that I almost don’t remember who asked it. (Well, for the record, it was me.) “Oh, they’re doing great!” came the reply as it often does from people we are acquainted with, but not close. I hear a different story when I talk with closer beekeeping friends, people I ..read more

Add to Favorites Reading Time: 5 minutes Unlike birds, bees don’t fly south for the winter, nor do they hibernate. So, what do bees do in the winter? They try to survive. They spend all their time and energy keeping warm and fed and waiting for spring. In the wild, bees have a natural way of surviving by doing things such as living in moderate climates and building their hives in hollowed out trees. However, for domestic bees, it’s a good idea to give the bees a bit of extra help to survive the winter, especially if you are bee farming in areas that have severe winters. The things that a bee ..read more