It’s March 27.  And I am worried about starving bees. This may come as a surprise to you, given I am in Texas.  If I look around, much that was brown, dry, and dormant two months ago is now green and alive. For weeks wildflowers have started to appear across the landscape.  But high on my list of concerns as I do inspections is checking for hives on the verge of starvation.   It’s worth noting that there is nothing unique about this year that has brought about this concern.  In fact, we’ve had a really nice spring that is conducive to a good nectar flow: no late f ..read more

It’s February in Texas, and that means our very short winter break in Texas is coming to an end.  In a few week’s time we will begin inspecting colonies once again on a regular rotation.  Our first post-winter hive checks will include all the ‘regular’ assessments we include in any inspection, and also include a few extra steps that are reserved just for these first hive checks of the year.   Today I’ll share with you what steps we take in these first post-winter checks to help guide you in your own apiaries!  Verify status of the queen:  By the first few weeks o ..read more

Here’s your random bee fact for the day: Did you know that St Valentine, the Patron Saint of Lovers, is also the Patron Saint of beekeepers!? (And epilepsy, and fainting, and plague.  Makes sense.) My research on St. Valentine over the years has turned up lots of confusing and conflicting stories, and in fact, even the Catholic resources I’ve read aren’t sure if there were one or two men identifying as St. Valentine. So in lieu of hard proven facts, I’ll just choose the stories I like the best and share those!  St. Valentine was imprisoned in Rome for trying to marryin ..read more

It’s summer time in Texas, a time when back to back (…to back to back……) days of triple digit temperatures are very common. Unfortunately, the summer coincides with perhaps the hardest job we do all year: harvesting. It’s tough to stay cool in these temps while wearing full bee gear, and can even be dangerous. Beekeepers are a creative and resourceful bunch, so I did an informal poll last week on social media to pull tips from other beeks on how to stay cool when the temperatures rise. I’ve collected the best responses and shared our own tips below. Hope this list helps you stay cool ..read more

Guest post by Klaus Lambour the founder of Mielenaria, a business dedicated to the conservation of the Meliponini bees of Guatemala thru the fair sale of their honey. The world of beekeeping is far larger than many realize. Usually when we think of honey and bees our mind jumps straight to the European honey bees (Apis melifera), brought over by colonial settlers in the 1600s. But South and Central America also have hundreds of species of stingless native honey producing bees. These bees are called Meliponini honey bees. Stingless bees are the original honey bees of continental America and the ..read more

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