How to prepare your family to survive and thrive in todays uncertain world
So this week I hived two new packages of bees. I’m pretty excited to see how they adapt! Last year when I hived my packages I did it without any sort of protective gear at all. I took quite a few stings. Joy. This year, I didn’t take any at all. As is usually the [...]
Today a bit of a change of pace. Some of you have asked about getting started in beekeeping, so I thought I’d talk about thw two primary ways to get started. I’m not going to discuss equipment, how to choose your bees, or anything else like that. I just want to discuss two primary methods [...]
This last weekend the weather stayed pretty good around here, and so I took that opportunity to go visit my apiary and take a better look at the hive that survived. My brother in law decided to tag along as well … he’s never seen a hive in person, and it was a good learning [...]
Well, this weekend was a great weekend weather-wise, and I managed to get out to see the bees. Unfortunately, when I got there I discovered that of my three hives, two of them had died. Now I was suspecting that this may happen… See, when I got hurt last fall (dislocated knee) it was before [...]
So I finished my first year of beekeeping, and while I didn’t get any honey, I did get an extra hive after a swarm and learned a TON. And better yet, I haven’t killed my bees (yet) … last I saw them, they were still going strong. I’ll be swinging by the farm that they’re [...]
So this last weekend my gorgeous wife accompanied me to the bee yard to see how the bees were doing with the second deep box I added the week before. I also expected to see hatched bees and an increased population. I wasn’t disappointed on the population front, there were definitely quite a few more [...]
I had originally planned to blog about each of my hive inspections, but with as busy as I’ve been lately, that just didn’t happen. So instead, I’ll skip to the latest inspection. Technically it’s two inspections, but I’ll write about them as one. Last Friday I cruised over to the bee yard after dinner to [...]
Thanks to the awful wet and cold weather we’ve had up and down the west coast, my bee packages from California were delayed by about a month. They arrived this last weekend. Unfortunately, the weather decided to be uncooperative on Sunday, leaving me no opportunity to introduce the girls to their new homes. It doesn’t [...]
The common western honeybee (apis mellifera) has a number of races or subspecies that are commonly used by beekeepers world wide. I want to cover some of the more common bee races and their characteristics today. The Italian Bee (apis mellifera ligustica) The Italian bee is the most common honey bee in the United States [...]
Yes, I’m still on my beekeeping kick. Today I want to talk about the economics of getting started with beekeeping. The prices I am talking about in this post are appropriate for the Pacific Northwest, specifically Western Washington. Your mileage may vary depending on where you’re at. Since the recommended minimum number of hives to [...]
Recent Comments