Here are the beautiful entries for our honeybee photography contest. WOW! There are so many beautiful entries! The photo credit is below each photo. By Jennifer McNamara By Hannah Stoehr By Cris Voss By Jennifer Andrews Begay By Derek Haynie By RaKell Montgomery Sutch By Margot J. Hakanson By Julie Peterson Riley By Angela Kennedy […]
7 Years Ago today, Stan asked me to marry him! And I’m so glad he did. We were engaged about 8 weeks before we married. Aaand I was going through some photos on the computer today and came across these. He proposed with bees on the driveway. He spelled the words with honey and beeswax and […]
Here are some crazy garden vegetables we’ve harvested over the years. We love it when we come across them! It makes us laugh. Enjoy! Crazy Tomatoes Bunny Pancakes Egg with calcium deposits What is that lurking in the refrigerator? This […]
Here’s our latest video on installing packages–IN THE BARN HIVE! Enjoy! The method is the same in other equipment too.
Summer of 2014, with experimentation and research online, we’ve changed our thinking about foundation a little. We want to use the middle bar frame to promote foundationless frames instead of plastic or wax foundation. We think it’s more sustainable, less expensive, and will decrease some disease transmission. Stan has been raising queen bees this fall. […]
Yesterday, Stan put out his hives for new queens to be mated. The first worker bee came out of the hive for an orientation flight. All of a sudden, a dragonfly swept out of the air and ate her, and Stan snapped a picture. We think it’s rare to have a photo of a dragonfly eating […]
While searching about beelining boxes, we came across this article. Did you ever wonder if there are any SPORTS related to beekeeping? Well, there is! Yes, competitive beelining is an actual sport. Or was in 2004, at least. Like on ESPN at 2:00 in the morning. Crazy! Now Stan wants to do it, of course! […]
Stan has been tinkering with his Beelining box again today. It’s pretty cool. For those who don’t know, Beelining is a method to find feral honeybee colonies. You catch some bees in a specialized “beelining box,” then fill their tummy (honey sac) with sugar water. This makes them want to fly back to their colony […]
Out on a walk today, my girls and I took some photos of honeybees on grape hyacinths. They were so pretty I thought I’d share!
Here are some photos of the hands-on beekeeping class on March 14. Derek Haynie, the expert photographer, took these pictures. Thanks, Derek! We’re looking forward to the next class installment on March 21. Here is the class gathered around a few of Stan’s hives. The goal for today was to see workers, drones, the queen, […]
We had a homeschool group come over to do Pysanka eggs with beeswax candles. We were learning about Russia and the Ukraine in a geography club. We use a hot stylus to apply beeswax designs to a hollowed egg. The stylus has a little cup that holds a reservoir of melted wax and a hole […]
We’ve been studying C.C. Miller’s book Fifty Years Among the Bees and came across some photos of how people moved bees by hand or with horses. If there ever is some sort of apocalypse and we need to live without electricity and gasoline, beekeeping is still doable! The prepper in me thinks this awesome! I wonder […]
A while back, I visited Slovenia. I was in the Carniolan region, actually, and didn’t know about the connection to honey bees. (Ignorant American that I am, I cannot read Russian or Slovene.) When I came home and realized a major breed of honey bees originated in this region, I dug out the old photos […]
Here is a basic explanation of pollen and some photos of how it is stored in the hive. Honeybees collect pollen from flowers. Some of it is transferred to other flowers, fertilizing the flower so a plant can produce fruit. (Pollen is essentially the “sperm” to fertilize the flower “egg.”) Worker bees bring pollen […]
Wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day with this vintage honeybee valentine.
Our queen and package supplier is part of the Managed Pollinator CAP program, which tests for hygienic bee behavior. We are excited to be part of the bee decline solution by supporting these producers. They test breeder queens for the recessive genetic trait, hygienic bee behavior. Hygienic behavior is when workers bees sense a missing […]
The case for a ‘local first’ mentality. The article below was copied and pasted from KSL.com. Here is the URL link. http://www.ksl.com/?sid=21721728. Who needs more reasons to buy local? I guess we all do. This article talks about purchasing at a local store 1 out of 10 shopping trips. If you are considering buying bees, […]
First of all, if you are a brand new beekeeper, please consider purchasing a nuc. See Lesson 1: Nucs and Packages. You will have more success with a nuc. Promise. Then next year, when you are addicted to bees, get some packages. If you have decided on packages (find our more about packages here), you […]
This article is from my days working for USU Extension. Thought it was appropriate to share here. What’s happening to our honey bees? By Alicia Moulton Honey bees are on the decline throughout the world. Here’s why. Honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder is a complex matter with many contributing factors that have compounded over […]
We found this photo of a queen bee in Grandpa’s files and wanted to share. Can you spot her? Queen bees have a longer abdomen and are larger than the other worker bees present. Here you see her laying an egg in a cell of honey comb.