Dan Greenwood 
For some people, bees are the stuff of nightmares. Most of us are fearful of something, but some fears prevent us from living a normal life. An example of such a limiting fear is apiphobia.
Catching or luring a honey bee swarm is a fine art. The spring season rolls in, and the anxiety comes with it. If it’s your first time catching a swarm, we have some valuable advice and insights for you.
If you’re an experienced beekeeper, but your luck has been pretty bad, there may be some things you’re unaware of. Bees are picky creatures and look for specific characteristics in their new home. Let’s delve deeper.
Honeybees carry out all sorts of tasks that are essential for the survival of the colony. One of these critical tasks is the building of honeycombs. Honeybees make honeycomb on their own naturally, to store the honey and pollen they’ve gathered.
Usually, this occurs with little input from you, but there are a few situations that arise where bees struggle to build comb. For example, you have a weak, aging colony with no young workers to build honeycomb. No worries! There are several things beekeepers can do to encourage bees to build honeycomb at a quicker rate.
Although bees are vital for the environment, it’s understandable to want to defend yourself from them. Even though bees only attack when provoked or if they’re defending their hive, there are ways you can get rid of honeybees. This is especially important if someone in your family has a bee allergy.
Since the honey bee population is declining fast, it’s important to take careful steps to remove them without killing them.
Yes, you can freeze honey. But, ask yourself why you’d want to. The definition of the word “freeze” doesn’t lend itself to honey, though. This is purely down to the lack of water content in honey. So, although there are some benefits to storing honey in a freezer, you actually freeze it like you can pure water.
Honey crystallization is a natural process that occurs with all types of honey. It only changes the structure and color of honey but doesn’t affect its quality in a bad way. On the contrary, crystallization makes honey more stable and keeps its nutritional value intact. Bees are the ones that make this happen.
Once we’ve taken you through the journey of how honey is made, you’ll likely agree that honey isn’t bee vomit. Honey is placed in the hive cells directly from the bee’s mouth, which causes the assumption that honey is the equivalent of vomit.
However, does it come from the stomach too? What are the processes involved to rule out the relation between honey and vomit? Let’s find out.
As with most beekeeping issues, the question of ideal beehive height yields as many answers as there are beekeepers. The right height ensures you, the beekeeper, can easily access your hives for inspection while protecting your bees from ground-dwelling predators like skunks and racoons. It should also be high enough to keep water out when it rains.
In this article, we’ll discuss the factors to consider when choosing the ideal elevation to help you decide what works best for you.
It’s amazing that one little insect feeds us, heals us, and teaches us without any intention of doing any of those things. The benefits of beekeeping depend on your objective. Are you looking to make a little extra money selling bee products? Are you looking for a hobby that’s not too intense yet offers enough of a challenge to keep you interested? Or have you heard the buzz about bee deaths and you want to do something about it?
Knowing what you hope to achieve from your project will help you weigh the benefits we will outline below against the required inputs, and then you can make a better-informed decision.
We’ll kick off our list with ways in which beekeeping benefits humanity as a whole, keeping the planet livable.
Raising queen bees can be an incredibly rewarding, educational, and profitable endeavor. The right combination of traits can give a colony a better chance of winter survival, increased honey production and resistance to pests and diseases. In the U.S, the average loss of colonies over the winter is almost one in four (23.8%), and that’s a national average. Backyard beekeeper losses tend to be higher than commercial ones, so their losses can be one in two hives.
To prevent future losses, beekeepers look for queens that will produce bees that don’t just survive but thrive despite the threat of disease and the chill of winter.
By mastering the art of raising healthy, strong queen bees, beekeepers can optimize their honey surplus, making the business of beekeeping more profitable and fulfilling.