You need some bees off your frame? Try Mr. Neil’s excellent Bee Flicking technique. Also a handy way to distract enemies should they surprise you in your bee yard. No bees harmed in the making of this video and most were scooped up off the ground and gently placed back in.
This is a video of some of our bees just chilling out at the hive. I started it to show what they look like when they are relaxed. We had to dig deeper into the hive to see what was going on so I asked Non Birding Bill to smoke them. When you puff your [ Read More ]
Dear Bees, I don’t want to get all Ned Stark on you, but Winter is coming. You are bees of summer and it’s been fun to fly around and explore, but seriously, dudettes, you need to start some serious storage to make it through the winter. See, this whole socializing and not storing honey business [ Read More ]
After having all of our beehives die this past winter, it’s so nice to finally have a warm spring day and look in to see bees industriously tending brood and filling up empty comb. Our Italian bees are filling up hives like crazy, but the Russians and Carniolans are at a slow and steady pace. [ Read More ]
Remember how we had 2 queen in one of our Russian hives? Well, they seemed to have sorted things out and the queen with the large white dot killed the newer queen with the small white dot. So, that solved itself. However, one of our other Russian hives is queenless–that queen was alive when we [ Read More ]
I’m in a quandary with my beehives and my love of birds. On my way out to the Horicon Marsh Bird Festival, I stopped at Mr. Neil’s for a quick check of our new beehives and some birding. The warblers have arrived and the cool weather has forced those who arrive early in migration to [ Read More ]
This is Kelly McCullough, he came out with us to help hive four more packages of bees on Sunday. His family kept bees when he was kid and I have to say, he’s the first person I’ve ever seen get almost every single bee out of the travel cage. I can’t remember if it was [ Read More ]
I’m so bummed, I took video of Mr. Neil‘s first ever bee installation yesterday and I left the video card in my bee suit out at his house. Gr. I’ll have to get it on Sunday. We started our first great bee experiment this year. We’re going to have a total of 7 hives: 3 [ Read More ]
Mr. Neil is so excited to finally be home for installing our bees. First time ever he was around to be a part of it.
Here is a curious article about an interesting hurdle faced by some urban beekeepers in Brooklyn…their honey is turning out bright red! Guess what the culprit is: Red Dye #40 from Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company. So people who want hives in the neighborhood to contribute to the whole slow foods/locally grown/organic/natural movement are being betrayed [ Read More ]
