Earlier in the summer I reported that an empty hive feel victim to a wax moth infestation. The frames were nasty and full of webbing and tons of squishy larvae. This gross combo did lead to me finding a way to combine my love of beekeeping and birds: It took some convincing, but the birds [ Read More ]
You may recall that earlier this summer, Mr. Neil’s newest dog Lola learned that if you violate bee ettiquette, you get stung. I must say, this incident of swollen dog face was not enough to convince her to avoid mischief around the hives. Non Birding Bill and I took her to the hives after this [ Read More ]
The lone bee! It’s late fall and we are getting our bees ready for the winter. As we were winding our bee season to a close, I thought I would bring up 2 different pieces of bee equipment that have been incredibly useful to use this year. There’s a lot of bee equipment equipment that [ Read More ]
Hello all, NBB here. Yesterday was a pretty shining example of why, three (?) years into this process, I’m still the junior beekeeping assistant, the Barney Fife of the apiary world. To get everyone up to speed: the bees needed to be fed, Sharon has to work, Neil is out of town, Hans is out [ Read More ]
I always love when I catch bees making little mistakes with m camera–like falling when landing. It happens a lot. Bees are not perfect creatures. I headed out to the hives to check my frame situation. A friend works at a local nature center and they need a few extra frames full of honey for [ Read More ]
We are in the midst of the Minnesota State Fair which is usually an opportunity to see cute barn yard animals and eat strange things like deep fried mashed potatoes on a stick. But this year, Minnesota beekeepers teamed up with Senator Amy Klobuchar to bring attention to the dangers of honey laundering…you read that [ Read More ]
This is an interesting little bird. It’s an eastern wood-peewee that was singing out around Mr. Neil’s property. Periodically, the peewee would flip out from its perch and grab some insects. I didn’t get a photo of it, but as I was watching the peewee through the scope, I noticed it grabbed a bee! That’s [ Read More ]
I thought I would share some sounds of our bees. We’re down from 8 eight hives from the beginning of spring to six. One of the new hives failed (something happened with the queen) and the red hive…well she swarmed and no new queen hatched afterwards. We combined her remnants with another hive so her [ Read More ]
It’s that special time of year when Lorraine extracts a little early honey, follows the strict codes, guidelines and fees of the county fair and submits it for approval. I know we aren’t the only ones entering honey because fellow beekeepers in the same county made some noise when we won last year that they [ Read More ]
Compared to the first year of beekeeping, we’ve mellowed out in some ways. There are still discussions and disagreements but we don’t often take extraordinary measures to save a hive…for the most part. Last time, we noticed that one of our new hives was failing–no sign of a functional queen, no new eggs, no larvae, [ Read More ]
