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New series of books coming to beekeeping: The Mentor Series

New series of books coming to beekeeping: The Mentor Series

When it comes to how-to books, I’m a BIG fan. Especially when they’re beekeeping books, and there’s plenty of them. I have bought quite a few books on Beekeeping, and checked out several from the library. And just like everything in life, there’s some good ones and some not-so-good ones. It’s redundant to find book after book with the same BASICinformation on hive tools, hive beetle, etc. So as…

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Gorgeous pictures with a Point-and-Shoot: Macro Photography

Gorgeous pictures with a Point-and-Shoot: Macro Photography

Have you ever considered macro photography? There’s a certain something to this style of photography that is unlike any other. In my first post on this topic, Honey bees up close: Macro Photography, I shared what I do as a hobbyist photographer with the hope to encourage more people like you to get out there and identify what types of wildflowers that honey bees love to forage. Today, I want to…

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Honey bees up close: Macro Photography

Honey bees up close: Macro Photography

I have never considered photography as a thing for me. When it comes to artwork, I usually prefer mediums like graphite, oil paint, or even watercolor. And though I still like all of those things, I’m finding that my love for honey bees and honey bee forage plants have combined to make a superpower: Honey bee Macro photography! Which pretty much means really close up pictures of wee little bees.

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Persimmons and Hazelnuts: Bigger is Better when it comes to pollination.

Persimmons and Hazelnuts: Bigger is Better when it comes to pollination.

We’ve all heard that bigger is better. Well, sometimes it is. Bigger fruit, bigger nuts, better crops. When my wife and I bought our Georgia mountain property, one of the first things we found was that there were Persimmon trees everywhere. A few years later we found Hazelnut trees here and there. We didn’t have beehives on the property yet but once we did we noticed the persimmons and hazelnuts…

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Why you should NOT feed pollen supplements in Winter 🥶

Why you should NOT feed pollen supplements in Winter 🥶

As Keepers of the bees, we have the inherit instinct to take care of our ‘girls.’ Winter time is possibly the time that many of us worry about them the most. And this totally makes sense; we haven’t popped a hive cover in weeks or even months, we don’t know how fast they’re consuming their winter stores and we worry whether they will have enough. It can be more than a little nerve-racking. The…

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Paint your Beehives with the Best, non-toxic paint

Paint your Beehives with the Best, non-toxic paint

When I was in commercial beekeeping, each year brought with it the chores of building new hive bodies and honey supers. I watched as each new box was dipped in a copper solution mixed with paint thinner. After the boxes were drip-dry, each one had to be painted with an outdoor latex-based paint on the exterior. The copper preserved the wood and kept termites at bay while the latex paint protected…

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How to One-Up your Beekeeping Game

How to One-Up your Beekeeping Game

One thing I believe that all beekeepers can agree on is the excitement we feel when the spring season begins. We love to see that our little bees are ‘waking up’ and venturing out after so many months. OH! And they’re bringing in pollen! Where did they get that from? Is it not too cold still? Those little girls never cease to amaze us. Well, wherever it came from it makes us happy because spring…

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The Cornerstone of Saving the Bees: Local Beekeepers and their Supporters.

The Cornerstone of Saving the Bees: Local Beekeepers and their Supporters.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if the phrase, ‘Save the Bees,’ soon changed to ‘Saved the Bees?’ Imagine if every town, village, and city had enough beekeepers who were keeping beehives using natural practices. What would that look like? For starters, I can picture more trees, bushes, flowers, and herb gardens specifically planted to support honey bees and all pollinators.

This was my very first…

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Weeds are Wildflowers, let them Bee. Part 2

Weeds are Wildflowers, let them Bee. Part 2

There are several sounds that a beekeeper loves to hear and one that they do not. The sound that beekeepers do not like to hear is the busy buzzing of honey bee wings telling the beekeeper, ‘Goodbye, alas we shall see you no more.” That’s right, it’s the sound of a swarm. Fortunately, today we are talking about the sounds that beekeepers dolike, which is when the blossoms are buzzing happily with…

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Weeds are Wildflowers, let them Bee. Part 1

Weeds are Wildflowers, let them Bee. Part 1

Most people do not realize the abundant variety of wildflowers that honey bees will forage from. Many of these wildflowers are something that most would consider to be ‘weeds.’ In my opinion, a ‘weed’ is just a flower that you haven’t met yet. And whether it has a name or not, honey bees don’t care; they like it anyways.

Honey bee foraging on Jewelweed. Photo by Jonathan Hargus

This…

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Get the Best bear fence for your beehives.

Get the Best bear fence for your beehives.

One day we got a phone call. Our apiary furthest to the south had some beehives knocked over on the ground. The property owner noticed this three days ago before finally calling us. He told us our hives had been ‘blown’ over. Fearing the worst, we set out on the one hour drive. Pulling into the cow pasture surrounded by orange groves, we could see the disaster from afar and as we got closer we…

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Queens with benefits: running your own Mating nucs.

Queens with benefits: running your own Mating nucs.

Have you ever accidentally squashed or damaged one of your queens? Perhaps you were being a bit rough while pulling frames out from the brood nest or maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, it sucks. Once the hive knows that they’re queenless, it will take another 10-12 days for them to get another one. Then possibly up to another week of mating flightsbefore she…

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The 3 Don'ts of Beekeepery

The 3 Don’ts of Beekeepery

I have a beekeeping buddy with slightly different ideas than I do about hive management. But that pretty much describes every beekeeper doesn’t it? There’s a humorous but accurate phrase that goes something like this, “If you ask 10 beekeepers the same question you’ll get 11 different answers.” Too true, but that’s what makes beekeeping unique, eh?

My new apiary is located very close to my…

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Mystery honey crop: Have you ever heard of Millet Honeydew?

Mystery honey crop: Have you ever heard of Millet Honeydew?

So I live in the North Central Georgia Mountains just inside of Union County. One of the most unique varieties of honey in the U.S. is made here: Sourwood Honey. If you have ever tried it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This honey is so popular that you rarely see it for sale outside of our tri-state area, the demand is as high as its price tag. People drive from nearby states just to…

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Tired of losing Your Beehives? Put the 'keep' back into Beekeeping. AFB.

Tired of losing Your Beehives? Put the ‘keep’ back into Beekeeping. AFB.

With the new honey bee vaccine blowing around in the news lately, and scientists Barking up the wrong Bee, I feel that I should share with you how I treat my beehives to prevent American Foulbrood. If you haven’t read my reaction to the honey bee vaccine, please do so. I would love to know your thoughts about it.

I have to admit something to you up front here- I have very little experience…

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Tired of losing Beehives? Put the 'keep' back into Beekeeping. Nosema.

Tired of losing Beehives? Put the ‘keep’ back into Beekeeping. Nosema.

I will neverforget my very first beekeeping club meeting in January of 2017. I showed up a little late and the speaker for the evening was already in the middle of a discussion. He was talking about his devastating winter losses and stated simply that he just could not understand why he lost so many beehives during the winter from year to year. Well, forty-five minutes later, when the discussion…

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It’s spring in South Central Florida! #honeybeeforage #betterbeekeeping #ninjabeekeeper #weedsarewildflowers https://www.instagram.com/p/Br8AKfDBMbR/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=k6da7170mzyo