Beekeepers Blog

1/1 (Most like Nectar for feeding larvae and drawing out honeycomb) Spring/Summer - 1 Part Sugar with 1 Part Water 4 pound bag of sugar formula: 8 cups of water per bag of sugar. Makes approximately 3 ½ quart jars...

The IPM approach is simply this – utilizing a series of methods for the long-term control and prevention of Varroa mites. The combination of these different methods gives the beekeeper and the bees a much broader chance of winning the...

Roughly 10% of the brood in a hive is typically drone brood. Since drones require a larger cell to develop in than workers, the bees must build special cells that are larger in diameter than worker cells. They typically do...

Drones are a normal and healthy part of every hive. Hives will usually remove drones from the hive in the late fall and begin raising them again in early spring. From early spring through late fall, about 10% of the...

I don’t recommend buying queens with clipped wings, nor do I recommend clipping the wings of a queen.    The theory is that it will prevent a hive from swarming, since the queen cannot fly away with the swarm. However,...

This is largely a question of preference. It doesn’t generally hurt a queen to get her marked, but it does cost extra, since beekeepers have to find a queen, pick her up, and mark her. It is far easier to...