Yes, this is a rant. I’ve been putting if off because it made me so angry I had to distance myself in order to write coherently. My daughter’s two-year-old recently came home from daycare and announced, “Bees will hurt you.” Not only that, she began stomping on any insect she saw, particularly ants. My daughter […] Read more
So what is “the better way to bee?” I now think of it as logic-based beekeeping—beekeeping built on science, experimentation, and reasoning—not on myth, wives’ tales, or hyperbole. Where I was raised in rural Pennsylvania, a high value was placed on “horse sense.” Also known as common sense, horse sense is the talent to apply […] Read more
Here is something I would do if I could. Bees in a field of buckwheat seems too good to be true. The source of my all-time favorite honey, Fagopyrum esculentum, just doesn’t want to grow in my shady forest apiary. Believe me, I’ve tried. So I have to be content looking at a photo like […] Read more
Queens can get rolled when the beekeeper lifts a frame containing the queen or lifts a frame adjacent to one with the queen. In the tight space between frames, the bees become bunched together or pressed against the comb or frame. If a queen becomes caught in a tight space or within a mass of […] Read more
Two of these photos arrived this week with the same question, “What is eating my bees?” The top photo, taken by beekeeper Wayne Gillispie, came from northeastern Kentucky. The second, by beekeeper Roger Taylor, came from Gallatin, Tennessee. Each predator has a honey bee in its jaws. These creepy-looking bugs are in the family Asilidae […] Read more
Since we’ve been talking about wasps, I want to show you a couple of cool photos taken by Bill Reynolds of Minnesota. He writes: The yellowjacket hornets have been behaving themselves and doing a good job cleaning up the dead bees in front of the hives. Every once in awhile I will find a dead […] Read more
Although I can’t actually see the victim, I’m taking the photographer’s word on it: inside this marauding ball of bees is a bald-faced hornet, Dolichovespula maculata. Sometimes timing is everything, and I was just lining up a little pile of bald-faced bodies here in Washington when this photo arrived from Craig Scott in Delaware. Craig […] Read more