All Posts

All blog posts, most recent first:

• Spotlight on honey bee legs: they’re not just for dancing
• The truth about hummingbird pollinators: are they better than bees?
• Bumble bees and hollyhocks: an old-fashioned love story
• Ways pollination saturation can help crops but exploit our bees
• Flowering trees revisited: the best way to save the bees
• The 3 surprising things honey bees (almost) never collect
• Is liquid smoke helpful or risky for calming honey bees?
• Witch hazel: the unusual feast bees need in the off-season
• Honey bee and wasp nests: how to know the difference
• Beekeeper magic: how to become a hive tool magician
• Think all bees are vegetarians? Strange reasons some eat meat
• Unlock beekeeping secrets with chatbots, but be wary of disinformation
• Introducing beewolves: watch them pollinate flowers as they eat bees
• 10 favorite posts about beekeepers (not normal people)
• 13 reasons for small honey harvests (& how to improve them)
• No Mow May: not very useful for the best pollinator health
• Beekeepers: this is the reason to taste your honey today
• Playing with fire: the reasons we all love beeswax candles
• Powerful and toxic honey bee venom is injected, not sprayed
• Peppermint won’t repel bees, but it may attract them
• Tempting blue-flowered Caryopteris makes bees soar: “We want more!”
• What happens when bees make pollen into magic bee bread?
• Upright hollow stems: much better than toxic mason bee houses
• Bees and blue: beautiful blue blossoms for happy honey bees
• Good-news bees: more than a colorful buzz in the blooms
• Simple ways honey bees nurture inner peace & shatter anxiety
• The Bee Inspired Garden: spectacular blooms for bee people
• Nativars for pollinators: the truth about cross-bred native plants
• How to lead your honey bees to the best water
• Bee-friendly fun: how to make seed balls for your garden
• What’s the best and highest use for dark beeswax combs?
• Bee-free hummingbird feeders: how to make hummers safe from bees
• Little metallic green bees: a stunning surprise in your garden
• Revealing photos show nectar-grubbing honey bees piercing flowers
• Honey bee down! How to help a drowning bee
• Hive placement: how to choose the best backyard spot
• How to repel 7 ruthless animals that eat honey bees
• One truth about honey: it’s not made from pollen grains
• What happens when shrewd solitary wasps kill mason bees
• The puzzling guide to bee cocoons & how to see them
• How much will the new AFB vaccine help honey bees?
• The magic of queen cups: here today, gone tomorrow
• How to recognize a queenless hive: 9 reliable ways
• Lickety-spit: how bees use trophallaxis to easily communicate
• A-Ž hives in a Slovenian-style apiary: awesome yet practical
• Spotlight on crystallization: how to make 2-ingredient creamed honey
• Crunchy honey: an innovative way to market crystallized honey
• How to increase hive ventilation for whopping honey crops
• A looming honey bee threat: colorful little microplastic particles
• When can I harvest honey from a new hive?
• Bottom line: bees are so cautious, they often don’t fly
• Bee secrets: what happens when bees make honey?
• How to cut & install queen cells easily without harm
• How to start beekeeping even if you’re afraid of bees
• How honey bees build perfect & practical six-sided wax cells
• Piggyback plant has dazzling red-orange pollen
• Surprising ways to identify a honey bee like a pro
• How to smoke bees: 10 tips for best results
• How to kill bees with vinegar (it never works)
• Learn to love the scientific names of bees
• 3 simple ways to recognize a honey bee scout
• 17 costly beekeeping mistakes and how to avoid them
• Why is it so difficult to breed better bees?
• 37 tested gift ideas for your favorite beekeeper 2022
• The best, most practical butterfly nets for beekeepers
• Why do bees visit latrines as they make honey?
• Once folk heroes, some beekeepers are targeted by ecoterrorists
• The ultimate yellowjacket trap is in your trash
• The remarkable distance honey bees actually fly
• Baby bees are like baby gnats: full size
• Sonication: why honey bees cannot buzz pollinate
• Oxalic acid best practices: safely treat for varroa
• Winter patties or pollen patties: how to choose the right one
• The eastern carpenter bee: an unloved nectar-robbing bee
• The uncommonly common drone fly: A shrewd drone lookalike
• The fascinating, unexpected shimmer response in giant honey bees
• Liquefy honey the easy way (or maybe not)
• Big-headed clover for hungry pollinators
• Red plexiglass lids for small hive beetles
• Why have I never seen a honey bee cocoon?
• Will tanging bring your bees to ground?
• Bees and water: the ladies drink for free
• Grow a no-till, herbicide-free bee meadow
• Why honey bee lives are so short
• Black Bears Destroy a Beeyard
• A beekeeper’s brush with disaster
• Oregon Sunshine: shine a light on your pollinators
• What are temporal castes in honey bees?
• Make it easy to find your queen bee: never struggle again
• Are you harassed by a single, ruthless bee?
• Two Pollination Myths You Shouldn’t Believe
• Never lose your hive tool again
• An intercaste queen stars in a class act of survival
• It’s time to soapbox the new beekeepers
• A virgin queen’s fertility window
• The many styles of bee sociality
• Is spotted lanternfly honey good for beekeepers? Or bad?
• When yellowjacket traps don’t work
• Hey Bee, Stick Out Your Tongue and Say “Ahh” 
• The special way bees and flowers help each other
• How can I find a source of lavender beeswax?
• The winter solstice: day one of bee season
• Common and lance-leaved plantain for bees
• Is a landing board necessary for your bees?
• Waste management: even the bees do it
• Beekeeping vocabulary: the best beekeepers get the words right
• Invasive honey plants: are they good for bees?
• The cost of beekeeping (you don’t want to know)
• Now is the time to learn a new bee
• Beekeepers and the Dunning-Kruger Effect: Unskilled and Unaware
• Create an Artificial Swarm with a Taranov Split
• What does terroir have to do with honey?
• Bearly there: the remains of my apiary
• Ethical beekeeping: What is it and who cares?
• How to make sugar syrup easy: mistakes to avoid
• Swarm traps won’t cause your bees to swarm
• Book review | A Beekeeper’s Diary
• Insects that feed us: more than honey bees
• Is honey made from bee vomit? Sure, why not?
• Should you feed pollen supplement in spring?
• Respiration and Circulation in Honey Bees
• A beekeeper asks, “When do I quit?”
• Cemetery Honey and Creepy Angel-Topped Babies
• One last sting: a fitting end to 2020
• A Christmas Tale: the fantasy of flight
• How to keep bees like a scientist
• Books for Beeple: two fun reads for a winter’s eve
• Aerial spraying and honey bees
• Emergence box vs hatching box: what’s the difference?
• Lovage: how to use this all-purpose pollinator plant
• A Thanksgiving thought: share what you know online
• The best beekeeping advice I ever shared
• CRISPR: the basics you need to know
• What I don’t know about bees would fill volumes
• Pollination syndromes can predict who will visit a flower
• Dry pollen substitute vs pollen patties: which is best?
• The first 11 days of a worker bee’s life: egg and larva
• Even honey bees struggle with air pollution
• To become the best beekeeper, learn it’s not a competitive sport
• It’s nearly impossible to save a dying bee
• An open-air colony in a pear tree doesn’t survive
• How to make beeswax food wraps step by step
• Vespid-19: the Asian giant hornet in North America
• Honey bees have their own agenda
• Mussing in the kitchen with honeycomb
• Is frequent swarming disastrous for bees, or a miracle?
• Dahlias for postage, if you hurry
• How Can You Save a Bee?
• Today is income tax day; except it’s not
• Do your bees have this strange condition?
• An especially early vernal equinox
• Fun with Figworts, the Sticky Scrophularia
• Repeat after me: Nosema does not cause dysentery
• Colony postmortem #4: two losses in one week
• Overcome wintertime beekeeping worries with a good self-preservation checklist
• Incomplete pollination and why it matters
• The Upstairs Downstairs Intrance: better hive access
• Peek inside a feeder frame
• Much to celebrate: Honey Bee Suite is 10 and counting
• Cultivating an obsession with bees
• The winter hive: to tap or not to tap
• A humongous hive in a house
• Wintertime books for people who love bees
• Opposing views of mite management: data vs date
• Thank you for reading Honey Bee Suite
• Get a free subscription to 2 Million Blossoms!
• The truth about zinc: is it toxic to honey bees?
• The Valkyrie long hive: practical, unlimited beekeeping for anyone
• What the heck is a honey cone?
• A close-knit family of bees
• Slatted racks: everything you need to know
• Distinctive domiciles for solitary bees
• Want 2 Million Blossoms delivered to your door?
• Immigrant bees that colonized North America
• How to feed stacked nucs in winter
• Is high-fructose corn syrup bad for bees?
• Making a beeline for lunch
• The marvel of bee mandibles
• Lessons from the year of the wasp
• A plant out of place, or not?
• The Price trap-out: no bee left behind
• It’s time to collect stems for bees
• Bearding bees are common in late summer
• How sparkling clean are your bait hives?
• Who’s that pollinating my garden?
• Assessing a pile of dead bees: what happened?
• Mosquito spraying decimates honey bees
• Are bamboo tubes causing mason bee Armageddon?
• Robber fly dining on a honey bee
• Stalking Bees in the Oregon High Desert
• Molly’s bees: shot brood and laying workers
• What’s wrong with this colony?
• Although we worry, honey bees are built to last
• Surprisingly, pollen tastes bitter, so why do bees love it?
• Are you rotating brood boxes? Is it the best advice?
• Does honey flow from flowers? Never.
• The best mason bee straws ever, and some alternatives
• The Pesticide in Our Own Backyards
• Wintertime projects: skeps and honey pots
• Are stingless bees moving north?
• Six myths about mason bees
• On diaphanous wings they soar
• The crocuses bloomed, but where are the bees?
• A secret reservoir of bees in the forest
• Wallace’s giant bee found in Indonesia
• Pacific Northwest pollinator summit
• For healthy bees: Sow seeds, not war
• An age-old question about the age of beekeepers
• Newly-painted hives eager for spring
• The high cost of launching a beehive for the first time
• Propolis and the resin connection
• Seed catalogs bring the promise of spring
• Don’t let your bees go hungry
• Bee Merry! It’s Christmas!
• Dianthidium bees make masons look like amateurs
• In praise of the Langstroth hive
• Favorite bees from last summer
• The mites are the same old mites
• Book review | Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees
• Have beekeepers gone bananas?
• A Thanksgiving message from Honey Bee Suite
• Is the beekeeping bubble about to burst?
• Many types of pollination: take the quiz
• Rendering beeswax in the microwave
• The dogma daze of beekeeping, part 1
• Are Women Better Beekeepers?
• The honey-tailed striped sweat bee, Agapostemon melliventris
• Motherwort as a bee forage plant
• Honey bee diversity: the best thing for a strong apiary
• Book review | Buzzled! Bee-themed junior puzzles
• How to help a bee in distress
• Sainfoin as a honey bee forage plant
• How to identify a honey bee using wing veins
• The Detritus of Brood Rearing: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
• Bee love: sealed with a propolis kiss
• Use an oxalic acid vaporizer with caution
• Fall forage for bees: what’s blooming near you?
• Beautiful kudzu honey with the unexpected taste of Kool-Aid
• The honey bee diet requires many amino acids
• Stalking an aggregation of tiny holes
• Using oxalic acid vaporization when brood is present
• Pink pollen and the mariposa lily
• How bees transfer pollen between flowers
• Purple honey: the genuine thing from North Carolina
• Lovage: a multipurpose pollinator plant
• Anthophora terminalis: the orange-tipped wood digger bee
• What is a honey bee drone congregation area?
• A Panurginus bee in the neighborhood
• If your bees actually want to beard, let them
• Reasons why extra hive space may not reduce swarming
• Tantalizing and weird things found on a bottom board
• It’s time to monitor bumble bees
• The native bee quiz returns
• Tick-tock: ticks in the bee yard
• The downside to extracted honey
• A quick-start guide to honey bee antennae
• Should you encourage honey bees to build comb?
• Basic honey bee biology: a beginner’s quiz
• Before you move a hive, read this
• Imagine the lucky colony that lives here!
• For the best overwintering success, do one thing differently
• Osmia mason bee inside a dog’s footprint
• 3 surprising reasons your bees might leave and never return
• A virgin queen bee with deformed wings
• How long can you keep bees in a shipping container?
• The slippery life of the small hive beetle
• Habropoda: an early spring digger bee
• How to safely install package bees in cold weather
• The men and women of beekeeping: a survey
• Early spring at Scatter Creek Wildlife Area
• Do bees have knees?
• Triungulins: revolting hitchhikers that know how to ride bees
• Sexy legs and amazing feets: the honey bee legs quiz
• When to feed pollen substitute to honey bees
• The worst thing about the spring equinox
• Honey’s magical power: four ways to slay microbes
• Four elegant homemade bee hives
• Spring pollen on a happy bee day
• A honey bee drone quiz
• Bees head-down in cells: did they starve?
• Did your bees die of cold or starvation?
• Making comb honey should be simple and fun
• This is what wax bloom looks like: weird white mold
• The benefits of having your honey labels printed
• When to remove quilt boxes and feeders
• The design of the honey dipper: from primitive to practical
• Up next: bird blood in bee feed
• Beekeeping will change you for the worse
• Treat your bees, but hold the lithium
• Halictus farinosus on drumstick allium
• Eristalis tenax: the most photographed bee in America
• Is infused honey safe to eat?
• Rats as honey bee predators
• Who visits your bee hive at night?
• Scrooge, the beekeeper, presents five New Year resolutions
• Eight candles and a Merry Christmas, too!
• How to store honey at home
• What is the lifespan of a drone honey bee?
• A huddle of drones tries to stay warm
• The mysterious disappearance of pure honey
• The simple reason bees dump their sugar outside
• A last-minute gift for a special beekeeper
• Slicing a brood box into ekes
• Overwintering honey bees in single-deep hives
• A Merry Thanksgiving To You from Honey Bee Suite
• A showstopper of a wasp: the great golden digger
• Revisiting the coolest Montana bee house
• Two beekeepers watch their bees abscond
• Beekeeping reality: Why does it depend?
• Tossing and turning and thinking of bees
• Tasting honey in new ways
• If you thought swarm traps were for honey bees
• How should we train the newbees?
• Hive stands that defy the wind
• Megachile angelarum: a bee in a pea
• Freakish wind topples bee hives
• What do you do with your honey harvest?
• BeeCounted.org: a new site for sharing hive data
• Overwintering honey bees: a guide to the fundamentals
• Varroa mite seeking a taste of royal blood
• The names of bee segments: how Ⅱ became 1
• Why are my bees crawling in front of the hive?
• Why do I see mining bees in September?
• Welcome to “Bee Space”
• How often do honey bees sleep in the flowers?
• What blooms in your September garden?
• Best advice: remove wax moth larvae from your comb honey
• The Valkyrie long hive: built with love for bees and their keepers
• Under cover of darkness, I watered my neighbor’s weed
• Figwort: a nectar-rich bee favorite
• Woodworking plans for beekeepers
• The undervalued robbing screen: the best quality hive defense
• Incredibly stupid things a beekeeper can do
• Flowers are for sharing
• Marketing your honey: make your claims crystal clear
• Aqua-green honey for your dining pleasure
• The sugar syrup recipe isn’t hard: don’t overthink
• Coelioxys: cuckoo bees with weapons
• A controversy over screened inner covers
• Beekeepers, wild bees, and the happiness of pursuit
• Bicolored pollen pellets on a bumble bee
• An ancient marine tea service for thirsty bees
• Summer dearth and honey bee management
• Requeening a hive may not be the best answer
• My one rule for hive inspections
• Footwear for beekeepers: What’s your favorite?
• Things you can catch in a bait hive
• The most important concept in beekeeping
• A non-threatening water source for bees
• The dazzling black-tailed bumble bee
• The truth about raw honey: is it really better?
• Bees in Idaho: a beekeeper’s first swarm
• My swarm arrived 38 minutes late
• Sun is for foraging, but bees love shade
• Upper entrances can enhance your honey production
• A swarm capture from the dark side
• Guardian Bee Apparel presents the perfect bee suit
• Do honey bees move eggs from cell to cell?
• How often do you think about fly feet?
• A lesson in beekeeping from a two-celled Andrena
• Digger bees living in an Arkansas farm shed
• The lifestyles of wild and healthy honey bees
• Cellophane bees make plastic-bag nests and bee soup
• Making a hive into a home
• Why save a laying-worker colony?
• Who knew vacuuming could be so much fun?
• Beekeepers: are you one of the 80% who will quit?
• Nomada bees prey on the real pollinators
• A garbage can for the mason bees
• Should I grow native plants for honey bees?
• Complete beekeeping kit at Costco
• Overwintering success: zero loss and healthy bees
• What to do when your dog gets stung
• Secrets to freezing wax moth eggs: your results may vary
• Here comes the sun: a male mason bee sees the light
• “Let the mites be mites” is no longer an option
• Can you solve this British bee mystery?
• Booklet review | Splits and Varroa
• Physics for beekeepers: mold in a beehive
• The demise of colony collapse disorder
• Nice, now my bees have mice
• The link between honey bees and resin bees
• Not every new beekeeper needs a mentor: compatibility is key
• Northern beekeepers: beware the Ides of March
• A free-hanging honey bee nest in Minnesota
• An instant-read hive thermometer for winter colonies
• Something you need to know: how to hide your beehive
• Bumble bee answers every beekeeper needs
• How the honey bee uses invertase
• It’s not about mites any more
• Is cannabis honey really a thing?
• Haunted by losses, a Maryland beekeeper speaks out
• Be practical about saving a failing honey bee colony
• Varroa: a mite by any other name
• Brewer’s yeast or baker’s yeast for bees?
• How to use oxalic acid & glycerin strips for varroa
• The night moves of a once dead bee
• Nuc or package: how to buy honey bees
• Varroa mite hitching a ride, staying alive
• Officially endangered: the rusty-patched bumble bee
• The flowers are gone, but why?
• A wealth of working winter bees can energize your colony
• Happiness is a mid-winter cleansing flight
• Can honey bees fly in the rain?
• Honey Bee Suite turns seven!
• Thermal imaging for beekeepers
• Book review | 100 Plants to Feed the Bees
• How much do honeycomb cells tilt?
• Seven good books on honey bee biology
• The hardest part of beekeeping
• Planting a garden for leafcutting bees
• Why does this bee suit smell like vomit?
• Happy Thanksgiving from Honey Bee Suite
• How the inverse square law governs the distribution of bee poop
• What does a laying worker hive look like?
• Are winter bee stings worse than others?
• Keeping bees in a barn: a lofty idea
• Book review | Simple, Smart Beekeeping
• The “year of” syndrome: what’s yours?
• Fall hive management: dealing with dinks
• A Montana bee house from a Dutch design
• Have more than one bee? Add an s.
• Weird reasons I don’t like beekeeping all that much
• My hives have no brood! What should I do?
• Why so many dead bumble bees?
• Bald-faced hornet nests in New York
• Honey bees are not endangered
• The role of pollen in honey bee nutrition
• Don’t mind the cold: how to open a hive in winter
• Pollen feeders for honey bees
• Beekeeping with Asian hornets in France
• Will American foulbrood make a comeback?
• Asian hornet found in the UK
• Why do honey bees waste pollen?
• When poison falls from the sky
• Madia elegans: a crazy pollinator plant
• The 3½ conditions your bees need for strong comb building
• The vocabulary of beekeeping: phoretic
• Do bees make poison ivy and poison oak honey?
• Spiders that eat bees
• A gentle warning about upper entrances: not too big
• What are the hard parts of beekeeping?
• Book review | The Sting of the Wild
• Megachile perihirta, the furry leafcutting bee
• Colony postmortem: a glistening pile of abdomens
• Open-centered dahlias, a pollinator favorite
• Prevent resistance to miticides: rotate your treatments
• What is a summer nectar dearth?
• Ants no more: how to keep ants out of your beehives
• August is a critical time for mite management
• How to torch your hive with an oxalic acid vaporizer
• Gone! The Oklahoma colonies abscond
• How to light a smoker so it stays lit
• How often do you smoke your bees?
• Who pollinates wild black raspberries?
• An open-air colony in Oklahoma
• A bee hotel like you’ve never seen before
• Bee words having Latin plurals
• Beekeeping: a hobby brimming with possibility
• On becoming a master beekeeper
• Hylaeus bees are easily confused with wasps
• All buzz, no bite: the fascinating truth about male bees
• After the summer solstice, your bees think of winter survival
• A queen returning from a mating flight
• A Eucera bee visits my garden
• Is she a queen or just a female bee?
• Why clip the wings of your queen?
• Counting the dead bees
• Mason bees in a honey bee hive
• How to use a swarm seducer to catch a swarm as it leaves the hive
• A new way to weigh your hives
• Using a top-mounted pollen trap
• 7 common methods of varroa mite transmission
• Book review | Following the Wild Bees
• How to fit deep frames into medium boxes
• Mason bees actually sting, kind of
• When will a newly emerged queen begin to lay?
• An early swarm becomes two
• The nectar was there, but now it’s gone
• How can you make your bees…
• How to use a queen excluder: safe and practical ways
• How important are sugar syrup ratios?
• Should I destroy extra queen cells?
• How to keep evil spirits out of the bee yard
• Why you should accept (not fix!) crystallized honey
• Stands for a double-queen hive
• Tinkering in the bee yard
• In-hive pollen transfer among honey bees
• More beekeeping won’t save the bees: better to plant flowers
• Collecting pollen from honey bees
• Kairomones and honey bee parasites
• Honey bee pheromones: common scents
• IR and hive maintenance: what glows?
• Thermal images of winter bees
• Book review | Two Million Blossoms
• Lavender honey from the source
• Keep honey bees dry and draft free
• How I came to have a camo bee suit
• A hive population wake-up call
• So you want to be treatment free
• Are we obsessed with Varroa mites?
• Absconding bees or death by Varroa?
• Cosmos seeds for all kinds of bees
• Open-air colonies from coast to coast
• The secret of extrafloral nectaries
• Why we fear scientific names
• Honey bee genetics: where’s the miracle?
• Honey Bee Suite is six!
• Winter hive check: how to help your bees thrive
• Hydroxymethylfurfural in sugar syrup
• Blue-banded bees: the buzz from Australia
• How to plug the holes in your beehives
• Stings of winter bees
• BroodMinder reminder
• An upper entrance in winter
• You’ve never seen yellowjackets like this
• Lasioglossum ovaliceps
• A wintertime reading list for bee lovers
• A guide to North American bees
• How to make no-cook candy boards for wintering bees
• Holiday gifts for beekeepers
• Honey bee mandibles have many uses
• Colony death by yellowjacket attack
• Two queens, one hive=lots of honey
• How common is foul brood in honey?
• The strangest honeycomb ever
• Ten beekeeping crimes you should not commit
• Customize a beehive and make it your own
• Cold way or warm way: how do your frames run?
• BroodMinder transmits hive data to your phone
• Coaxing them through the excluder
• My bees won’t go through a queen excluder
• The Bee-Thirsty: a mini wet-vac for bees
• When pests become pets with portraits
• BeeCraft wins gold at Apimondia
• Fight habitat loss: put a flower pot on every porch
• How to make value-subtracted honey
• Bumble bee on a dahlia in September
• Sunflowers transition from bees to birds
• Perfect disks or ragged holes?
• The long path back to nature
• That smarts! 9 fascinating facts about bee stingers
• Infographic: 21 buzzworthy facts
• Hives that fell into rot and ruin
• Rebuttal: bees turn sugar into honey
• Is your honey cut with sugar syrup?
• Seed bombs: reasons why a clever idea barely works
• The joy of autumn
• Observation hive for sale
• How tender is your comb honey?
• A Langstroth like no other
• Wintertime hive prep: a list of things to do
• A beekeeper’s message from sunny Florida
• The week in photos
• Clearly a waste: the bee digestive system
• The blaming of the shrew
• Smoke and bees: the effect of wildfires on bee populations
• Take the dog hive challenge
• I’ll have the pollinator plate
• A day in the world around me: a guest post
• Try-its: what worked and what didn’t
• Cosmos: a multipurpose bee flower
• Surplus secret: access holes with platforms
• Autumn Joy beginning to bloom
• What crud is this?
• Why won’t my bees store honey?
• How to make a steam melter for beeswax
• Wasps aplenty follow a mild winter
• Packing more than pollen
• Stealing honey: bee-on-bee robbery
• Male wool carder bee: a military prototype
• Why do my hives smell like meat?
• More than a box of bees
• Bees on a distant bloom
• What’s wrong with this picture?
• A garden gem
• A delicious meal of wasp larvae
• Facing front, stung from behind
• How the honey bee makes pollen pellets
• Plays well with others, not
• Xylem sap for honey bees
• Sea glass bee watering dish
• Disappointing pollinator garden?
• A marble bar for bees
• Ground bees in a rooftop garden
• One queen, a few bees, and a dash of skill
• Would you accept this package of bees?
• Dead bees in a package: how many is okay?
• How does your garden grow?
• Squatters in the attic
• Who reuses old frames?
• Many types of smoker fuel: What’s your smoke?
• Dead bees rising
• Pollinators on the night shift
• Taranov split in photos
• A wall of bees
• Honey is not bee vomit
• Instant replay
• How to clean wireware
• Home is the bee, home from the tree
• Let’s save the right bees
• A pair of early swarms
• Queen piping: listen!
• Neonicotinoids: euphoria then death for bees
• How to build a slatted rack
• Photos of Autumn Joy sedum
• Snack food for bees: Autumn Joy sedum
• A beekeeping mystery
• Bee-u-tify flower seeds for bees
• My advice for new beekeepers
• Do large tubes yield extra-large mason bees?
• Tiny bee loses her pollen
• Can a colony collect too much pollen?
• Nomada bees: the home invasion specialists
• A lewd and lascivious swim in the soup
• Can I collect pollen from a Flow hive?
• A mason bee condo won’t “save the bees”
• When can I get honey from my Flow hive?
• A letter to sticky-fingered beekeepers
• Video: Oxalic acid trickling
• How to make a straw-bale pollinator garden
• How to do an oxalic dribble, even on cold days
• Oxalic acid approved for Varroa mites
• Comb honey with instructions attached
• An act of defiance: plant a flower
• A honey bee, not
• Colony postmortem #2
• Mason bee “menage a trois”
• Observation hive for sale
• Patent for Flow-style beehive: 1940
• Movie review | Burt’s Buzz
• What the heck is vegan honey?
• Flow hive review
• Winter aconite attracts pollinators
• Should you go with the Flow?
• Dead bees in the snow
• Spring in February
• Spinning the truth in favor of pesticides
• Lemon queen sunflowers for pollinators
• Too young for field work
• Do moose pollinate alders?
• Update: the open-air colony in Maupin
• Pearlescent honey glimmers from within
• Bee plant survey results
• Stickier than honey
• Bee plants and your hardiness zone
• An A-list of bee books
• How to feed syrup in winter
• A song of the bees
• The crocuses are popping
• Last thoughts on a lost colony
• CSI: colony postmortem
• How to feed bees in freezing weather
• Good bee books | Hives in the City
• Viper’s bugloss: a top-tier honey bee plant
• You be the judge
• Beekeeping with a purpose
• Hive temperature vs humidity
• Leafcutting bees in action
• The truth about honey bee decline
• Blog review | Botanical Accuracy
• Happy Birthday, Honey Bee Suite!
• The bee year is about to begin
• A crude post on crude protein
• Joe’s mysterious honey
• Consider the honeybee bee
• Don’t miss these photos!
• Winter thoughts
• AFB-fortified pollen
• A shortage of pollen for bees
• A pair of bees
• Should I feed pollen substitute to my bees?
• Plant a flower, answer a survey
• Wrapping a feral colony for winter
• The surprising way honey bees stay warm in winter
• Honey bee: It’s what’s for dinner
• A taylor-made feeder
• Bee size, mites, and pesticides
• Chocolate pollination: not the job of bees
• The stunning Valhalla long hive: low, sleek, and practical
• An unnatural dilemma
• Worried about my bees
• Monitoring mites with a sugar shake
• Moisture quilts should be dry
• A pair of enemies share a pear
• Winter pollen for bees: snowdrops, crocus, and squill
• How to make a removable bee cozy
• Shaking larvae from their beds
• Robbing and fighting and falling in clumps
• The fear of bees
• Logic-based beekeeping
• Bees in the buckwheat
• Be careful! Don’t roll your queen!
• Robber flies grab bees in flight
• The sign of the sting
• Italian mob takes down a wasp
• Book review | The Bee: A Natural History
• Fall management of honey bee colonies
• Strung out on pollen
• Do honey bees eat fruit?
• A woolcarder bee peers inside a flower
• The remarkable amount of honey your bees need for winter
• When the feed is too close
• What is guanine?
• The value of a postmortem
• Absconding: when your bees move on
• Is death camas a threat to honey bees?
• Favorite watering holes
• Lucky on guard
• Can I use mothballs in my hives?
• European woolcarders: bees that attack honey bees
• Her bees are so refined
• A honey of a bee
• How to recognize a nectar dearth & safeguard your bees
• Dropping in for a visit
• Bees on Eryngium
• Canola pollination
• Abuzz about you: do bees get angry?
• The purrfect guard
• Metallic green sweat bees add sparkle to your garden
• How to fix a laying worker hive
• A summer swarm
• A tiny pole dancer
• When the weak become strong
• Winter is coming and your bees know it
• Bee on a corn tassel
• Kill it! Kill it!
• Nomada bee loafing in the park
• Bees in an icebox
• Comb decoded
• The suspense of the sting
• Build it, and they will come
• A photo from the underground
• A note to visitors
• A swarm for the records
• Drones under house arrest
• Swarm sequel
• Swarm!
• Quote of the day
• Andrena mining bees
• The “tear ’em off” split
• Book review | Hives in the City: Keeping Honey Bees Alive in an Urban World
• Pesticides on the prairie
• A Taranov in time
• The neighbor lady smells best
• Honey bees unite!
• Spotlight on mining bees: what happens when you let them be
• A warning about bee-friendly plants
• Where have all the flowers gone?
• On a wing and a prairie
• Drone-laying queen or laying workers?
• Why are my honey bees different colors?
• For the love of bees
• Putting the squeeze on mason bees
• When your bees mess with you
• Observation hive extraordinaire
• The dandelions of spring
• My bees left! How to prevent absconding
• Bee suit alternatives
• Mason bee on the wing
• Bee Creek
• How safe is your hive from vandals?
• Bombus vosnesenskii
• Comb honey: Kelley squares
• Protect your bees from autumn wasps
• Comb honey: Ross Rounds
• A sign that it’s time to free your mason bee cocoons
• Reminder: pollen is not nectar
• Honey bee forage: Siberian squill
• The leafcutter bee: nature’s hole punch
• Bee bits in the news
• Stingless beekeeping in Mexico
• Take the pollinator challenge
• Hourglass bees: even bees have places they can’t scratch
• Comb honey in glass jars
• Who’s living in my apiary?
• Tracking Hive Tracks
• Is my honey safe to eat?
• Comb honey: Hogg half-comb cassettes
• It’s time for pollinator habitat
• Bee on red huckleberry
• Comb honey and smokers
• Plastic debris for brains
• A journalist’s bumble
• Comb honey behind the scenes: sneak peek
• S(tuff) happens
• Hives with real quilts
• What’s really in your bottle of honey?
• Why is beekeeping so hard?
• The snow wars continue
• Hives in real snow
• Bear crossing
• The seven families of bees
• Snow in Georgia
• Where do bumble bees go in winter?
• How to use a quilt with a candy board
• Best bee sting relief: how to ease the epic pain
• Comb honey: when to treat for mites
• Tweaking my moisture quilts
• How to super for section honey
• Honeycomb salad
• The minimalist guide to winter feeding
• How to manage bees for section honey
• How to get stung 22 times in one place
• Tips for using Stratiolaelaps scimitus
• Stratiolaelaps scimitus for Varroa control
• Bee thinking
• Packin’ propolis
• Report from the 47th parallel
• How to make chunk honey without scaring the public
• Comb honey: how to make cut comb
• Thirty-one gifts for beekeepers
• Return of the photo thieves
• Comb honey foundation: yes or no?
• Comb honey: it’s all about the wax
• Comb honey: the alleged series begins
• The finer things in life
• Wintertime reading
• Tea in the honey bee diet
• Pollen patties need a warning: Use with caution!
• Cold bees brave the New York winter in a tree
• Tincture of queen: how to make the best swarm lure
• Bumble bee on goldenrod
• Recooping the bees
• Physics for beekeepers: temperature in the hive
• Meadowfoam honey?
• Whose honey is it?
• Expanding with different hive types
• Honey bee kneading elder bark
• How to wrap a hive to overcome cold weather
• First frost
• Like honey in the bank
• Winter is frightening: should I combine weak colonies now?
• Melissodes sleeping in a thistle
• Chiropterophily: bats are powerful pollinators that soar in the dark
• Many dead bees on screened inner cover: what happened?
• I’m stuck on you
• Not all wasps are yellowjackets
• Bumble burger
• Teeth, tombs, or waffle cones?
• Stinky honey
• Top-bar hives and comb honey
• Put the syrup close to the bees
• Do honey bee eggs just sit in the cell and do nothing?
• Do bumble bees hibernate or estivate?
• Great black wasp
• Homes for the underground majority
• The forgotten wasp
• Can I extract honey from sugar syrup if they are mixed?
• Is it true a drone has a grandfather but no father?
• Pollinator party
• Conversing in Canadian
• Down with bee suits!
• Top eleven questions of the week
• How long does it take bees to change sugar syrup to honey?
• Is it safe to eat beeswax with honey in it?
• Autumn in the apiary
• I was so much smarter then
• From China to Mexico with the bees
• When a colony refuses to drink
• On a wing and a prayer
• Keeping antennae shiny and clean with a built-in antenna cleaner
• Save that bird nest!
• That candy cane glow
• More red honey: this time from candy canes
• What’s a bored queen bee to do?
• Who’s that sitting on my clothesline?
• Bee ready to bite a nest mate
• Thoughts on natural beekeeping
• A toast to Taranov and his split
• Late summer forager on borage
• Beekeepers grumble about those damned bees
• Robbing bees on a mission
• A September swarm it was
• Bearding or swarming?
• This bee seems to have Angelina lips
• Sharing more than extractors
• Is a solitary bee a mason bee?
• A honey bee manifesto
• Don’t think, just do: a beekeeper’s answer to pointless anxiety
• Get that camera outta here!
• In through the back door
• A tale of two neighbors
• Braula coeca: devastating bee parasite makes a lousy companion
• Bathing with bees
• How to move a bumble bee nest
• Nectar dearth and summer stress
• How to make an awesome nesting block
• A homemade extractor
• Equal opportunity housing
• A wispy water wasp
• The value of scientific inquiry
• A combination chicken and bee coop
• The great extractor debate: don’t buy one till you need one
• Bee mail
• A face only a mother could love
• Variations on the hive
• Honey for sale
• Let’s spray the trees while they bloom! Great idea!
• Weight training for honey bees
• Andrena bee
• Honey bee on blackberry
• What is open-brood pheromone?
• Sharing a flower
• Protein and the hypopharyngeal gland
• Looking for lunch
• Seattle sleuth
• How to feed crystallized honey
• Bumble bee on herb-robert
• Danger in the flowers
• Learning to fly
• Cuckoo sweat bee
• Lasioglossum on Claytonia
• Referee bee: touchdown!
• Chimney bees and their turrets
• My spider queen
• Don’t miss the Varroa train
• See an innovative and stunning water feature for thirsty bees
• Backfilling: the sign of the swarm
• The iterative method of swarm capture
• My husband made me do it
• Bumble bee on piggyback plant
• A beekeeper’s trip to Corvallis
• Details of the Taranov split
• Another take on Taranov
• Crimson clover in bloom
• My zombie flies: pets I could do without
• The great divide: a Taranov split
• Green metallic cuckoo wasp
• Intercaste queens and swarm guards
• Do brussels sprouts need pollination?
• My bees swarmed right after installation
• Easiest package installation ever
• Bee Craft: the best of the bee journals
• How to use a swarm guard
• Why do I feel like “Dear Abby?”
• My teacher says bees have five eyes. She’s creepy.
• Bee poop on flowers: the best in sanitary practices?
• Installing a new package of bees
• Is it a good idea to feed my neighbors’ bees in hope they will swarm here?
• Can I start a new package on honey instead of syrup?
• How long before a new beehive begins to forage?
• How close together can I put my hives?
• How to clean up from Nosema apis
• Do mice eat bees?
• Apivar vs ApiLife Var vs Apiguard
• Are their ethics loose in the package too?
• Do honey bees leave in winter and return in spring?
• Outwitting the mites
• Why do honey bees need fur?
• “Bee” and “honey” in 42 languages, just in case
• Mentoring the mentor: bees behind bars
• Does pasteurization of honey kill Clostridium botulinum?
• Can humans catch bee dysentery?
• Why do my bees turn nasty when I kill them?
• The reason mites kill bees leaving a hive full of honey
• My first bee photos of the season
• Does your honey have that new-car smell?
• This is why honey bees never pollinate wheat
• Section supers will make you awesome quality comb honey
• Is a honey bee a single-celled organism?
• Excluding your queen . . . or not
• Is Africanized honey bee venom more toxic?
• The long and short of honey bee tongues
• Keeping bees . . . in Chinese
• What is idiopathic brood disease syndrome?
• A bully of a bumble
• Is wearing blue waterproof trousers bad for bees?
• Does pink pollen make pink honey?
• Allergy or just scary looking?
• Why did they die?
• How do I make my queen bee come to me?
• The big bad dirty environment for honey bees
• Actually, I was thinking of absconding
• A winter bee?
• Native bee forage: European centaury
• Diploid drones are a result of inbreeding
• Can you eat honeycomb and swallow?
• How to make a vertical split
• Red deadnettle: a beautiful early bloomer for hungry bees
• Mint plants bees love despite what people say
• Crimson and clover
• English for beekeepers: basic terminology
• Cemetery honey, Tennessee style
• Ick! Mold in my hive!
• Beekeeping in the Himalayan Highlands
• How to make a simple split
• Cooking with honey
• Sugar syrup or honey: which is best for bees?
• A personal note to cranky old beekeepers
• How to attract bumbles to an artificial nest
• How to cut comb honey
• The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved in amber, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar
• What’s hopping on my bottom board?
• Should you trust your bees to Phil?
• The syrup solution
• Bumble bee defecation
• Are bees insects or animals or something else?
• Update on bee forage plants
• How much pesticide in commercial foundation?
• It’s pink with star-shaped petals . . .
• A sting in winter
• What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee
• What’s new at Honey Bee Suite?
• Recipe for bee-scrumptious dry pollen substitute
• She’s been framed! Funny beekeeping search terms
• The continuing saga of Signal Mountain honey bees
• How to make fondant for bees from table sugar
• How to make hard candy from table sugar
• Too many bees for the middle of winter
• And now . . . normal wax scales
• Syrup does not belong in a cold hive
• Opening your hive in winter
• It’s winter and I’m tired of seeing dead bees!
• January in the apiary
• Lekking for love
• Glory, peace on Earth, good will toward all
• Filter beeswax with old socks and a crockpot
• What is incomplete fertilization?
• Mites on a bumble bee
• Alkali bees, the alfalfa specialists
• Twenty-five holiday trinkets for beekeepers
• What is first rinse water?
• How to avoid an expensive honey extractor: 3 alternatives
• Varroa mites feeding on a sick honey bee
• Yellow rain: but whose bees did it?
• December in the apiary
• Housekeeping, blogger style
• Housekeeping, honey bee style
• Things we forget to remember
• Absconding or CCD?
• Brooklyn bees take a bath
• Hive or colony: What is the difference?
• How many hives to start?
• A bear with table manners
• Out of sight, out of mind
• Mean neighbors using your site against me
• Why so many wings and legs?
• Should I keep bees?
• Watch out for those mandibles! Honey bees bite!
• Why tip my hive?
• A butterfly emerges
• Honey bees on a camping trip
• Hive humidity affects mite reproduction
• Breakfast in the apiary
• Not so sweet: how too much honey can cause diarrhea
• Once you understand mitekeeping, beekeeping is stupid simple
• Count down till winter
• Honey bee dysentery and water
• Can honey bees eat crystallized honey?
• Bovard rack? Really?
• Prepare your hives for winter
• Zombees arrive in Washington
• To improve the cluster, destroy the nest
• Why are my bees dying in the grass?
• Partially capped frames: what to do with uncapped honey?
• For my friends in the UK: the telescoping cover
• How to recognize robbing bees and ways to stop them
• Kudzu: the weird dark secret of purple honey?
• An immense observation hive
• Fretting over fall hive inspections
• Just hanging out
• Waxing eloquent
• The secret to brushing bees safely
• Japanese knotweed: the surprising source of quality bamboo honey
• Mite management in large hives
• The trouble with triples
• Tiny spider on a zip-line
• Pollen tramps I have known: Isabella
• Triple deep questions
• Triple deep hives in mid-summer
• A bull in the beeyard
• My worst beekeeping day ever
• Shame on the photo thieves
• The best bee butt photo
• Alkali bees face death by highway
• How I photograph bees
• Vandals in the beeyard
• The bee project of Shangri-la
• A light in the attic
• Does pollen cause crystallization?
• Liquid gold
• Flies with a wicked thirst
• The logistics of pollen
• Mite it bee the scutellum?
• Beekeeping in Thailand: Chiang Mai
• Danger in the borage
• Fit for a frog blog
• The mystery of the dead drones
• The allure of decapitation
• Drought and the water content of nectar
• Let us see your beehives!
• What is honeydew honey?
• Beekeeping in the dog days of summer
• The hum of a happy hive: nothing sounds better
• A fight with the varroa mite in New Zealand
• Fecal retention in bee larvae
• Trekking for pollinators
• Fluffy bums and fault lines
• A mason bee covered in hairy-footed pollen mites
• Can’t find your queen? Are you queenless or clueless?
• Thursday’s bees
• Pyramiding: getting bees to move up
• Bumble bee with mixed pollen
• Pollinator week: what’s the point?
• Daffodil seeds are easy to get
• One that got away
• Lions and tigers and bears, oh my
• A beer box for bees
• A hive of a different color
• Painting the inside of beehives
• A royal jelly factory in New Zealand
• Bees on a dairy farm
• The Zen of bees
• The best ventilated gabled roof
• Of mites and men
• Hive five: the best ventilation equipment
• How to make an overnight split
• The birds and the bees
• To gleefully bludgeon a beemudgeon
• The catch-22 of beekeeping
• Pacific waterleaf: early forage for bumble bees
• Extracting Australian watermelon honey
• Update on ants
• Great expectations
• Managing packages and swarms
• And I thought bumbles were big
• Honey bee forage: vine maple
• News clip about neonicotinoids and honey bees
• Post-package anxiety
• Bumble bee on cherry laurel
• Bad ant advice and the ascension of bees
• Out for a drink
• Invasion of the Asian honey bee
• A reader’s questions answered
• Seven types of beekeeping advice to avoid
• Rachel Carson Forum: opening remarks
• Bees that bring a tear to your eye
• Honey bees love that dirty water, but why?
• Robin Hooding in the Outback
• Honey bee forage: black locust
• Return of the black honey bee
• Heavy metal accumulation in honey
• A morning snack of cedar planks
• Where, oh where, has your hive tool gone?
• On the 50th Anniversary of Silent Spring:
• How many bees fit in a city?
• Capital Growth yields . . . veggies?
• How to build a native bee block
• Native pollinators: bumble bees
• Feral colonies and the quick spread of varroa mites
• Beekeeping myths, half-truths, and rumors
• Runway lights for honey bees
• Through a screen darkly
• It’s time to think about wasps
• The irony of complaining
• Announcement: the ultimate dilemma
• Another rendition of rendering beeswax
• Doing the Mississippi splits
• Who’s to blame, masons or carpenters?
• How to move a hive any distance
• Think extracting is messy? Try melting beeswax
• Thy neighbors’ bees
• The dead hive that isn’t
• How to kill bees with soapy water: non-toxic but risky
• Why do brood combs turn black?
• Pollinator walls, bee towers, and insect hotels
• The biggest threat to bees today . . .
• Are you a natural beekeeper?
• Planting for honey bees
• What’s an unlimited brood nest?
• Revenge of the cattle dog
• How to make a screened inner cover
• How to use the famous Demaree method of swarm control
• A bee in my bonnet
• Physics for beekeepers: heat loss from spheres
• Honey bees all tangled up in blue pollen: bee-witching!
• How to open the brood nest
• Messing about with beehives
• Airtime for bees
• Swarm sense
• Honey bee forage: bee bee tree
• How to checkerboard a hive
• Checkerboarding: the X-files of beekeeping
• Backfilling the brood nest
• A lounge of lizards on a Langstroth
• More on triple-deep hives
• Searching for humor, the beekeeping kind
• Sipping bug juice through a straw
• Rethinking the triple-deep hive
• Did the bees find their keeper?
• Hopping mad at HopGuard
• Should my hive tilt forward?
• Shed beekeeping gloves when it feels right: don’t hurry
• Buy seeds, not ‘cides
• Groundhog stung on nose, scrambles for cover
• Is tree honey slow to granulate?
• The beginner hive: Langstroth or top bar?
• USDA updates hardiness zones
• How much honey for a warm winter?
• Monitoring mites with a sticky board
• The day the trees fell
• A special note to my readers . . .
• The pie trip: one for the road
• Beekeepers come and go
• What is a brood pattern and why does it matter?
• Wild pollinators cannot replace honey bees . . .
• Banking frames hold multiple queens
• Carrot honey . . . really!
• Sugar slurry: a feeding option for winter bees
• Mountain Camp feeding: what it is, how to do it
• A fly in the hive causes bees to flee
• Must I feed a new package of bees?
• Flying Bee Ranch gets a soaring A
• One beekeeper’s New Year
• Cockerell’s bumble bee makes a comeback
• Baking with honey
• The solstice is here and so is bee season!
• Wednesday wordphile: terroir
• Tamarisk honey: a dark secret
• Winter feed Q & A: liquid vs solid sugar
• Physics for beekeepers: Why bees can eat solid sugar in winter
• Physics for beekeepers: heat transfer in sugar syrup
• This is what happens when you actually pasteurize honey
• The parralel’s of diksion, speling, an grammer
• Occupy the barren landscape
• Beekeeping videos from the 1930s
• Book review: Honeybee by Marina Marchese
• Honey so bland it’s boring
• So is it honey or not?
• Wednesday wordphile: vitellogenin
• Trying to communicate with beekeepers is tough
• Is organic sugar better for honey bees?
• Giving thanks to the bees
• Wednesday wordphile: precocious foraging
• Faster than the speed of mite
• Pesticide residues in brood comb
• Cemetery honey
• Bees from coast to coast agree . . .
• New bees on the block
• Bees with quilts: spendy but cute
• Small cells do not control Varroa mites
• Wednesday wordphile: pollination ecology
• “Buzz Away” is not bee repellant
• Monday morning myth: no-forage zones
• The feds forced me to use insecticide
• Science and HoneyBeeSuite
• Honey bee quilt show
• Why feed sugar syrup at all?
• Pollinators on clematis
• Why won’t my bees cap their syrup?
• The truth about honey bees changing syrup into honey
• To wrap or not to wrap your hives for winter
• Why didn’t I get more honey?
• What beekeepers do in winter
• Preventing crystallization in honey: it’s not about revenge stirring
• Preparing a top-bar hive for winter
• Why I hate ants
• An e-mail from my husband
• What about the other 125 species of maple?
• How I scared away a new beekeeper
• Freeze your frames to kill wax moths
• Why did my honey granulate?
• The allure of bigleaf maple honey
• A very simple rain shelter
• Captive robber bees can change allegiance
• How to stop robbing honey bees
• Pesticide residue in urban honey: yes or no?
• Yellowjacket redux
• Re-thinking the queen excluder
• Yellowjacket nest falls from the sky
• How to combine colonies using newspaper
• How to prepare your hives for winter: a checklist
• The ABC & XYZ of Beekeeping
• Is there a way to feed wild bees?
• Crushing and straining . . . and moaning
• Wednesday wordphile: honey flow
• How to move a hive
• Monday morning myth: bees need a front porch
• Why so many new beekeepers quit
• How to remove propolis from your camera
• HopGuard: first impressions
• Victory! I think . . .
• Tiny bee builds flower-petal nests
• The best way to avoid robbing: prevent honey drips
• Essence of dead drone
• In service to her majesty
• A morning sip of nectar
• Wednesday wordphile: proboscis
• MBeeA bees schedule honey production
• “Let the bees be bees” Really?
• Why do entrance reducers never fit?
• Can powdered sugar control Varroa mites?
• Hive five: equipment to improve summer ventilation
• Deformed wing virus
• Bee abortion
• The truth about organic honey
• Why people prefer dry cappings and how to get them
• Physics for beekeepers: How does ventilation increase honey production?
• Are we listening to the honey bee’s message?
• What is biodynamic beekeeping?
• Yellowjackets and honey-robbing bees go hand-in-hand
• 15 ways to quickly attract pollinators to your yard
• Native bee forage: California lilac
• What history tells us about hive design and ventilation
• Drone eviction in July?
• A quick way to paint supers and ekes
• Bees and their families
• A honey bee forage plant: lovage
• More thoughts on urban beekeeping
• The simple truth about your empty honey supers
• Should I add a new super on top or underneath?
• A rare case of “honey intoxication” in Seattle
• How to make bees go through a queen excluder
• Bee sweet and don’t ask me such things!
• Summer in the city: urban hive inspections
• In(sect)flation and honey bees
• Wednesday wordphile: bee sting cake
• Is too much hive inspection a bad thing?
• Bee suit-related stress syndrome: why they drive me mad
• Native bee forage: salmonberry
• A perfect swarm
• Two queens in one hive
• You need to increase summer ventilation for good honey yields
• Why do bees collect on the bottom board?
• Mason bees fill up their nests
• Hive five: must-have beekeeping supplies
• What size hardware cloth is best for bee hives?
• How to over-winter a nuc
• How to keep queen bees in reserve
• One trap catches two swarms . . . at the same time
• One tree, three swarms
• “A swarm in June . . .” No, make that two
• A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon
• An open letter to Phillip and HB
• Never trust a queen to be in the right place
• Are they worker bees, girls, or units?
• Wednesday wordphile: bee space
• Buttercup bees: they are what they eat
• Romancing the swarm: the dream of wild bees
• Bees of a different color
• Queen rearing vs queen breeding
• A bit more about VSH
• Wednesday wordphile: hygienic behavioral disorder
• Playing hide and seek with a queen . . . or two
• That awesome busy beehive smell can become an obsession
• How to avoid squishing bees
• Splitting the top-bar hive with a shook swarm
• What is a trap-out and how does it work?
• Wednesday words: queen-rearing terminology
• Bees vs. mouse: a skeleton tells the story
• Queen rearing methods
• Even painted boxes warp
• Mason bee condo filling up
• Bumble bee on azalea
• Honey bee forage: curlycup gumweed
• Why honey doesn’t run out of the comb
• What is survivor stock?
• Drowning in drones
• You are a stranger to your bees
• What is entombed pollen?
• Sun or shade: which is best for the bees?
• Wednesday wordphile: grafting
• Brood nest inspections made easy
• The dissemination of misinformation
• Beekeeping and the erosion of English
• Bee with bi-pollen disorder?
• Beekeeping is not rocket science
• Cell phones and bees: hang up and forage!
• Honey bees: be good and eat your greens!
• Reasons floral fidelity is important for bees and plants
• Freeze combs to prevent wax moth damage
• How to use an eke in a bee hive
• Mississippi honey: the sweetest gift
• Beehive records: in praise of paper and pencil
• Pollen variety and bee health
• 8 ways to attract bees to your garden
• Monday morning myth: attendants must be removed from queen cages
• Where the wild things are
• I love bees, but beekeeping? Not so much
• The truth about bees that die head-down in honeycomb
• The perils of spring for bees
• Drones signal the onset of swarm season
• Chinese tallow: a honey bee bonanza or an environmental nightmare?
• Wednesday wordphile: scopa
• Why did my bees leave their hive?
• Waiting for honey bee drones
• Bumble bee on vinca
• Nosema and dysentery are not the same
• Visitor to the top-bar hive
• Plant-pollinator mutualisms and biodiversity
• Wednesday wordphile: eke
• How to start a queen in a two-frame nuc
• Can a Texas bluebonnet change its spots?
• Honey bees collect Alaska cedar pollen
• Honey, what’s that smell?
• Tricks for using a baggie feeder: it takes practice
• A hive stand fit for a queen . . . or a swarm
• Mason bees waiting for sunshine
• An update on “How I overwintered ten out of ten”
• How to mark a queen
• Native bee forage: bird’s eyes
• My design for a bait hive
• Ocelli: tiny bee eyes
• Great minds who loved honey bees
• 2011 is a year for white queens
• How I overwintered ten out of ten
• Use caution when removing entrance reducers
• The worst day of my blogging life
• Wednesday wordphile: phenology
• Do clipped wings prevent swarming? Not often
• How to make starter strips
• Why buy eight-frame hive equipment?
• Wednesday word file: footprint pheromone
• Yet another take on follower boards
• Now speak the truth: is honey actually poop or vomit?
• What vitamins should I give to my bees?
• Should the number of frames in each box be the same?
• Slatted racks: how should the slats be arranged?
• How to make follower boards for a Langstroth hive
• A slow drink of cool water
• Wednesday word file: slumgum
• How many frames should you put in a Langstroth box?
• The truth about daffodil pollination: surprising reasons bees ignore them
• Measuring the bone pile: death in the hive
• Baby blue eyes: delightful blue flowers with navy blue pollen
• Why is comb honey so expensive?
• HopGuard section 18 approvals
• Rotate brood combs for a healthier nursery
• HopGuard: update
• The essence of beekeeping is not in the hive
• “Hive Tracks” boxes the beekeeper
• Sonication is a way of releasing trapped pollen
• Crimson clover is a honey bee favorite
• An unpainted hive makes for poor and expensive bee habitat
• The frantic life of woolcarder bees: fighting, fiber, & forage
• How long should I feed a new package of bees?
• Honey bee forage: hardy kiwi
• Wednesday word file: nectar guide
• Keeping a nuc might look like a waste, but it’s powerful
• Another good reason to eat chocolate
• Monday morning myth: alder pollen is bad for bees
• Snacking on sugar cakes: it’s a bee thing
• Queen cup: a cradle fit for a queen
• Don’t toss the honey with the wash water!
• Don’t panic: how to handle moldy combs in your beehive
• Wednesday word file: forage
• Dead bees all over the place! What happened?
• Native bee forage: five spot
• First signs of spring
• Reversing brood boxes: is it necessary?
• Honey bee forage: pussy willow
• 8 devastating beekeeping errors you can easily fix
• Wednesday word file: pollinia
• Spring caution: handle the brood nest with care
• Notes on cooking bee candy
• How to assemble a bee box
• Possessed by honey bees
• A hive by any other name is still a hive
• How to make protein-enriched candy boards
• Wednesday word file: super
• How to make a cut-down split
• How to make a walkaway split to build more colonies
• How to start multiple hives from a swarm-control split
• How to make a swarm-control split
• Bee skeps: the lost art of beautiful woven hives
• Monday morning myth: small-cell foundation discourages Varroa mites
• A great day for bees: down with honey bee dysentery
• How acidic is honey? Compare with orange juice & acid rain
• Bottom line: how much does the average honey bee cost?
• Wednesday wordphile: floral fidelity
• How to make a moisture quilt for a Langstroth hive
• Africanized honey bees are not Apis mellifera scutellata
• Bees and pets: what are the risks?
• Will cream of tartar harm my honey bees?
• How to get started in beekeeping
• Beekeeping essentials for the beginner: Langstroth hives
• What is trophallaxis?
• How to safely store empty supers & frames in winter
• Temperature regulation in a winter cluster
• Readers: How do you remove bee poop stains from laundry?
• Why are all my bees at the top of the hive?
• Honey bee species around the world
• End of the year tale: how I write HoneyBeeSuite
• A bee in the bra is worth a dozen anywhere else
• Wednesday word file: protandry
• Pollen can carry disease to native bees
• Christmas swarm saved by caring homeowner
• Wednesday word file: last sting-of-the-year
• Pollinators are not going to change, so we have to
• “Stocking stuffers” for your favorite beekeeper
• Anise oil for bees: they will follow it anywhere
• Tropilaelaps clareae: another scary creature for bees
• Dead queen on the landing board
• Is there an environment the EPA actually protects?
• Time to order bees for next year
• Five favorite plants for the bee garden
• Wednesday word file: pollination syndrome
• The secret of bee tea . . . remains a secret
• Dances with bees: a beekeeping philosophy
• Comb honey: Bee-O-Pac system
• Brooklyn bees pig-out on maraschino cherry syrup
• December in the bee yard
• What is a wired frame?
• Wednesday word file: fructose
• Bees benefit from an energy conservation professional
• Honey bee myth: bees don’t sting at night
• Usurpation: when one colony takes over another
• Wednesday wordphile: phoresy
• Small but mighty: mites in the beehive
• Honey bees do not hibernate any time of year
• You can move nucs inside for cold weather
• Ventilation in a hot & humid climate
• How to keep 2:1 syrup from crystallizing
• Wednesday wordphile: travel stain
• Monday morning myth: royal jelly is good for you
• Bee-yond bee-lief: drama in the media
• Shaking the queen into shape
• HopGuard: the new Varroa pesticide
• A night in the lecture hall: students, bees, and pesticides
• Wednesday word file: drone congregation area (DCA)
• Chunk honey: a strange hybrid
• Foundationless colonies raise too many drones
• Comb honey production part 1: The why of it
• A warm, dry day is good for winter bees
• Wednesday word file: frass
• The how and why of bee beards
• Monday morning myth: creamed honey is whipped
• The CCD connection: what I believe about colony collapse disorder
• Migratory beekeeping and honey bee health
• A beekeeper’s winter “to do” list
• On entoms, pesticides, and human extinction
• Berry busy berry bee
• All the better to see you, my dear!
• A tip for torrential rains: hive shelter
• One for the road: bees with a buzz
• A time for every purpose: temporal castes in honey bees
• Native bees should not be managed like farm animals
• Honey refractometers measure moisture content
• Propolis is easy to remove in cold weather
• A tale of honey bees and barbecue sauce
• Mountain melancholy signals a change of season
• The truth about uncapped cells of honey & what to do
• Why did my honey crystallize and then ferment?
• Why do honey bees swarm (or abscond) in the fall?
• Honeysuckle sawfly: a colorful, nectar-sipping, stingless plant wasp
• Mining bees are wild bees that live underground
• Classification of western honey bees
• Dazzling dandelion pollen makes a fall comeback
• Plant pollination yields seeds, the key to agriculture
• How I threw a banquet for yellowjackets
• Candy board advice: know what happens in winter
• A face to remember: the small hive beetle
• What makes honey bees aggressive: things you need to know
• Milkweed surfaces as a green alternative
• Rings and beekeepers: Will the circle be unbroken?
• Why are bee suits white?
• Casting light on honey bee castes
• The role of fat bodies in bee health
• Milkweed fairies due for a comeback
• Are your honey bees ready for winter?
• Freezing comb honey cuts wax moth damage
• Entrance reducers can annoy your honey bees
• Monarch butterflies are losing habitat
• Thixotropic honey gels in the comb
• How to convert sugar syrup to a different ratio
• Bumble bees hibernate, honey bees do not
• Swarm traps can be powerful or no good at all
• Habitat fragmentation produces inbred bumble bees
• Bee flies require a second look
• Using extender patties is a criminal act
• Grease patties help control winter mites
• Are glacier lilies and bumble bees out of sync?
• Sugar syrup measurement: weight or volume?
• What to do with all that tongue?
• Do honey bees sleep? Of course they sleep!
• Honeybee or honey bee? Which is correct?
• Buckwheat: a casualty of American agriculture
• Washboarding bees arockin’ and alickin’
• More Than Honey—a film about bees and bee people
• Autumn: the time for harvesting propolis
• Goldenrod: a fabulous feast for late-summer bee survival
• Plant a garden and they will come
• How to determine the purity of honey
• National Honey Bee Awareness Day
• Beware of false varietal honey
• The trouble with canola honey: crystallization
• Chronic bee paralysis virus
• Confusion about escape boards: which side up?
• Field bindweed as a pollinator plant
• Another denizen of the apiary
• Drone eviction: it’s not a good time to be male
• The best ways to feed honey bees during winter
• Meteors zip across the August sky
• How to make candy boards (and candy cakes) for bees
• A taste of honey
• BBC News reports on bees in Paris
• Mischievous proliferous: the scoop on bee poop
• Joe-Pye weed for the pollinator garden
• A sweet surprise
• Apiforestation: Reclaiming coal mines for bees
• Escape boards: Separating bees from honey
• Tree frog in a bee hive
• Invasion of the hover flies
• Russian sage for your pollinator garden
• Queen piping, quacking, & tooting: powerful, provocative bee talk
• The amazing genetic diversity in the best honey bee colonies
• Chalkbrood disease of honey bees
• Cat on a Mason Bee Condo
• Robbing bees prey on the weak
• Reasons why bearding is easily confused with swarming
• Uncapped honey fermenting in the comb
• Autumn feeding of honey bees
• The cyclic nature of honey bee populations
• It’s time to think about over-wintering
• How to prevent swarming with a Taranov board
• In search of creepy crawlies
• Hover fly on Agastache
• A reader delves into the one-third question
• Yellowjacket café: the honey bee special
• Ventilation Part 4: The summer Langstroth hive
• The real estate market heats up
• Pollen: a tough package wrapped in color
• Pollinators smile and say cheese
• Ventilation Part 3: Warré hives take ventilation seriously
• “How do I kill my neighbor’s honey bees?”
• Ventilation Part 2: Special considerations
• Ventilation Part 1: A hive is not a tree
• Converting Langstroth frames to foundationless
• A walkaway split and the tiniest queen
• The swarm saga continues
• Pheasants Forever provides bee habitat
• Aswarming we will go
• Organized feet are a feat of nature
• Foundationless beekeeping in a Langstroth hive
• Hover flies pollinate flowers and eat aphids
• Why I don’t extract my honey harvest
• Hardy kiwis attract many kinds of bees
• Pollen-laden sweat bee in a buttercup
• Climate change affects nectar collection patterns
• Update to “Bumble bees are not just for killing”
• Queen cups: cut them or leave them?
• Can anyone identify this bee?
• Bumble bees are not just for killing
• The color of honey
• Bees pollinate one-third of what? Do we really know?
• A day in the life: why do I do this?
• A chair with a buzz
• The Great Sunflower Project continues to grow
• The queen excluder controversy: some things never change
• Pollen collecting behavior of honey bees
• How to use a double-screen (Snelgrove) board
• Latin 101 for beekeepers: What’s in a name?
• Yes, I actually did graduate . . .
• A different kind of bug
• Bees working a section super
• Sticky yellow bee droppings are an excellent thing
• Dandelion pollen: it’s not perfect but it sure helps
• Pollen traps require constant attention
• Pacific Northwest bees see sunshine
• Varietal honey: the label tells most of the story
• Update on honeycomb ice cream
• Using the Cloake board method to raise queens
• A bee suit is worth the money
• Beekeepers develop their six senses
• The best way to reduce hive moisture in early spring
• Messing in the kitchen with honeycomb
• Transgenic crops and honey bees
• Mini cascara flowers are now in bloom
• An “undercover” queen nearly loses her life
• Ten ways to help the bees, starting today
• Varroa mites feed on honey bee hemolymph
• Reduce varroa mites by culling honey bee drones
• Honeydew: waste management in the insect world
• Follower boards in a Langstroth hive
• Preventing a swarm is not easy
• Bigleaf maples covered in moss
• Maple honey is a taste of spring
• How to know a swarm cell from a supersedure cell
• Swarm prevention: a duel with the forces of nature
• A swarm of European honey bees is relatively docile
• Absconding bees leave an empty hive
• Visitors to the bee yard
• Festooning bees: lacework between the frames
• Smoker fuels are as varied as beekeepers
• Will different colors help my bees find the right hive?
• Water droplets sometimes carry insecticides
• A sad day for bees . . . death of a healthy hive
• How to prevent moldy syrup in bee feeders
• Reversing brood boxes: when and why
• Mountain camp feeder: use for winter feeding only
• A modern Langstroth hive from top to bottom
• Sugar syrup ratios simplified: what you need to know
• Inspecting a new colony: what to look for
• Bees are infinitely complicated: questions please!
• Honey bee eggs in the brood nest
• Mixed brood comb
• Drones signal the beginning of swarm season
• Bee box terminology: what to call all the sizes
• Essential oils and honey bee health
• Strange comb in strange places
• New packages: when should I release the queen?
• Plant a pollinator-friendly plant for Earth Day
• When to unite the queen and a package of bees
• My day in bugs
• Yes, Raid kills bumble bees
• An unwelcome visitor to the mason bees
• Baggie feeders and package installation: update
• Native bees are disappearing across the globe
• The types of hive tools
• How to install a package of bees
• Update on how to eat comb honey
• Foraging habits of different types of bees
• How to find your queen bee
• How to use a baggie feeder
• Never feed syrup during a nectar flow
• What type of honey bee feeder is best?
• How to eat comb honey: a unique taste treat
• Do-nothing beekeeping will no longer work
• Hydroxymethylfurfural is not good for bees
• Why feed sugar syrup to honey bees?
• We must take care of our pollinators
• More on painting bee hives
• Have you had your pesticide today?
• What bumble bee is this?
• What is pollenkitt?
• Newly hatched mason bee showing ocelli
• Why bees pollinate plants that don’t need it
• Mason bees are not the answer
• How to use a slatted rack
• Do beekeepers smoke bees with marijuana?
• Heater bees keep the brood nest warm
• Pollinators and vegetable gardens
• Tips for planting a pollinator garden
• Pollinator-friendly plants
• Poisoning of honey bee larvae
• Painting beehives: things you need to know about color
• Two types of reproduction
• The beekeeper’s woodshop
• Monoculture diets and honey bee health
• Why honey bees collect propolis
• Massive pollen collection is vital for raising strong baby bees
• Water collection by honey bees
• Nectar collection by honey bees
• Make room for mason bees
• Urban beekeeping webinar
• Hives in winter
• A poison by any other name
• All beekeeping challenges are local
• What’s all the hype about pollinators?
• Well, it depends . . .