It is autumn. Your bees are busily backfilling empty brood comb with fall nectar, but you would like them to build more comb so they don’t completely choke the brood nest. So far, the empty frames you provided are being ignored and you see no sign of new comb. How can you get them to […] Read more
Honey bee colonies store nectar and pollen to use in times of dearth. To a honey bee, a dearth is a shortage of nectar-producing flowers. The most obvious nectar dearth occurs during the winter, but many places also experience a summer nectar dearth, a hot and dry period between spring flowers and autumn flowers. This […] Read more
In an unexpected turn of events, the Oklahoma open-air colony I wrote about last week absconded from its nest. Even more surprising, the parent colony, the one that had lived for many years in the hollow of an oak tree on the far side of the pasture, absconded at roughly the same time. Lorieann Bradley, […] Read more
Open-air colonies seem to be everywhere these days. The bees living in this particular colony, hanging from a large oak in northeastern Oklahoma, have a history of dwelling in trees. Both the new colony and the parent colony belong to Lorieann Bradley of Kellyville, Oklahoma. The parent colony has lived for many years in the […] Read more
Once you fall in love with honey bees, it is easy to characterize them as intelligent, practical, even prescient. But in fact, honey bees do the things they do in response to pheromones. A pheromone is a chemical or mixture of chemicals that is released by an individual and affects the behavior or physiology of […] Read more
Twice this week I received photos of open-air honey bee colonies. Open-air colonies in regions with cold winters are not common, so they tend to receive a lot of attention. The first photo is of a colony I wrote about in the fall of 2014. If you recall, the colony was discovered in a cottonwood […] Read more
Last time I promised a list of ways to encourage your bees to travel through an excluder even though I don’t think it’s a great idea. Anyway, your choice. The first point was mentioned several times by readers, and I will repeat it here. Wire excluders seem to work better than plastic ones, probably because […] Read more