Honey Bee SuiteA Better Way to Bee

Home » equipment

Tag - equipment

beekeepers

The cost of beekeeping (you don’t want to know)

2 years ago

27 Comments

postmortems & mysteries

What crud is this?

8 years ago

30 Comments

beekeeping equipment

Who reuses old frames?

8 years ago

121 Comments

Bees and their queen on a honeycomb. Pixabay

beekeeping equipment

Thirty-one gifts for beekeepers

10 years ago

9 Comments

beekeeping equipment

Twenty-five holiday trinkets for beekeepers

11 years ago

12 Comments

beekeeping equipment

How many hives to start?

11 years ago

40 Comments

beekeeping equipment

Through a screen darkly

11 years ago

11 Comments

beekeeping equipment

Even painted boxes warp

12 years ago

1 Comment

beekeeping equipment • how to

How to use an eke in a bee hive

12 years ago

21 Comments

beekeeping equipment • English for beekeepers

Wednesday wordphile: eke

12 years ago

Add Comment

beekeeping equipment

A hive stand fit for a queen . . . or a swarm

12 years ago

1 Comment

beekeeping equipment • how to • queen rearing

How to mark a queen

12 years ago

18 Comments

Honey bees at the entrance to their hive. Escape boards can be used to separate bees from honey.

beekeeping equipment

Escape boards: Separating bees from honey

13 years ago

24 Comments

beekeeping equipment • ventilation

Ventilation Part 4: The summer Langstroth hive

13 years ago

27 Comments

English for beekeepers

Bee box terminology: what to call all the sizes

13 years ago

14 Comments

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. This book started zillions of people on their path to beekeeping. If you haven't read it, you should.

QueenSpotting: Meet the Remarkable Queen Bee and Discover the Drama at the Heart of the Hive by Hilary Kearney. You have to be a scrooge not to love this book. It even includes 48 queenspotting challenges.

The Bees in Your Backyard by Wilson & Carril. If you have any interest at all in the "other bees," you need this book. These are the bees we need to save.

Manuka: The biography of an extraordinary honey by Cliff van Eaton. The discovery of manuka honey and its medicinal properties.

Regardless of dictionaries, we have in entomology a rule for insect common names that can be followed. It says: If the insect is what the name implies, write the two words separately; otherwise run them together. Thus we have such names as house fly, blow fly, and robber fly contrasted with dragonfly, caddicefly, and butterfly, because the latter are not flies, just as an aphislion is not a lion and a silverfish is not a fish. The honey bee is an insect and is preeminently a bee; “honeybee” is equivalent to “Johnsmith.”

—From Anatomy of the Honey Bee by Robert E. Snodgrass

The non-native European Honey Bee is the state insect of:

Arkansas
Georgia
Kansas
Louisiana
Maine
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
New Jersey
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Tennessee
Utah
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Not one native bee is a state insect. The closest relative of a North American native bee to make the list is the Tarantula Hawk Wasp, the state insect of New Mexico.

Minnesota now has a state bee as well as a state insect. Bombus affinis, the Rusty-Patched Bumble Bee, has been so honored. Good work, Minnesota!

Connecticut’s state insect is the European “praying” mantis. Although they are beneficial insects, they are not native to North America.