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beekeeping equipment

Slatted racks: everything you need to know

4 years ago

73 Comments

hive stands and structures

Four elegant homemade bee hives

6 years ago

30 Comments

honey bee management

A gentle warning about upper entrances: not too big

7 years ago

57 Comments

Bees and their queen on a honeycomb. Pixabay

beekeeping equipment

Keep honey bees dry and draft free

8 years ago

43 Comments

wintering

Moisture quilts should be dry

9 years ago

24 Comments

guest posts • how to • wintering

How to wrap a hive to overcome cold weather

10 years ago

57 Comments

beekeeping equipment

Many dead bees on screened inner cover: what happened?

10 years ago

7 Comments

honey bee management • predators

Nectar dearth and summer stress

10 years ago

31 Comments

beekeeping equipment • hive placement

Honey bees on a camping trip

11 years ago

10 Comments

beekeeping equipment • photographs

A light in the attic

11 years ago

2 Comments

honey bee management • ventilation

Beekeeping in the dog days of summer

11 years ago

14 Comments

beekeeping equipment • ventilation

The best ventilated gabled roof

11 years ago

44 Comments

beekeeping equipment • ventilation

Hive five: the best ventilation equipment

11 years ago

19 Comments

beekeeping equipment • how to • ventilation

How to make a screened inner cover

12 years ago

52 Comments

beekeeping equipment • muddled thinking • wintering

Should my hive tilt forward?

12 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.