Search:

Mead must age for at least 9 months before it become drinkable, unlike beer which is ready much sooner.

Give your mead a year and revisit it.

Alsike clover and white clover are good. Honey bees can't deal with the depth of the red clover blossom.

The only colored nectar we see up in the Great Frozen North (Minnesota) is the greenish nectar from purple loosestrife (an invasive exotic). A lot of this nectar gives honey a fresh motor oil color...

If it's not too far, we're very happy with Nature's Nectar in Stillwater MN. The Kloecks are great folks, very helpful. They resell Mann Lake products, and are a wealth of knowledge.

We had a brand-new hive swarm on us on 20 July 2011 in St. Paul MN--hot sticky weather (low 90s, high humidity) for 10 days. The other new hive threatened to swarm the day before, but hastily adding...

I'm surprised you're feeding in the middle of nectar flow, but okay.

I don't think they're so much eating as they are repairing. Scratching the caps and extracting honey does a number on the comb,...

We're in our second year of hobby-level beekeeping. We had pretty good luck with one of our two first-year hives--two full supers.

We used ApiGuard without doing a check for mites. We seemed to...

Up in Minnesota we don't have much in the way of SHBs, so that's one less pest to worry about.

We didn't test for mites last fall (our first year); the U of Minnesota class recommends treating the...

I found them on a dead pine bough that was being moved to the burn pile. The picture's not very good (but then, neither is my cell phone); they have very triangular heads (with the eyes at two of the...

The willow tree is supplying its usual load of pollen (little whitish-green packs of pollen being brought in). The dandelions are just getting into the swing of things, and we've had a nice wet...

http://givesgoodemail.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/famine_bb3_frame.jpg

This is a hive that has made very little progress in the last 30 days. After 90 days of great growth, the third brood box...

Yes. We started the Four Horsemen Apiary with Famine and War this year, with Death and Plague coming next year.

We have Italians, and I've been looking very carefully lately for mite evidence, and...

(This is all coming from a new beekeeper, so take it for it's worth.)

Top bar hives as I understand are not for the beginner, and the fact that you had a bad run of luck is not the supplier's...

We have two new hives this year.

Our second one (War) is just abuzzin' along. We added our first honey super on 10 July, and 6 out of 10 frames are getting drawout. Honey's being laid in, and the...

I've got a hive (its first year) that has the side of one frame virtually covered in a second layer of comb. I had forgotten to put the 9th frame into the brood box, so the bees had a little more...

I pulled brood box #2 off of one of my hives today. When I lifted the box, I discovered a large flat structure of comb between the boxes; lifting the box tore it in two.

Should I be concerned...

We started our two new hives in late April, and had a queen-right problem for a bit but got through it just fine. We added a second brood box to each hive 10 days ago.

I went to check the hives...

Interesting. We put up our two (new) hives in late April, and while one of them (Famine) drank syrup and ate pollen patty (we had queen-right issues in that one for awhile) like they were going out...

My fiance and I are getting ready to start our first two hives. We've ordered Italians to start, and will likely add Minnesota hygenics next year.

Happy to be here!