Category Archives: Queens
A Depleted Home
A few days ago, a friend invited me to visit her bees. In one part of her apiary, there were three hives, neatly lined, single-storey. These hives had started the season as packages five weeks earlier. Two were excellent. They … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Queens
Tagged Alberta, package bees, pollen substitutes, queenless hives, Tolstoy
7 Comments
Babysitting the queen
A friend left town for a few days. She had two queens, in cages, which she’d acquired for her hives. As it turned out, she used one of them but her second hive wasn’t strong enough to split. That meant … Continue reading
2017: The Year in Bee Review
As 2017 draws to a close, let’s look back at the year’s best beekeeping stories. With lower honey prices in 2017, some beekeepers left the business and colony counts fell a little. Back in 2016, I reported that honey bees … Continue reading
Posted in Apitherapy, Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Culture, or lack thereof, Diseases and Pests, Friends, History, Hive Products, Honey, Honey Plants, Killer Bees, Movies, Outreach, People, Pesticides, Pollination, Queens, Save the Bees, Science
Tagged blogging
6 Comments
Shake, Rattle, Roll: Our Little Earthquake
I live in one of the less shaky parts of the world. I don’t think that Calgary has ever had a damaging earthquake. (Granted, the city isn’t much over a hundred years old, so it’s a short history.) When the … Continue reading
Posted in Friends, Honey, Queens, Science, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged beekeeping, Chile, earthquake
4 Comments
One Week with a Queenless Hive
Over a week ago, I brought a nuc into my back yard. Twelve days have passed, so there should be an emerged virgin queen inspecting the neighbourhood, looking for boys. My little nuc was intentionally built as a queenless hive. … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Queens
Tagged Calgary, queen breeding, queen cells, queenless hives
17 Comments
Return to PolliNation
Last month, I mentioned a great new podcast, PolliNation. It’s produced by Andony Melathopoulos, a university professor at Oregon State. The PolliNation podcast series is very nicely produced and Andony has a voice made for podcasting. As a bonus, he … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Friends, Outreach, Pollination, Queens
Tagged Andony Melathopoulos, Meghan Milbrath, podcast, Pollination, queen breeding
4 Comments
Miel Carlota – Once the World’s Biggest Bee Farm
One of the world’s largest honey farms was a Mexican outfit started by a couple of guys on holidays from Germany. The Second World War broke out while they were rambling around the Mexican coast, so they stayed for an … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Books, Commercial Beekeeping, History, People, Queens
Tagged Alberta, Mexico, Miel Carlota, queen breeding, royal jelly
25 Comments
Long Live the (New) Queen
During the past week, we looked at how to requeen a hive. On Monday, we considered the reality of queen troubles and how our hives differ from feral colonies. Tuesday was about identifying a queen’s quality from her brood pattern, … Continue reading
Sticking the Queen In
Over the past few days, I’ve written a little about identifying poor queens by examining brood patterns. Then we discussed finding and pinching her failing heinousnesses. The next step in your requeening saga is inserting the caged queen. Here in … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, History, Queens, Tools and Gadgets
Tagged Benton cage, queen cages, queenless hives
2 Comments
Pinching the Queen
Today I’ll write a few words about finding and murdering the old queen. We’ll assume that you have decided the queen must die. Harsh as that sounds, sometimes it’s the only way to save a hive. Think of the colony … Continue reading
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