Tag Archives: package bees

A Year of Backyard Beekeeping

Regular readers of this blog know that I once kept hundreds of hives in Florida and Saskatchewan. That was a long time ago. Now that I’m all grown up, I’ve got just two colonies in my Calgary backyard. Much more … Continue reading

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Package Bee Population

Yesterday, I wrote about bee populations in a hive that starts as a package.  The original bees slowly die while the number of new bees, arising from eggs laid by the package’s queen, rapidly increases. In yesterday’s example, the immigrant … Continue reading

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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

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Welcoming some new friends

The bees arrived. It was getting late. I was getting anxious. But just after the sun settled for the night, my friend Mark arrived with our two packages. He brought us 13,637 worker bees and two queens. We counted them. … Continue reading

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International Workers’ Day

My home city of Calgary celebrated May Day (International Workers’ Day) by welcoming 1,176,334 foreign workers into our community last night, doubling our population. 196 packages of worker bees had arrived. A swarm of Calgary beekeepers greeted the immigrants. (The … Continue reading

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Some Mountain Beekeeping

A month ago, friends invited me to see some bees at a ranch up in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Beekeeper Stephen, a fellow geophysicist, guided us as we meandered the secondary roads west of Calgary. We gradually gained … Continue reading

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Package Bee Express

In my meagre effort to stay informed about bees, beekeeping, and beekeepers, I occasionally creep around the internet, stalking new ideas, and sometimes marveling at the bad beekeeping I find in cyberville. Here is an amazing statement from a hobby … Continue reading

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