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As our apiary has grown, we have streamlined stuff to save time and labor. If it’s awkward and time-consuming, chances are it won’t be fun and won’t get done. This spring we moved a yard onto 4-way pallets from the Blue Ridge Honey Company. After figuring out the details, mostly how to stay out of…

Our local bee club, the Tri-County Beekeepers Association, meets the last Wednesday of each month. The usual agenda is to have a guest speak the first hour, followed by a recess and then the club’s business meeting. Unfortunately, this month’s speaker was unable to attend. The club officers agreed that the assemblage could probably find…

Last week, when it was still warm and sunny and the bees were out giving the goldenrod a good shakedown, we did a quick look into a yard of production hives to see if they’d put up any late season honey. The hives were fragrant with the particular butterscotchy fragrance of goldenrod honey – except…

A ‘dearth’ is a scarcity of something. In the Bible it assumes a more serious meaning, a famine, a consequence of divine judgment visited on people to test their faith. In the world of beekeeping, a dearth feels exactly like a Biblical event. A dearth can occur at any time: we had brief dearths this…

Beekeepers like to talk about bees and read about bees, and the list of thorny topics and good books does nothing but grow. A couple of weekends ago a road trip took us, after several stops, to Sunnyside Bee Supplies in Middlefield, Geauga County, Ohio. Sunnyside has everything a small-scale beekeeper could ask for, in…