So you’re thinking of starting your own apiary… Odds are you have spent some time learning about bee biology and gaining an understanding of your role as a new beekeeper. You might have already done your homework and are familiar with the best type of land for beekeeping. If you are using someone else’s land…
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Whether you have a few hives and want to sell a bit of your honey at the local farmer’s market or you are running a large wholesale operation, you will need to decide how much to charge for your honey. Your honey is the product of hours of hard work— both on your part and…
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It can be easy to find beekeeping books for beginners; however, sometimes it can be difficult to find books for those who are more experienced in beekeeping. This list highlights ten books for advanced beekeepers, in no particular order. The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism (2008) Jürgen Tautz This educational book is great…
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If your honey starts to solidify over time, do not worry, because this is completely normal. Raw and unfiltered honey naturally crystallizes naturally crystallizes because of the sugars they contain. If your honey looks hard and crunchy or has even turned completely solid, then it is undergoing crystallization. The chemistry behind crystallization In general, the…
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In beekeeping terminology, honey bound refers to a hive that is overflowed with honey or pollen. Bees are hard workers, and they are constantly collecting nectar and bringing it back to the hive, even if there isn’t enough normal storage space. When a hive becomes overfull, the queen doesn’t have enough room to continue to…
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It was only natural for Honey Nut Cheerios to join in the movement to save our honey bees. In 2017, with “Bring Back the Bees,” the cereal company notably left Buzz the Bee off its cereal boxes, emphasizing its effort to raise awareness about the decline in bee populations in North America. In tandem with…
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Unfortunately, bee bread is not what it sounds like. It does not resemble a typical piece of sandwich bread; instead bee bread is the fermented mixture of pollen and nectar or honey that bees produce in cells. Bee bread is made for consumption by worker bees and larvae, and it is one of their main…
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The notion that honey is “bee vomit” comes from the fact that bees chew and spit up nectar before it is made into honey. Most people agree with this assumption because it is a substance that goes down their esophagus into a second stomach then is forced back up, which is what vomit is. However,…
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Source: Dengarden Beekeepers have many decisions to make when starting out, and one of the most significant is the size boxes to use for hive bodies and supers. The nomenclature within this component of beekeeping can get confusing because there are many ways to refer to different hive boxes. The boxes can be “hive bodies”…
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Are you tired of mowing the lawn AND do you want to help the bees? A Minnesota program introduced in 2019, called “Lawns to Legumes”, allocated $900,000 for residents to adopt bee-friendly lawns to protect the rusty patched bumblebee, which has been endangered since 2017. What is Lawns to Legumes? With Lawns to Legumes, residents…
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