No doubt about it, beekeeping has made it into the mainstream of American life. You can now order a complete beekeeping kit—instructions included!—at Costco. Or in some places, like here in Olympia, you can walk into your local warehouse and pick one up. For just $274.99 at the warehouse or $299.99 online, you can get […] Read more
Today, for the first time in my life, I supported a crowd-funding campaign. The object that caught my attention was the BroodMinder, invented by Richard Morris and his team. The device is a temperature and humidity logger designed specifically for bee hives. The slender device, Model 42, slips under the inner cover and rests atop […] Read more
Each time I read the following letter, I get a picture in my mind of the honey bee hives I used to see as a kid in rural Pennsylvania: peeling paint, rotting boards, rain-admitting gaps and holes. That was before Varroa mites and a host of other diseases, and colonies persisted for decades until the […] Read more
A beekeeper in Kenya, Nicholas Mbugua, is looking for some advice on keeping bees in the extra-long Langstroth hives shown below. His objective is to have fewer hives that are more productive and well managed instead of many small hives that are difficult to manage. Nicholas writes: I have been keeping bees since 2008 in […] Read more
Whenever my queen excluders or screened covers get all blocked up with beeswax, I use a heat gun to melt it off. I used to try to scrape them clean but it took forever; the heat gun does a better job in a fraction of the time. The heat gun I have is 1500 watts, […] Read more
I never go without a slatted rack in my beehives, and I extoll the virtues of them every chance I get. David Manning, a beekeeper in Missouri, makes some seriously good-looking slatted racks that you can see in the photos below. For those of you who are handy in the woodshop, David has graciously shared […] Read more
We’ve all called those customer service hotlines where a recorded voice says, “Your call is important to us. Please hold for the next available representative.” Slight pause and then, “Your call is important to us. Please hold . . . .” You finally hang up, which is what they were counting on. Well, this question—and […] Read more