Everything you need to know about raising bees on your homestead or farm.
Bees aren’t just a good source of honey, they also help with pollination, thus improving your garden’s yield. Many plants rely on bees in order to grow, such as squash, apple trees and almonds.
As you may already know, there’s a global problem with bees disappearing, with devastating global consequences. As such, raising bees may be one of the smartest things you can do for your homestead.
Ask anybody who is unsettled by insects what bothers them the most, and at least some of them are going to answer that it is their creepy eyes. Most insects have eyes that are beady, lifeless-looking, strange, or just too big. It’s enough to give you the willies! But how about our bee friends? How … Read more
Everyone knows that honey is some seriously viscous, sticky stuff. It’s also surprisingly heavy. Ask any beekeeper that’s removing loaded frames from a beehive, and they will tell you they’ve got some heft to them. And this is more than just an interesting piece of trivia to know, because honey is typically sold by weight. … Read more
In a beehive, every bee has a job to do, and every bee has to do its job so that the hive can sustain and prevail. But amidst it all, there’s one bee that’s undoubtedly more important than all the others and that is the queen. The queen bee is responsible for laying countless thousands … Read more
Even though they don’t make it specifically for us, it sure is nice of our bee friends to make a surplus of honey that we can collect. This golden, wonderfully sweet stuff has been coveted and harvested from bees since time immemorial, and today it’s one of the most important and beloved foods around the … Read more
You’ve probably heard the old argument about insects and arthropods, and the number of legs that they have. But then again, there are some radical exceptions in each category. As most of us know, most insects typically have six legs. Most, but not all. How about bees? How many legs do bees have? Bees have … Read more
Pretty much everyone knows by now that bee hives have a queen at the top of the hierarchy. This isn’t exactly true, because bee hives operate more by consensus than they do by royal decree, but the queen bee is still incredibly important. She’s responsible for laying all the successive generations of bees that will … Read more
Pretty much everyone knows by now that bees are among the most important creatures in nature, even though they are some of the tiniest. These are some of the most important pollinators found the world over, and without them, so many of the crops we depend on would basically disappear. But bees, as it turns … Read more
You ever wondered how many eggs a queen bee lays per day? I think it’s a really good question considering the geometric growth that most beehives show. One day you’ve got a few bees flying around and by the end of the week the air is thick with them! That’s great, and we need all … Read more
Bees are some of the most fascinating and important insects in nature. It’s amazing how much work they get done and how organized they are, and all the thousands of bees in a colony, generally follow their queen. The queen bee is a critical figure in any healthy colony, arguably the most important, and the … Read more
Have you ever taken the time to watch a bustling beehive? Did you ever wonder how many bees live inside? They certainly seem countless, and watching these industrious little insects work tirelessly all day long for the good of the hive is a little inspiring, and also a little bit scary. No telling how many … Read more
Bees are among the most amazing builders in nature. Given just a little bit of time, they’ll soon construct a tidy, orderly hive containing hundreds and hundreds of cells used for storing honey and hatching the next generation of bees. They are amazingly adaptible to different environments and different circumstances when they decide to set … Read more
Nature furnishes us many examples of excellence in engineering among the members of the animal kingdom. Beavers change entire ecosystems with their dams. Ants excavate extensive underground colonies. But probably no other construction has captured the imagination like the humble beehive. The geometric symmetry, the purpose, the sheer coordination required to make one; it’s amazing! … Read more
If you’ve ever walked through your lawn or a meadow and been stung by a bee, after you recover from the shock and the pain, you probably wonder why bees sting at all… After all, you’re just walking along minding your own business; you weren’t bothering the bees or trying to steal their honey. Why … Read more
The question of whether or not we should use excluders in our beehives is as old as time. Many beekeepers say that using an excluder can cause honey production to come to a grinding halt, they are prone to calling them honey excluders because they believe the bees are not producing as much honey as … Read more
No bee hive can exist for long without its queen. When a queen bee dies, the hive goes into a kind of shock. Vital direction is lost. Replacement numbers dwindle. The bees soon know that they are in trouble when their queen is gone, and they start to take action… In this article, we will … Read more
Keeping crops safe during growing season is a top priority for most homesteaders, and while nature is wonderful, there are bugs and predators out there that can cause some serious damage to our gardens. On any homestead, bees are crucial to our long-term survival, so it’s important to watch out for their sake, as much … Read more