May 1st. May Day. Beltane. Not much celebrated in the western world after the mid 20th century because Soviet Russia aka USSR used it for military parades. Remember those photographs of missiles and tanks rumbling down Main Street Moscow? That was the May Day Parade. The Novelist and Poet Margaret Atwood used it as a…
It is heart wrenching to lose a hive. The silence of your backyard when the bees are gone makes you want to cry. But you can also look at it as an opportunity for a fresh start. If you are just getting started it is easy to doom yourself to frustration by making uneducated choices. The best…
Q: What do you do when working the hives to minimize stings? Q: Anything you recommend for bee stings if someone has a minor reaction but nothing life threatening? Q: What do you do when you get stung? In reality, the answers are all related. A: Don’t mind it too much. What I am saying is…
A real life example. An entire community in England has rallied around this simple idea and changed their world. Take a moment and watch this.
A very non-aggressive bee raised in a nurturing chemical free hive, smelling the sunflowers. Since sensationalized stories about aggressive bees seem to be hitting the news lately, I thought it would be a good idea to post about dealing with an aggressive hive. The first step is to do nothing. Refer to the previous post about observation and management. Maybe the “Mean…
Hive management is an art, not a science. There are some basic principals I try to follow in an attempt to make hive management a more predictable and consistent art. First off, if you are in doubt, do nothing. You can’t make the bees do anything. What you can do is provide an environment which will encourage…
The options are many: Langstroth, Warre, Top Bar, Long Hives. The impassioned reasoning to favor one or the other is endless. For someone trying to get started it has to be overwhelming. I am going to make some very specific recommendations for your first hive and give you the reasoning for each part of it. What works (or lately…
The continuing process for changing over to foundationless hives is very simple. Keep adding new frames to the center of the bottom box two at a time. When you add a new pair, move a pair of old contaminated foundation based frames up to the second box. Each time, you should place the new pair of foundationless empty…
What is natural comb? What is foundation? What do you mean by foundationless? It is apparent there is a lot of confusion out there surrounding this. I think this post will make things crystal clear! Most chemicaly managed hives are full of nasty old comb drawn over foundation by a hive of bees in the late…
I started out beekeeping on my own just the way I learned growing up. With foundation. I had heard the old saws: 1) “It takes twenty pounds of honey to make a pound of wax.” 2) “You can’t extract if you don’t have foundation”. 3) “You will end up with a hive full of drones”….
Backyard Ecosystem began as an expression of my determination to make a difference in our own backyard. Literally and metaphorically making a difference at the micro level of my yard and to operate at macro level of treating the entire planet as something I am an integral part of and whose destiny is shaped everyday by what I do in my corner of the world.
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