beekeeping
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Real Men Vacuum
The mud room is loaded with bees. There are clusters on the door and window. A few bees buzz around the room. A few more linger on the honey boxes in the center of the floor. Even though Beekeeper Man put a bee escape on the hives to minimize the number of bees clinging to Continue reading
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Installing the New Bees
Our new honeybees arrived this week. We picked them up Monday evening, having made an appointment for pick-up and advised to arrive with protective gear—not to protect us from the bees, but to protect humans from each other. So, with our corona masks in place and our hands in thin vinyl gloves, we exited the Continue reading
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Propolis: Bane of the Beekeeper’s Wife
There are many things that set me off on a rant but the worst ones involve Any Other Person messing up My Stuff. It doesn’t have to technically be my stuff. If I use it and/or clean it, it counts as mine. Any beekeeper wife will agree that beekeeping presents some challenges with protecting stuff. Continue reading
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The First of This Year’s Honey: Beating the Bear
We pulled four frames of honey today. They were capped and we are so afraid that the local bear will defeat our electric fence and get to the hives again that we decided to pull some honey as soon as possible. Those of you familiar with our bear escapades will remember that last year the Continue reading
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Oops, No Queen: Recombining a Hive
A few weeks ago, in the midst of the spring nectar flow, with queen cells popping up everywhere, BeeMan decided to split a hive using some of the unwanted queen cells. The three other hives, with more room to grow and no longer honey-bound, resumed laying eggs and all is well. Honey-bound is when the Continue reading
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Swarm Season
Maywood is in its glory as the May woods blossom with tulip poplars, black locust, and wild roses. The bees have already had their fill of red maple and skunk cabbage and purple dead nettle, a pretty purple-flowering ground cover that brought in bright red pollen. Yesterday we went in to the bees for the Continue reading
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Les Rûches de Notre Dame and the Prize of Paris Honey: Beekeepers Go to Paris
We were dining in Montmartre when the news broke that Notre Dame was on fire. Almost instantly, our phones began dinging with texts from back home. “Notre Dame is on fire!” “Where are you? Are you ok?” Concern for our well-being came with snarky comments, too: “Was John smoking cigars in the restroom at Notre Continue reading
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This Little Light of Mine: Beeswax Candles
I recently gifted a dear sister-in-law with two homemade beeswax candles. This has prompted her to do a blog post about beeswax candles. And that has been a major kick in the pants for me to share my candle adventure here. Making candles is so easy! Just melt and pour. NOT. It took me over Continue reading
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Long live the queen
Getting a new hive of honeybees established is exciting but sometimes exasperating. Lately it has been more exasperating. Last year was so exasperating that not one of our new hives managed to survive even the summer. We strongly suspect the problem was the queens. When they arrived last year, the queens were so small we Continue reading
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Spring SnowBees
There are 58,000 bees in the basement. It’s the end of March. We turned the clocks to “summer time” two weeks ago. Last week the vernal equinox made it officially spring. Today we took delivery of four new packages of bees. And it’s snowing. At 9 a.m. we head to Snyder’s Apiary in Whitehall, windshield wipers brushing snow Continue reading
Slightly Off the Grid 