Blog Profile / Mistress Beek
| URL : | http://mistressbeek.wordpress.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Hobbies / Beekeeping | |
| Posts on Regator: | 177 | |
| Posts / Week: | 0.7 | |
| Archived Since: | May 21, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
And the brood is on!
It’s barely spring in Albuquerque, but already my backyard colony is ramping up for the big bloom! It hit 50°F this afternoon and the girls were soaring like tiny striped eagles. Which is all to say the queen has increased her egg production and the workers are out looking for food and water. Food? There’s none to [...]
Hands down, the best beekeeping book for beginners
This is the book I wish existed when I started beekeeping in 2008. Loaded with photos and step-by-step instructions, it’s one of the few books that will help you survive your first year, especially if you don’t have a mentor. Homegrown Honey Bees: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Beekeeping Your First Year Pros: Photos, photos, [...]
Using a stethoscope to “hear” if your bee hive is alive
If you’re itchy for signs of life over the winter, lord knows you can’t open the hive! But given the right “ear”, you might be able to hear the crunching sounds of life within the four wooden walls. This week, during Albuquerque’s wicked cold snap, I borrowed a “mechanic’s” stethoscope from a computer hardware geek [...]
Deep Freeze: Will my bees survive?
In a record-breaking winter maneuver, we’ve plunged below zero here in Albuquerque. The ever-present sun masks a cruel truth: It’s wickedly cold outside and most local critters aren’t prepared. This morning, I knocked on my hive and listened. With an ear to the wood, I thought I might hear the faint crunching of a cluster [...]
Bee Queen for Halloween
Happy halloween, fellow beeks and mellifera lovers! May I present my niece, Sasha, Most Royal Queen of the Hive. At least for tonight.
Winter is coming
Desperation is starting to set in. After a chilly morning today, the scene at my backyard hive was frenzied. As though all creatures knew that time was running out and that their last meal was rapidly approaching. In some cases, that meal was a juicy honeybee snatched in mid-air like candy at the Day of [...]
Fried honeybees on a stick? Bees at the NM State Fair
Amazement is putting it mildly. “If you put your ear by the vent, you can hear the bees working inside… Right here.” If the wide-eyes and motionless stares were any indication, honeybees were the hit of the Agricultural segment of the NM State Fair this month. Not that we stood a chance competing with “fried [...]
The Pollen Files: Deploying the Ground Troops
Apparently the air force isn’t enough to unload the Pagoda Tree (Sophora japonica) blooming in my backyard. It’s a vigorous, glorious explosion at a time when resources have gone dry in Albuquerque, so the girls have decided to call in the ground troops for timely assistance. While their airborne sisters rush to extract pollen each [...]
Save your wine corks for the bees
If you’re like me, you’ve got a drawer full of wine corks imbued with optimistic ideas about cork bathmats or cork trivets and yet they continue to lead an empty existence. Waste no more. Whether you’re a beekeeper or a bee lover, you can help your neighborhood honeybees AND recycle a few wine corks all in one superhero [...]
Meet the Millennium Park Beekeeper, Chicago
Nestled in Chicago’s Millennium Park hides a sliver of nature’s wild heart called The Lurie Garden. It’s an unruly place with prairie grasses and purple coneflowers, butterflies and cottontail rabbits. There in the gardens, tucked behind a tall hedgerow is an even bigger surprise in this belly of Chicago’s Loop — two bee hives. Today [...]
Meet the New Regent: A successful hive requeening
Last month, this bee hive near Albuquerque’s Nob Hill neighborhood was in dire straits. Queenless and eggless, the colony was on the brink of collapse when I requeened her with a virgin from Zia Queen Bee in northern NM. It’s been three weeks since then and yesterday I popped open the hive to see what [...]
There’s a Virgin Queen in My Pocket: A Photo Essay
The queen bee’s gone missing. And all the tell-tale signs are there: no brood, a restless wings-spread stance, and an anxious hum when you open the colony. I’ve got to give this otherwise strong hive a new brood mare, pronto. Last night, I scored a virgin queen from Zia Queen Bee Co but night’s no [...]
A Happy Birthday Bee Swarm
For almost a year now, this hive has stood silent in my backyard. Today, just in time for my birthday, we caught a swarm with a cardboard box and installed the new girls all snuggly into their new home.
Ideas for Beautiful Honey Packaging
I won’t lie: Beautiful honey jars matter more to me than anyone else. “Why are we spending $80 on labels,” my husband asked, “we don’t even sell our honey!” And he’s right. Our 1040 reads a fat zero on the “Honey Income” line but, I might argue, if the IRS measured quality of life, mine [...]
The Silent Bee Hive
7 months later, it’s time to clean the hive of doom, utterly devastated by wax moths last September. Like the unbearable pain of losing your sweetest love, sometimes denial works best. Denial and the slow plod of time’s anesthesia. But eventually, one must don a pair of work gloves and dig in. This weekend, I [...]
The Beekeepers of Albuquerque, New Mexico
We’re an eccentric crew. With over 400 teachers, students, attorneys, engineers, scientists, accountants, fighter pilots and more, the Albuquerque beekeeping scene is endlessly varied. And one of my greatest pleasures is to volunteer as co-chair with Jessie Brown to organize our collective efforts. Hands down, the highlight of our annual event series is our Spring [...]
The Existential Pleasures of Beekeeping
The world is filled with probabilistic certainty, like a well-honed consumer behavior study or the latest microeconomic manifesto. And that, my friends, is why I keep bees. I keep bees for the pure moments of surprise, doubt, and confusion that inevitably arise when I least expect them… When the burgeoning hive that towers like a [...]
Update on the DIY Propolis Hive Entrance
A month ago, I found that my neglected hive had built its own propolis entrance reducer since I forgot to add one last fall. As temperatures warm up with the season, my theory is that the girls will remove and reshape the propolis as needed. Here are two shots, about one month apart and one [...]
Spring Hive Check: What to look for + how to prevent swarms
‘Tis no time for inaction. The dandelions are blooming and neighborhood fruit trees are covered with frizzy flowers, all of which means SWARM SEASON is upon us! So giddy up, it’s time to dig into my hives and see how they fared the winter. Spring is unpredictable in Albuquerque with great swings from night to [...]
Propolis: The original entrance reducer
Score another victory for lazy beekeeping! Either it blew away or I just plain forgot to add one, but regardless, when I went to visit the Candelaria Farms apiary, there was no entrance reducer on the one surviving hive. The girls had managed on their own and here’s how… But first, what is an entrance reducer [...]