Author Archives: libhart
I think I’ve finally developed my first useful item that could officially be called a “gadget”. The beekeeping world is fond of using this word. The item is used to determine if a colony is still alive in the cold of winter, something not always easily checked without disturbing the bees. Some people use the […]
Something that has me thinking over the past few days is the “sustainable apiary” and what that means exactly. The venerable Mike Palmer is the one who I think has coined this term. The definition isn’t what’s really giving me a hard time, it’s exactly what a backyard beekeeper has to maintain in order to […]
January 1, 2012. Bees flying a bit, even saw some bringing back small amounts of pollen yesterday. Where they’re getting it I’ll never know. But this is giving me bad flashbacks of last year. We hopefully will have a more average January and the insulation will allow for some movement inside the hive during a warm […]
Three days before Christmas and it went into the mid-50s with the temperature in the hive reading a whopping 70 and for the first time in a while I got to see the girls. What an excellent early Christmas gift. And everyone got a bathroom break.
It’s cold outside. Not bitter, but cold. It might finally stay cold. This is the third time since the freak snow storm that we had just before Halloween that I’ve said that to myself. But the previous two times I just wasn’t right. The following week saw temps in the mid-50s and bees flying. But […]