100% Local Ohio | Your Cincinnati Bee Connection
Posted in honey on Apr 18th, 2010
Today I did a little work with the bees. They’re doing much more work than I am, let me tell you that. The new colonies (Tomboys and the Girls of Summer) are building comb like crazy. Because they were installed only a week ago, I had to leave them alone for a bit so they [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Apr 13th, 2010
When we installed our two new colonies on Sunday, I watched several Amazon girls hauling grass and twigs and dead leaf material from their hive. Uh oh, I thought. Today I dug into their hive to check their spring progress, and I discovered a dead mouse between the top and bottom boxes. I scraped his [...]
Posted in Beekeeping Philosophy on Apr 12th, 2010
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. We were on hand yesterday to watch Christy install her bees. She was gentle. She went to great lengths to avoid any violence or aggitation to the bees…it was an elaborate process. Here she is preparing her brood box to welcome its new family. Here’s Jana [...]
Posted in Education on Apr 6th, 2010
The Scott’s lawn service truck just pulled up to my across-the-street neighbor’s house, and now the guy is out spraying chemicals on the grass. Deb calls them the honey-bee eliminators. Friends—pesticides and herbicides are bad for bees; and they’re bad for your honey. Whatever goes in your yard goes in your honey goes in you. [...]
Posted in Beekeeping Philosophy on Apr 2nd, 2010
A long-time beekeeper wrote an article for the April issue of Bee Culture magazine, and I like his philosophy. He doesn’t medicate his bees. At all. Ever. For any purpose. Not even mites. All but one beekeeper I know makes a very big deal of medicating for mites. But this fellow believes that because mites have [...]
Posted in Food on Apr 1st, 2010
The past two days have been….drumroll….SPECTACULAR! High 70s and nooooo clouds. And the bees are flying like nobody’s business. They come back to the hive heavy with pollen. They’re not touching the sugar water. No.