Last week was a good and productive time in the bee yard. I made a lot of headway preparing for the two new packages of bees due to arrive s...

Cloud formations. Almond sprouting in compost pile. The spider that lives by Hive Orange. Comb cut from the dead hives to be melted down to...

Spring has definitely arrived in Upstate NY USDA Zone 4. There aren't enough exclamation points in all of human history to adequately pu...

This weekend I checked on the hives using the observation windows—still too cold and wet to open them up. Hive Orange appears to be truckin...

Orange Hive swarmed, for the second time, on Labor Day weekend. In the morning, we saw the swarm high up in a tree near the hive, and by lat...

Autumn has definitely come to Hooterville, complete with an explosion of aster and the first hesitant dropping of maple, birch and chestnut ...

What exciting occurrence is pictured below? It's the emergence of worker bees—the next generation. In the shot above, you can see three ...

Two weeks ago, I paid a visit to the bee yard to confirm that the (previously) virgin queens had mated and were laying "the next genera...

Yesterday, I heard the queens in Hive Orange piping . It sounds a bit like singing whales, but eerier—an amazing, insistent cry audible even...

The verdict is in...Hive Orange is fixin' to swarm, as indicated by this swarm cell and several others. I now have the following options...

Today we inspected Hive Orange from top to bottom, since I'd noticed some oddly shaped cells through the observation window and was conc...

Pop quiz: Which of these objects provides a shortcut through the time-space continuum? The other day, while moving some of the top bars arou...

The Hive Orange bees have been hanging out in increasing numbers outside the hive entrance--in a behavior known as bearding . Two days ago, ...

Like everything in nature, a honeybee colony has its moods. Here’s a sad one: a weathered worker bee in her final hours. See those tattered ...

During our inspection of Hive Orange today, a bit of nectar was spilled from one of the combs as we lifted it out of the hive. Right away, o...