• beekeeping supplies
    supplies

    Healthy Beehives Need the Proper Beekeeping Supplies

    Raising a dog or cat takes very little specialized equipment, however beekeeping involves educating oneself regarding all the supplies, procedures and techniques for raising healthy bees. Improper education of apiary methods will put you and your beekeeping experiment in serious danger. Beekeepers avoid the potential dangers by simply using the right beekeeper supplies. The extraction and processing of honey requires specialized equipment however, any beekeeping guide worth it’s salt will tell you that the management and maintenance of a colony of bees will require specialized and proper beekeeping equipment. Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated, and in this case we always need to remember that the safety of the…

  • learning,  preparation,  supplies

    s is for sarah

    .I took a little trip to Better Bee Supplies today, to pick up some frames for my honey supers and some gloves. Gloves were not something I really wanted to work with; it’s great to have the sensation in your fingertips and be able to ‘pet the bees’ with your bare hands. However, my allergist tells me I have a Colophony allergy, which is basically an allergy to coniferous trees and products made from them. This is an issue because the propolis – the super sticky gummy glue that the bees make and use to seal and weatherproof their hive – is made using things like pine or spruce sap.…

  • learning,  supplies

    surprise

    Are there beekeeper fairies? Or elves? We came back from vacation today, and I found 3 beekeeping catalogues in a bag on my front door! They look interesting, I’m looking forward to giving them a proper look once the camping clutter has disappeared from my dining room. And by ‘disappeared’ I’m referring to the process whereby I am the one who cleans said clutter. Hopefully it won’t take too long. We should have camped out for a few more days, I think. I find it takes about a day on either end of camping to transition in and out, so the longer we go the more worthwhile it feels. Although,…

  • bees,  learning,  neat tricks,  supplies

    screening visitors

    Here is a pic of my screen bottom board. Normally it’s under the brood chamber and I only see the front entrance part of it, but it’s on display here because we were cleaning the bottom board. (And by ‘we’ I mean Ken.) The screen bottom board is there to enhance the health of the hive. Mainly as protection against varroa mite, which can be incredibly damaging to a colony of bees. The screen mesh is wide enough to allow the varroa mite to fall through, but narrow enough to keep the bees away from them. Varroa mites will wait there on the bottom board for a bee to come…

  • bees,  learning,  supplies

    new supplies

    Here’s my little beekeeper smoking the bees, in her new hat and veil! I finally went and got the kids hats and veils of their own, and they enjoyed having them the last time we visited the beeyard. Especially this one. She wanted to do everything and see everything. So, she used the smoker until someone mentioned that she should stop, and she was right in there underneath me so she could see all the action. The smoker had to go, though – smoke rises, right? Yep. And she was right under me… I couldn’t see or breathe for a few minutes, until someone set it somewhere else. I love…

  • bees,  learning,  preparation,  supplies

    big plans

    After researching honeybees for approximately a year, and taking a course from the University of Guelph to see if I could handle working with them, I’ve decided to buy my first two nucs, or sets of bees. They’ll be ready for me sometime after June 7, so in the meantime I’m getting my supplies and bee yard ready. No turning back now….