Top Bar Beekeeping and Hive building

Today’s post is inspired by the video blog HOME SKILLET found on youtube. I like the kids, they are spunky and independent. Go spike their stats. https://youtu.be/S_W2JlOAltQ is their first post, and https://youtu.be/pR2WkbfNb2g is the vlog that inspired this post. This is about Top Bar Bee hives to share with anyone who shows interest in this form of beekeeping. I like this style better than Langstroth hives because I don’t do lifting and don’t want to buy fancy equipment for honey harvesting. I am also intrigued by an approach focused on keeping bees that need less or no expensive treatments … Continue reading

Bees Bees Bees Bees

Our colony of bees is still alive in spite of my newbie errors. This week I took out the large feeder and replaced it with two smaller feeders. Now the temperatures are back down low, and so I have to wait until the next warm day to repeat the process. On the first warm day the bees cleaned out the dead bees, those bees who didn’t survive the several days of freezing weather: Lots of bees die during cold snaps, but here is a terrible picture of the very busy colony: I wish I could have gotten a sharper picture, … Continue reading

Family Bee Keeping Project Update

Our bees thrived all summer long. We had a couple times when the heat softened the comb enough to cause it to break under the weight of the honey, but this was solved by opening up a couple more entries to help them cool the interior. We fed during our summer dearth, when the heat is such that few flowers bloom here. The colony grew, expanded to fill half the top bar hive box. This was perfect, so I left them alone when the fall bloom began for two weeks. When I returned to checking–we had a huge problem! By … Continue reading

The Bee Keeping Home Educator

Kinesthetic learners do best when doing. Hands on, action, and linking this with the material to be mastered. This has been a huge shift in my understanding of my vocation as a home educating mom. I’ve a bug nut. This is the kid who for most of her 7+ years has followed insects through the grass, getting up very close to see what they were doing. This is the kid who rescues bees from water buckets and places them on leaves to dry out and does not get stung. This is the kid who needs to be channeled into pollinators … Continue reading