BeeKeepClub’s Beekeeping Blog

Drones are the male bees whose role is dwarfed by that of the female worker bees. Nonetheless, they play an important role of sustaining the colony’s lifeline. An understanding of the drone bee's survival and wellbeing is a fundamental when raising successful honeybee colonies. Being able to recognize drone comb is an important for both new and experienced beekeepers.

Beehives are microclimates with conditions that require careful control to remain at optimum levels at all times. Changes in beehive conditions affect honeybees living there. They can turn harmful if left unchecked for long periods of time. Honeybees are always regulating the temperature and humidity of beehives. They employ various techniques to achieve nearly uniform temperatures in the hive. Of major consideration to honeybees, is the brood of the colony. Other parts of the beehive come second in priority when it comes to warming or cooling the beehive, as well as in humidity control. Read on to learn how honeybees maintain temperature and humidity in a beehive, and what you can do to help them.

The honeybee colony is complex by design and handle seamlessly a number of tasks: defense, communication, division of labor, food production, nest building, colony condition control, and many others. Within a colony exists a number of cells and it is crucial for the beekeeper to understand how each looks like. Knowing how to identify and analyzing queen cells is essential since this is where the future of the colony is pegged.

Honeybees will make a new queen without notice. These small creatures have been naturally wired to do this, and you will certainly have little control over it. The making of queen cells portrays two things. Firstly, it means you have a strong honeybee colony and you only need to manage them well for a few months to get a new healthy queen. Secondly, this may mean the colony expansion rate has surpassed the available space and it needs to split. You therefore need to have a plan on how to handle this, otherwise you might end up losing half of your honeybees or a swarm might hurt people within the locality. Fortunately, you can interrupt colony development and honey production as a strategy of combating swarming. Honeybees will build emergency queen cells for a number of reasons, perhaps within or beyond your control. Join us as we find out more about these queen cells.

Although gardening is not the only possible solution for weight loss, it plays a key role in shedding some pounds of fat while enjoying the outdoors with some sense of fresh air. Not only this, there are more other benefits of gardening other than weight loss. If one wants to use gardening in a more interesting way, then gardening can also be a great team sport. As said above, gardening is more than just a hobby or activity. It offers a variety of lifelong health benefits. For many seniors or old-age people, gardening is considered very therapeutic as it involves movement, exercise, focus, and a lot more. Some of the tasks such as raking, digging, planting, and watering are enjoyed by most people irrespective of age groups thus helping to promote weight loss and improve overall health.

After the processes of harvesting honey, it is stored in large containers, usually buckets. The end consumers usually want it in small amounts for their purchase. Smaller units of honey weigh less and are thus easy to transport. Jars are a very popular and common method of packaging honey. Some beekeepers also use tubs that hold a slightly larger amount of honey than jars. Both beginner and experienced beekeepers can easily bottle and package honey for the market. This article details the best practices and methods on how to bottle and package honey.

Honeycombs are the lifeline of any honeybee colony. They are of special importance since this is where the brood is raised and food reserved. Nonetheless, you might come across some white stuff in honeycombs and just wonder what this could be. In most cases, the first reaction would be the assumption that this could be a disease or pest infestation. These substances could be white and wet or simply a chunk of crystals. We shall discuss what is and what it means in this article.

If it is your first time inspecting your beehive, then you can be puzzled when you come across some dark or black combs. As a matter of fact, some brood cells tend to be darker in some parts of the hive, more so, after the end of your first season in beekeeping. In subsequent years combs may even be just about black in colour. Contrastingly, honeycombs can retain their light colour for many years. Here are some reasons for dark honey combs.