The strange winter continues here in Minnesota… On February 29th, only two and a half weeks ago, this is what it looked like outside our window. The snow started during the night and by morning, we had almost a foot of heavy, wet snow. School was cancelled and we wereContinue Reading
We have now enjoyed three seasons of beekeeping. Each year brings new challenges, successes and failures. It is a constant learning process, which is part of the fascination of beekeeping. Just when we think we have it figured out, something unexpected happens. The whole endeavor is a good reminder that,Continue Reading
We are in our second year of beekeeping and what a year it has been. Similar to gardening, the season started off with us full of hope about the potential bounty of honey we would enjoy come fall. As any gardener knows however, things rarely go as planned when youContinue Reading
Our adventure as beginning beekeepers keeps providing us with new challenges and opportunities for learning. After getting our two packages of bees in early April, we soon discovered that the queen in one of the hives had not survived. I picked up a new queen from our supplier and re-queenedContinue Reading
The Prairie Fire crabapple tree right outside my kitchen window is in full bloom . It is quite a sight and smells delightful. Apparently, we are not the only ones that are enjoying the tree. After two days of rain, snow and freezing temperatures, we were outside Sunday enjoying theContinue Reading
Our first bump in the road with the bees this season was to lose one of the queens from our two new packages of bees. I went to inspect them last weekend to look for signs that the queens were alive and healthy. Looking for either eggs or bee broodContinue Reading
Our package bees arrived last night after a long and harrowing trip from sunny Chico, California, to the cool weather of Minnesota. Their arrival was delayed a day after they were temporarily stranded in Wyoming due to a snow storm. Our bee supplier, who lives only about 15 minutes fromContinue Reading
It was our understanding as beginning beekeepers that it was possible to winter our hive here in Minnesota so long as we took steps to help them through the harsh season. The first task was to provide the bees with sugar syrup (since we harvested most of their honey) for them toContinue Reading
After our first summer as beekeepers, we were fortunate enough to enjoy a moderately successful honey harvest. Jesse collected the full frames from the hive and we brought them into the house to start the messy process of extracting the honey from the comb. Using an electric uncapping knife, weContinue Reading