Rusty Burlew

In the last couple years I have been re-thinking my position on the spring reversal of brood boxes. If you are not familiar with this maneuver, it means switching the position of the brood boxes such that you move the brood nest to the lowest point in the hive

Why do experienced and commercial beekeepers use queen excluders without hesitation, while newbees insist their bees won’t go through an excluder under any circumstances? Certainly the bees aren’t considering the beekeeper’s experience level, they’re just doing what they need to do on their own schedule. The answer, I think, has more to do with beekeeper impatience than anything else, and impatience is a hallmark of many new beekeepers: “I want honey and I want it now

No one knows how they got there, but a colony of stingless bees was recently discovered at the Elizabeth Gamble Garden in Palo Alto, California. The scant information I’ve read came from an observation posted to iNaturalist on Sunday, March 31

A male pussy willow is one of the best trees for the bee yard because it will bloom especially early in the year. Pussy willows are dioecious, meaning there are both male and female trees. Although only the male flowers produce pollen, both sexes produce nectar. The medium yellow pollen from the male trees is considered to be of average quality in terms of its nutritional contribution to honey bees, having a crude protein content between 20-25%.