Musings of an Unseasoned Beeman

While at Keown Orchards last week, I spoke to Ken Warchol about my predicament – and interestingly, another first year beekeeper there was querying him on the exact same problem!  We both had lost our queen, introduced another, and then ended up with a laying worker hive.
I had been interested in his thoughts on whether [...]

Alexa’s 3rd grade class was doing a science segment on pollination, and they were using bees-on-a-stick to pollinate the plants.  Alexa mentioned that we had bees, and her teacher, Mrs. Lavallee asked if I would come in and talk to the class about beekeeping.
I brought in all of the tools, as well as a couple [...]

Today I opened up the hive in preparation for tomorrow’s class with Alexa.  I took a couple of drawn frames out of the hive, and shook one off, hoping to get a few drones for show-and-tell.
While collecting the drones, and putting them in a glass jar, I had visions of some youngster taking the jar, and [...]

Today we went to the Worcester County Beekeepers Association meeting – it was an ‘open hive’ meeting at Keown Orchards in Sutton.  Ken Warchol, the Worcester County Apiarist, led the talk on final winter preparations, discussing medication, feeding and over-wintering the hives.
Keown Orchards has twelve hives on their property, and while the meeting was well [...]

I’ve been keeping an eye on the hive without opening it up, and the number of bees coming and going has been pretty minimal, as expected.
When looking at the hive entrance, it’s obvious that there’s not much traffic, as typically when you look in the front door, you see a line of bees getting ready [...]