by Texas Homesteader ~
Around the end of March RancherMan & I start thinking about splitting our beehives. Splitting a hive accomplishes 2 things – it expands the number of hives in your apiary. (yea!) But it also gives the bees a little elbow room by putting empty frames in each hive allowing for expansion.
We often do our splits by swapping empty frames for full ones. It was easy!
by Texas Homesteader ~
How do you feed your honeybee hives during the cold winter months? It’s a different procedure than just feeding the sugar syrup like you do during warmer summer dearth months.
We easily make homemade honeybee candyboards to see them through the cold of winter.
By Texas Homesteader ~
Hobby Beekeeping is enjoying quite a popular resurgence. Many people are becoming interested in raising their own bees, whether for pollination of their own gardens, that delicious honey, valuable beeswax or just to care for our beloved pollinators.
Today I’ll be talking about requeening our hive. There are many reasons a beekeeper might want to requeen their hives. Maybe their existing queen is older and not productive anymore. Or maybe over the years the bees in the hive have swarmed and requeened their colony so many times the hive is becoming more aggressive, or ‘hot’.
You see, each time the colony makes their own queen, she must make her maiden flight for breeding with the surrounding bees. Oftentimes those are wild bees and some might even have more aggressive Africanized bee influence.
If you have very many generations taking those steps you’ve gotten too much opportunity for aggressive characteristics to be introduced into your hive.
by Texas Homesteader ~
I love candles, but these days I prefer an all-natural beeswax candle. And you’re not gonna believe how easy it is to make one yourself. They make a cute gift idea too!
by Texas Homesteader ~
It’s not hard to bottle fresh sweet honey from the apiary. But what steps need to be taken from beehive to jar?
There are things to watch for. Things such as moisture content in your honey, capped vs uncapped honeycomb, etc. But now? Finally the time is right. We’re going to take that sweet honey from frame to bottle!
by Texas Homesteader ~
There’s more to harvesting honey than just walking to the hives. There are simple preparation tips and hints to simplify the actual harvesting of honey frames, and I’m sharing it all with you! Come see the steps we take before harvesting that sweet honey we crave.
by Texas Homesteader ~
A beekeeping nuc box is a hive box only large enough for small a nucleus hive – usually 1/2 the size of a regular hive. We can quickly build FOUR 5-frame nuc boxes from a single piece of plywood. Come see!
by Texas Homesteader ~
Y’all know I shun plastic like a banshee, right? I haven’t accepted a plastic shopping bag from the store in years, much preferring my pretty shopping basket anyway.
And I refuse to buy overly-packaged items too. I’ve learned that recycling isn’t the answer to our landfill problems – PRE-Cycling is!
But what is precycling? Well that’s shunning trash from coming into your home in the first place.
But today I’m talking about cling film. You know the stuff, it’s always sticking to itself and hardly ever sticking to the item you’re trying to wrap. Use it once & throw it away.
But whaddyagonnado?? Well, I’ve started using beeswax wraps!
