Free-bee Articles

Hello Bee-loveds, I hope you are enjoying this wildly early and abundant spring. Here in Western NC, our honey flow started about a month early and there is so much to be grateful for.

I want to point you to two free honeybee articles you might find useful.  They are both posted on HolyBeePress.com. One is about how to make a split (particularly relevant to spring bee management and for those of us in places like NC and ORE who are having a very swarmy spring) and the other is about how to work with Varroa.

Here is the link:  http://holybeepress.com/articles/

TRUSTING THE BEES: Thoughts on a Stronger Stock or How to Raise Queens with Just a Few Hives  (Carl Chesick, President of The Center for Honeybee Research)

PARTICULARLY HELPFUL article right now about how to make splits. Many of us are experiencing a very swarmy spring and now is the time in the year to have this information to hand. Learn an easy way to make a daughter colony that helps to both breed a stronger bee and supports the bees’ ability to select their own best future queens.  If you are wondering things like this -- What frames do I take from a large mother hive to start a new colony? And when can I take them? --  then this article will clearly lay out the how-to steps that will help create a great daughter colony and also respect the life of the mother hive that sourced it.

TAMING THE MIGHTY MITE: Some Thoughts on Living with Varroa  (Kefyn M. Catley, Ph.D.)

THIS INFORMATION ABOUT VARROA IS VERY HELPFUL as we look ahead across our bee stewarding year; it will help you understand Varroa so you can select for better, less-virulent mites and better-adapted bees. It also helps educate us about why chemical treatments are not a fruitful path in the long run. This is one of the clearest articles I have ever read about the unique characteristics and nature of Varroa and how to think about them in relationship to our western honeybee.

And if you want to be notified about future articles across this year, you can subscribe to Holy Bee Press (on our home page, in the upper right hand corner, is a Subscribe button).  Here is the link:  http://holybeepress.com/       We are planning about one article every two or three months.

Blessed be. Blessed bees.

-Debra Roberts