The Hive RSS

"Is it local"?  "What do they feed on"? "Do you have buckwheat"? "Do you have 'Manuka'"?  Just a small smattering of the questions I get every day while selling honey at farmer's markets.  All these questions are intertwined.  As some of you know, if the bee hives are surrounded by a particular pollen type (flower) the honey they output will tend to be made up of entirely that flower's pollen.  For people out there who are suffering from seasonal allergies, wildflower honey (from within the pollen bloom (not necessarily within a few miles)) will allow your body to acclimate to...

Don't just jump into bee keeping.  Get a teacher.  Better yet, get a mentor.  Learn from someone who has ALREADY made the mistakes you will make without their guidance.  Learning from a mentor is a proactive approach for creating success!

I am coming at you with a 'How To' blog post this week.  Since I started this honey shop endeavor, not a week goes by, not a week, where someone asks me what can be done when their jar of honey 'sugars up', 'turns hard', 'crystallizes', 'gets all gritty'... Pick your descriptor.  Some of you reading this might say to yourselves, "This is so simple.  It doesn't even warrant a blog post."  That's what I thought until I realized that I have been answering this question over and over for the past 7 years,  So here goes:  1) Fill a...

I'm posting this just before 9:00 AM Thanksgiving morning so absolutely NO ONE is going to cook this for today but hey, it's a good idea.  Maybe you can use it for Christmas.  I snagged this one from Better Homes and Gardens.  Like they don't get enough web traffic.  Please let them know I will accept an 'Honorable Mention' in their next publication. https://www.bhg.com/recipe/turkey/honey-roast-turkey/ Ingredients 1 12 pound fresh or frozen natural turkey 2 cups water ½ cup honey (Try with our hot pepper honey)! ¼ cup finely snipped fresh parsley 2 tablespoons finely snipped fresh sage 2 tablespoons snipped fresh...

What is a Rose hive?  Never heard of it?  It is a new development in hive-management.  Rose Hives are basically he same as the hives your Joe Average bee keeper uses, except instead of having two different size boxes (one for brood-rearing and one for supers), there is just one size box which can be used for either brood or honey.     The big benefit here is that you allow for rapid brood expansion.  There is no queen excluder in this set-up.  That means the queen can lay as many eggs as she can.  As you check the box, and the brood...