April 4, 2021
The annual Maine beekeeper survey of losses and management practices is now live and ready for your input! Gathering this type of data is important for seeing trends, recognizing when and how losses occur, and determining where to focus education/outreach activities in the future. A summary report of the survey will be presented at the Maine State Beekeepers annual meeting in October and available online. The survey can be found…
March 5, 2021
MSBA 2021 Webinar Series #1“Queen Bees”Presented by Karen Thurlow Saturday, March 13th, 7:00 pm About the WebinarMaster Beekeeper Karen Thurlow will give a presentation on honey bee queens, including requeening, raising your own queens and finding them in the hive. She will also talk about spring buildup. Karen started keeping bees in 1978 and is a popular speaker at chapter meetings. She has taught microscopy workshops and bee schools, most recently for MOFGA. She ran New…
February 6, 2019
Two warm days in February, up to 58 degrees in north Norway, brought out the bees. I have two two hives of Italian’s. The left hive, being slightly stronger than the split right hive, and both being just one season old. I fully insulated both hives in late November, just prior to the snow and cold. The prior year I had experimented with insulating three sides and leaving the southeast…
March 27, 2018
If you live in Maine and haven’t seen a bear around your hive…… you will. Prophetic warning, nope, just more common sense advise from Kenny. Kenny doesn’t just make this stuff up you know, and he isn’t talking all the time either, as witnessed in this photo. Kenny has a love for nature as most all of us do. If you made it to the March meeting, you too were…
June 12, 2017
Grafting your own queen honeybees is can be rewarding, in many ways. Ken Record discussed a few of his techniques he and his son, Gerry, use for best results. At approximately 3 days of age, the tiny bee larvae is transferred into the queen cups which will be drawn out into queen size cells.
March 23, 2017
Taken from Wikipedia, “An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, obduction, necropsy, or autopsia cadaverum —is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse by dissection to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present. Knowing that a hive of bees is more than “many individual bees” but is a “super organism”, we can apply this definition to the hive itself. In this post, I will give only observations and through first…
November 26, 2016
In order to better explain effective wintering of bees, Lynwood Sweyt presented an example of his latest hive set up. If experience counts, and it does, Lynwood has the numbers on his side. It was immediately evident that Mr. Sweyt’s hive was meticulously built. Carefully placed entrance holes drilled and sanded to specification were able to accept plugs when not in use. The metal entrance reducer tightly fit beneath the smooth paint job…
