Author: Queenbee

It’s been a rollercoaster watching the weather these past couple weeks. I know we live in the Midwest, but c’mon! Regardless, we’ve started grafting for our spring queens and there may have been some bees in our basement to weather the cold, cold nights. We have overwintered nucs available in our shop right now and… Continue reading Spring!

We get asked a lot if we sell at the farmer’s market, a road side stand or from our home. The answer is “not quite”. We do sell in bulk to other, locally retailing beekeepers. It’s a trade that allows all of us local producers to keep our customers in locally produced honey consumers can… Continue reading Where’s the honey?

The days are finally getting longer. We have been busy planning for this season and setting up the online shop. We have also been enjoying some quality time together making protein food (patties) for the bees. We are seeing strong and healthy hives which is always a joy. Hopefully we will be getting to editing… Continue reading Spring is coming

You may have seen that we have nucs for sale this year. Turns out, we will also have queens! We are getting two VSH-Breeder Queens, one Carniolan x Caucasian (crossbreed) and one Italian this spring and will have our very own first-generation local genetics and VSH crosses available starting late April. Still working on how… Continue reading Queen Bees

Andy wrote this for Prairie State Beekeeepers – our home club. Packages   – are made with bees shaken from brood frames of colonies into a cage for transport.    Are they nurse bees?  2lbs vs 3lbs – basically you ensure you have more nurse bees… or do you?  It all depends on who does the shaking’.  Each package comes with a… Continue reading A guide to packages and nucs

We had a lovely holiday season and got to spend lots of family time. It’s back to work now – planning for the year. We are inventorying equipment and plotting our course. This year, we intend to expand our apiaries, produce ample honey for sale, and make some comb honey. We are also looking at… Continue reading New Year

We are at the last days of fall and just finished the last feedings with heavy syrup. If all goes according to plan, the bees are using these to shore up their larder and have plenty of food to get them through winter. Meanwhile, we are shifting gears to our winter projects – planning for… Continue reading Winter time

We are helping our bees get the most out of the last days of fall forage by feeding them light sugar syrup. We’ve had some help these last few times getting the sugar ready and filling the buckets at the bee yard.

Our hives are starting to smell like socks which means the Goldenrod flow has started. Goldenrod honey has a stronger flavor than our regular summer honey and is usually more of an amber hue. This year we won’t be harvesting any Goldenrod honey since we just spun out honey and want our hives to go… Continue reading Goldenrod