Mason bees, mining bees, leafcutter bees, and more — a field guide to identifying the solitary bees living alongside your honeybees. Last April, I watched a woman in my neighbor’s community garden spray a can of wasp killer into a…
An honest comparison of packages, nucs, and swarms — cost, risk, and timing — to help you choose how to get your first bees this spring. The question I get asked more than almost any other, usually sometime around January,…
Bees have a gut microbiome too. Here’s what lives inside it, why it matters for colony health, and whether probiotics for bees actually work. I didn’t think much about bee gut bacteria until a colony I was documenting came out…
Bees have exactly one mating flight, ever. Here’s what actually happens in a drone congregation area — and why it determines a hive’s future. The first time I watched a virgin queen leave the hive on a mating flight, I…
Three years ago, my dandelion bloom — the signal I’ve used for over a decade to know when spring buildup is really underway — showed up eleven days earlier than the year before. Not a slow creep. Eleven days, in…
The frame smelled wrong before I even had it fully out of the box. Not the usual warm-wax-and-honey smell I’d gotten used to after twenty-some years of opening hives — something closer to sour glue, with an edge that made…
I drove past a solar installation in June that I hadn’t seen in about two years, expecting the usual — rows of panels over mowed gravel, the kind of site that looks efficient and says nothing about anything living. Instead…
Last February I got a text from a grower I’ve sold nucs to for six years. He wasn’t asking about bees. He was asking whether I’d heard of a company flying drones over almond blocks instead of trucking in hives.…
Queen Bee Marking Colors: The Full Year-by-Year Chart What color do you mark a queen bee this year? The full international color chart, the mnemonic, and how to mark her safely.Slug : queen-bee-marking-colors-chart-by-year I once spent forty minutes tearing apart…
Does No Mow May Really Help Bees? A Beekeeper’s Take No Mow May is under fire in 2026. A working beekeeper breaks down what actually helps honey bees — and what’s just an unmowed lawn. I let my back lawn…
