I have walked up to colonies I expected to be thriving and found the frames swimming in a sour, brown slime that smelled like rotten oranges. That moment of standing in front of a slimed out hive is one of the hardest in beekeeping, and the decisions you make in the next hour shape how … Read more

Spring hits the southern United States weeks before it reaches northern apiaries, and that timing gap changes everything about how you manage your colonies. This spring management checklist for southern beekeepers walks you through exactly what to do, when to do it, and why southern climates demand a different approach than the generic guides you … Read more

Last October I lifted a hive that felt like a bale of straw. The cluster inside was tiny, maybe two frames wide, and the honey supers were nearly empty. I had missed the fall feeding window by three weeks and lost the colony by February. That mistake is the reason I built this guide, because … Read more

Overwintering hives in the Upper Midwest is the make-or-break moment of every beekeeping year. Between November and March, temperatures in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan regularly plunge below 0°F, with wind chills hitting -30°F or lower. I’ve lost colonies to cold before, and the lesson is always the same: bees can survive bitter cold, but … Read more

A full-size honey bee colony needs 90 to 100 pounds of honey to overwinter safely, according to Cornell University’s Pollinator Network. This is roughly equivalent to one full deep super of capped honey. But that number shifts based on where you keep bees. Colonies in the southern US may thrive on as little as 40 … Read more

I learned this the hard way: in Minnesota, the calendar lies. After losing two colonies by treating on the wrong date, I switched to tracking soil temperature instead of dates. This spring management checklist for northern beekeepers is the temperature-based system I now share with every new keeper in our local club. Northern beekeepers face … Read more

Every summer, beekeepers across the country watch their thriving spring colonies suddenly shift into survival mode. Flowers are everywhere, the world looks green and lush, yet the bees come home empty. This quiet crisis is called the summer nectar dearth, and it catches more beekeepers off guard than any other seasonal challenge. I have watched … Read more

Every year, right when you have resigned yourself to months of scraping windshields and bundling up, the weather does something strange. Temperatures climb, snow turns to slush, and you can hear birds singing again. This is the January warm spell, and yes, it is real. I have lived through enough of these midwinter warm-ups to … Read more

I’ll never forget the morning I opened my first Langstroth after a cold Pacific Northwest winter and found a soggy quilt box, water beading on the inner cover, and a cluster of dead bees on the bottom board. The hive had enough honey. The cold had not been extreme. The colony had simply drowned from … Read more

Winter is the single most dangerous season for honey bee colonies. According to data from multiple beekeeping associations, commercial and hobbyist beekeepers routinely lose between 30% and 50% of their colonies each winter. Our team has worked with dozens of apiaries across different climates, and we have seen the same pattern repeat itself: colonies do … Read more