Great Conversations Table Host

Beekeeper to Host Table at Great Conversations

This Saturday, beekeeper Ellen will be hosting a table at Great Conversations, an annual dinner event organized by the Ripon Education Foundation.  The Foundation supports innovative educational opportunities for students and teachers including grants, scholarships, tutoring programs, and the high school High Mileage Vehicle team. Honey. Bee stings.  Business.  From …

Painting the second coat that Sunday was a little faster with a third person.
My father called while I was basking in the March sunshine and painting the hive covers.
Kickstarter Success: crowdsourced fundraising

Year in Review Part 2: March 2012

Assembling the first hundred frames, building the hive covers, and painting… Frames: Inside a beehive you’ll find bees and wax. In human-managed hives you’ll also find moveable wooden frames holding the wax. The most common style beehive around here is called a Langstroth hive. Moveable frames allow beekeepers to inspect …

Honey Pots

Honey Tasting

Join us for Honey Pots: A Handmade Holiday Open House! Local honey tasting & 15% off all gallery sales. Midwest Clay Project, …

Top Vents Prevent Moisture Build-Up, Bees Like the Wide Door
Eight hives ready and waiting for winter
Happy Beekeeper

December Sunshine

53F in Madison on Sunday, December 3rd, 2012 Who wouldn’t enjoy gorgeous weather in December? I didn’t think it would be warm …

Honey for Sale

Raw honey. Liquid gold. Sweet ambrosia. Need a present for the host?  Something for the person who has everything?  A treat to …

The hives are wrapped in black tar paper to take advantage of the sunshine in the winter. Bees eat honey and move around to maintain an internal hive temperature around 90 F.
These hives look really tall for two reasons: 1. We combined the weak and the strong ones so instead of twice as many hives at half this height, their powers are combined and they're a little taller. 2. After extracting honey, there is still some residual honey on the frames so we put them back on the hives for a couple days. The bees will clean it all off and move it down into their living quarters, then I can take the empty, clean boxes and store the for the winter.
I wasn't expecting to harvest any honey, and in the end I got to harvest twice and still leave ample supplies for the bees to eat all winter.

Apiary Progression 2012

Haven’t seen many pictures of the beehives yet? Here they are, from the installing new package bees way back in April, through …

One frame of brood
Another Close-up
Bee brood (eggs and larva) near the bottom of the hive

Open a Hive

Here we’re checking the whole hive to see how strong it is for the winter, how much extra honey they have that …