Bushkill Bee Blog

Reduce the need to even use a bee vac by using swarm traps. Our bee vac is by far the easiest on bees and beekeeper, but you can ease the stress even more by proactively setting out swarm traps. There are many options out there for swarm traps, but if ease and less...

In remembrance of a good friend Robb Russell, I have archived all the beekeeping podcasts from the Wildlife Pro Network. Although not a beekeeper per se, Robb had a great respect for honeybees and their importance. Robb was the driving force behind bringing nuisance...

Here is a video from my good friend JP the beeman that shows the damage that can be done to a dwelling if honeybees are not handled properly. Next time you have a customer who questions your removal quote, feel free to show them this video.

 Abscond - to depart in a sudden and secret manner, especially to avoid capture. Absconding seems to be a bigger issue in some areas than others. Personally, I can only remember one or two hives absconding in the last 10 years. I have heard from others, especially in...

Special Thanks to Jim Hensel for sharing this idea, photos, and directions. Background: I am making my own hive boxes. I have researched handles and the choices are as follows: Cleat Dado slot Canoe shaped routed pocket But I wanted something more. I noticed that many...

It's springtime and a lot of folks are eager to expand their apiary by doing splits. Splits are very popular since they are "almost free". Problem is, a good portion of those doing splits use the "walk away" method, because it's easy and cheap, without thinking it...

I don't like to put frame spacers in my supers because I like to start new un-drawn frames 10 to a super to get the comb drawn correctly. Once the frames are drawn, I reduce them to 9 per super to make extracting easier. I've tried putting 9-frame spacers in some and...

There are always discussions as to which feeder is “the best”, but like everything else in beekeeping, there is no one best solution for every situation and location. I have taken the most popular feeder options and rated them in different categories. I make no...

There are good reasons to have your queens marked, including: Ease in locating the queen during inspections. Confirm the hive hasn't swarmed. Confirm the queen hasn't been superseded. This can be very important in areas that have Africanized honeybees. Unfortunately,...

The big craze over at Beemaster is switching to only medium depth boxes. Yes there are some advantages like uniformity and lighter weight, but there are also some things I consider disadvantages, at least to me. One is more equipment and therefore more cost. One can...

Emergency Feeding When you find the need to feed a weak colony in the midst of winter, there are may things you must be careful of.   The bees need to be able to access the food when clustered. It only takes a short cold spell for the bees to starve if the...

Queen Rearing using the Nicot System and Cloake BoardPodcast of Small-Scale Queen Rearing can be found -> Here.The following is the method I used for raising small quantities of queens. It uses a Nicot no graft system that I purchased from BetterBee. When I bought...

Queen Introduction using a Double Screen Board My preferred method of queen introduction is with the use of a double screened board. The advantage of this method is, unlike most other methods, you always have the original queen to fall back on if your new queen is not...

We first shared the barrel top bar hive in 2007.   Since that time there are a few copy cats claiming their original design.  Take note that they never provide pictures with an established colony like we do. Featured in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Backwoodsman Magazine...

Beekeeping Related Patents If there are any others you would like to see, send me the patent number and I will add it.