I’ve been meaning to make this post ages ago, and a lot of it was already written up, but time has a way of creeping up on you. And I forgot about it. As we are approaching winter, I have done the last bits of preparation for my hive. I’ve fed them a bunch of…
Did you know that when creating honey, bees actually regulate the temperature and humidity in their hive to a certain point so that it’s just perfect for the honey. And that this is one of the reasons why honey can be preserved for basically forever? If someone told me 10 years ago that I would…
Did you know that wasps are basically drug addicts? Their young secrete something that’s quite like sugar for the protein that their workers provide them. Protein that was gotten by going after caterpillars or aphids and whatnot. But by the end of the summer there’s no more larvae to give protein to, no larvae mean…
Did you know that bees dance in order to communicate where they can find water or good flowers? It’s called the waggle dance. The other day we went on a search for the queen. As most of you probably know, the queen is at the centre of the colony. No queen, no new bees, no…
Did you know that depending on where they get their nectar, the honey will look and taste different? As I’ve explained in my first post about these wonderful little creatures, it’s only been a few weeks since me and my buddy decided on becoming beekeepers ourselves. As per usual, my motus operandi doesn’t consist of…
Bees have been kept throughout the centuries. There are cave paintings in Spain out there from thousands of years ago that shows people on a rope trying to get to that sweet sticky stuff we call honey. It was the ancient Egyptians themselves that were the first to keep bees themselves in a kind of…
Did you know that bees were around for more than one hundred million years, whereas we as a species (homo sapiens), have only been around for about 100 000 of it? It is only fair then that the bee has a place in myth too. In this particular case the Greek myths, as told by…
Did you know that male bees (also called drones) only have on purpose? They only live to mate with a virgin queen in order to have somewhat of a genetic diversity in hives. This because a virgin queen mates with multiple drones from multiple colonies in what is called a drone congregation area.Oh, and their…
Did you know that bees take care of approximately 30% of our food? Neither did I, the more you know. About a week ago from this writing I decided that I wanted to become a beekeeper. The other day my equipment arrived. ‘But’ you ask yourself, why on earth would you make a decision like…