What’s the Buzz With Beekeeping?

For all the beekeepers and future beekeepers out there, this one is for you.

The benefits of bees are numerous: honey, beeswax and let’s not forget pollination. Raising honey bees increases pollination of flowering plants and honey bees are the heroes of pollination efforts for modern agriculture.

Anyone can master the skills necessary to be a good beekeeper. Your journey to successful beekeeping begins with preparation. We’ve compiled some of our favorite bee articles to help you get started with your bee colony, no matter where you live!

The Buzz: Beekeeping for Beginners

Beekeeping has been on the rise in recent years, and Ross Conrad’s book Natural Beekeeping has become a must read for enterprising apiculturalists who want to learn how to care for bees holistically and organically.

Urban Apiculture: Raise Bees in Your Apartment

Learn how to raise bees in your own apartment, no matter where you live!

Biodynamic Beekeeping 101

Spring is here and I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get started on all of the projects I mapped out during the cold winter months – including trying my hand at incorporating bees into my homesteading adventure! As a new-bee (get it?!), I need help to get started so I did a little rummaging through the CGP archives and stumbled upon some great insight from Deirdre Heekin. Happy beekeeping, ya’ll!

On Swarms and Stings

To a beekeeper, thousands of bees concentrated in one area isn’t a nightmare–it’s an opportunity to help the bees find a new home safely when necessary. However, not all beekeepers began their career being fans of bees. It takes a lot of time and patience to gather up the nerve to walk directly into a swarm and handle relocating these buzzing insects.

Recipe: Ginger-Apricot Honey Mead

When Jereme was in North Carolina for the 2016 Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville, he picked up a local honey made from summer wildflowers. Why? He was inspired after visiting Fox Hill and sampling their Special Reserve Mead, which has hints of ginger and a unique blend of buckwheat honey and some lighter varietals. For his Fair workshop, he started a one-gallon batch of mead with dried apricot and ginger.