Beekeeping at FiveApple

In this episode I share my own process for getting honey from the hives to the jars. It's quirky but it works for me and I'm hoping you might find ideas for your own process or just enjoy hearing how someone else does it. That's what I did when researching this episode!

For supporting patrons, I've also collected a few videos (with video summaries included)  you might enjoy and for newer beekeepers, a PDF with a list of tips and links that may help you figure out your own process. If you aren't a supporting patron yet, please join and find that post here: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple/posts/ep160-honey-162052074

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Not a patron yet? You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon and join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show  please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

Beekeeping at Five Apple — talk, tips, and how-to on sustainable beekeeping from the Blue Ridge mountains of Southern Appalachia.

Host Leigh Wilkerson brings sixteen years of hands-on experience from her self-sustaining apiary since 2010. The podcast explores colony health, natural bee biology, and organic to chemical-free approaches. Episodes go deep on seasonal management, swarm control, queen rearing, hive biology, nutrition, and sustainable genetics. Designed for beekeepers ready to go beyond the basics, with episodes for newer beekeepers too.

Leigh is a popular Zoom presenter for bee clubs and associations. Topics include specialty splits so you never buy a package again; requeening approaches; simple frame-based queen rearing; building VSH genetics in your yard; and topics by request.

So you have a caged mated queen and a colony that needs requeening, how to make that happen (so that your special queen actually survives the process!) is what we cover today!

As a thank-you, Patrons got this episode a day early and also get a bonus portion covering the vertical requeening methods that Ryan mentioned last episode plus tips and resources on introducing virgin queens. Supporting patrons keep this show on the air and keep it advertisement free! 

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Not a patron yet? You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon and join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show  please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

Beekeeping at Five Apple — talk, tips, and how-to on sustainable beekeeping from the Blue Ridge mountains of Southern Appalachia.

Host Leigh Wilkerson brings sixteen years of hands-on experience from her self-sustaining apiary since 2010. The podcast explores colony health, natural bee biology, IPM from organic to chemical-free approaches. Episodes go deep on seasonal management, swarm control, queen rearing, hive biology, nutrition, and sustainable genetics. Designed for beekeepers ready to go beyond the basics, with episodes for newer beekeepers too.

Leigh is also a popular Zoom presenter for bee clubs and associations. Topics include specialty splits so you never buy a package again; requeening approaches; simple frame-based queen rearing;  alternative hives including Layens; building VSH genetics in your yard; and topics by request.

Something special today! This interview with Ryan Williamson of Sourwood Farm of Virginia has been the one where I learned the most. He is a full time beekeeper selling local nucs and honey, but who also specializes in offering VSH queens from tested breeders he raises himself.

We start off with how he got into the bee biz and just got to talking between beekeepers and ended up in full geek mode on tips and hacks for testing and introducing queens and much more. He is doing wonderful work and is a joy to get into conversation. Enjoy!

PS. Ryan is a frequent speaker at bee clubs and conferences. He is available by Zoom and in-person in some cases. I got a sneak preview of a couple of his talks and I'm going to be lobbying our club and state conference to book him as soon as possible. You can contact him at his website.

Find our more about Ryan, order queens, honey or this winter...hats (!) Ryan makes from the links below.

Home page: http://sourwoodfarm.com/

Buy Queens or Honey: https://sourwoodfarm.square.site/

Ryan's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SourwoodFarm

Facebook Page: https://facebook.com/sourwoodfarms 

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Ep157 More Springtime Tips

Ep156 Spring in the Bees! 

Ep 155 Interview with Colorado beekeeper and writer Tina Sebestyen

Ep 153 Interview with James Lee of SBGMI

⬆️ available wherever you listen to podcasts

Patron exclusive show notes on Ep 155 which includes link to the split notes compendium.

Links to Five Apple’s podcast on the Reverse Doolittle split on Patreon, with links to Tina’s how-to article as well as my own silly drawings of the process AND the link to the compendium of splits methods I teach (the handout when I speak to bee clubs)

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Not a patron yet? You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon and join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show with $3 a month or more, please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen+ hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor, genetic diversity and disease resistance, but without chemical treatments for sixteen years. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year. 

Ep157  More Springtime Tips: Keeping bees in the boxes, avoid the honey dome, get more comb drawn, know if your hive is queenright or queenless. 

Ep156 Spring in the Bees! 

Ep 155 Interview with Colorado beekeeper and writer Tina Sebestyen

Ep 153 Interview with James Lee of SBGMI

⬆️ available wherever you listen to podcasts

Patron exclusive show notes on Ep 155 which includes link to the split notes compendium.

Links to Five Apple’s podcast on the Reverse Doolittle split on Patreon, with links to Tina’s how-to article as well as my own silly drawings of the process AND the link to the compendium of splits methods I teach (the handout when I speak to bee clubs)

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Here's an extra tip for those who read show notes: If you see your hive swarm, and it was a large hive, there are probably enough swarm cells left in the original hive to cause afterswarms. It's wise to carefully go in the hive and look for swarm cells on frames.

I like to relocate a frame with swarm cells, a frame with open nectar and ideally some pollen, and a capped brood frame to a nuc box and add a few shakes of bees (remember to never shake a frame with a queen cell on it if you plan to keep that cell). This is your backup insurance.

In the main hive, go through each frame carefully and brush bees off brood frames with a feather or bee brush so you can see the swarm cells. Cut them down to one large swarm cell and replace in the original hive.

You have greatly reduced the chances of afterswarms. Plus, you have a backup nuc (or three!) that will also requeen. If your main hive fails to make a queen (check 3 weeks after you do this split to look for eggs from the new queen!) you have the nuc most likely with a new queen and you can combine the two. You now have a young robust queen to go into winter! 

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Not a patron yet? You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon and join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show with $3 a month or more, please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor, genetic diversity and disease resistance, but without chemical treatments for sixteen years. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year. 

Today it's a ramble through things going on in the bee yard as Spring has taken over and the bees won't wait! Doing some quick splits to save the day, still aiming for more data-driven stock selection and whose swarm is this in my equipment?

Ep 155 Interview with Colorado beekeeper and writer Tina Sebestyen

Ep 153 Interview with James Lee of SBGMI

⬆️ both of these also available wherever you listen to podcasts

Patron exclusive show notes on Ep 155 which includes link to the split notes compendium.

Links to Five Apple’s podcast on the Reverse Doolittle split on Patreon, with links to Tina’s how-to article as well as my own silly drawings of the process AND the link to the compendium of splits methods I teach (the handout when I speak to bee clubs)

Not a patron yet? You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon and join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show with $3 a month or more, please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor, genetic diversity and disease resistance, but without chemical treatments for sixteen years. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year. 

I ask Tina about the Miller (graftless) method of Queen rearing and her recent articles in ABJ, then we wander into chat between bee friends of goings on in our apiaries, things we want to try this year and more. Enjoy!

-Leigh

Supporting Patrons, view your exclusive show notes here. 

Patron exclusive detailed show notes include:

What is the Miller Method? 

More info and how-to from Tina’s on the Miller method

Article on the Miller Method with illustrations of the special comb cuts. 

Handy queen calculator where you fill in the date you graft (or remove the queen in a frame-based split) and it fills in the critical dates such as the cell being ripe and able to be moved to another hive (day 10), when to check back for eggs, etc

Videos from Tina’s Four Corners Bee Association on splits and other topics

Link to Tina’s ABJ article on the Demaree method of swarm management. 

(You will need an ABJ subscription to access that article. The subscription gets you access to years of archived issues so it’s a real reference resource!)  Not an ABJ subscriber? Subscription info here: https://americanbeejournal.com/subscribers/orderrenew-subscription/

Five Apple’s podcast on the Reverse Doolittle split on Patreon, with links to Tina’s how-to article as well as my own silly drawings of the process. 

Queen Breeders we mentioned in the show and their links:

Cory Stevens (MO) 

Sourwood Farms (VA) 

Hall Apiaries (NH)

Not a patron yet? You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon and join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show with $3 a month or more, please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor, genetic diversity and disease resistance, but without chemical treatments for sixteen years. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year. 

Today I share some great tips shared by Greg Rogers of Haw Creek Honey when he presented to our local club. Then we work through swarm prevention strategies (starts at 16:25) that are especially important when it's too early in the season to make splits due to drone availability.

Patrons, you will find your exclusive detailed show notes here.

Today's notes include:

Not a patron yet? You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon and join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show with $3 a month or more, please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor, genetic diversity and disease resistance, but without chemical treatments for fifteen years. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year. 

Today I interview James Lee, president of the Sustainable Beekeepers Guild of Michigan about the goals and offerings of this important virtual education hub for beekeepers interested in increasing the genetic work towards reducing the need for treatments in hives. We talk about his work in creating the Northern Queen Initiative to provide locally raised Northern adapted queens as well as his own apiary and management techniques which you can follow on his YouTube channel James Lee's Bees. 

We mention the Harbo Assay, a well-documented but labor intensive way to 'grade' queens on their expression of varroa sensitive hygiene as a way to guide stock selection. SGBMI even offers a course you can take to learn to do it. Or you can read about it from this publication from Penn State. 

I hope you enjoy this interview! Leigh

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This episode is free and available to everyone....and your support really makes a difference. You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon to join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show with $3 a month or more, please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor and mite/disease resistance. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year. 

This is a hefty episode that reviews some of the many, many ways knowing bee biology will directly affect the decisions you have to make as a beekeeper in every season of beekeeping. It's long because it affects nearly everything and this is just a sampling! Beginners: take the details you need and just roll with the stuff that you haven't learned yet, but please note how important learning all that bee life cycle stuff turns out to be! Experienced beekeepers: I hope this will inspire you to emphasize bee biology to your mentees as the framework they can build their beekeeping upon.

This episode is free and available to everyone....and your support really makes a difference. You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon to join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free.

https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

In addition to huge gratitude, you get:

Detailed show notes with links, tips, comments

Access to Patreon blog posts including tips and videos

Occasional bonus podcasts and early access episodes

Commenting on posts (and DMs) allows me to answer questions

Input on the podcast topics

Shout-outs on the show because I appreciate you! 

If you can support the show with $3 a month or more, please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple

About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor, genetic diversity and disease resistance, but without chemical treatments for fifteen years. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year. 

It's that time of year as beekeepers that we find out how we did — how we did all the way back to the summer before. Some years it can be a tough report-card to get! As all things in bees there are many ways to understand what happened. The good news even if it was a bad year is this: we can do better in the coming season. In this episode I encourage you to do just that, while also acknowledging its really really hard to lose any of our colonies. But there's no way to be a beekeeper without losing hives sooner or later. If we truly learn from the losses, it can turn into beekeeping skills that help keep more colonies alive.

Things mentioned in the episode:

Ep 150: Lifecycle of the Bees (and beekeeper) - a storytelling of the yearly cycle the bees circle through and how the beekeeper interacts. Please share with friends and family who want to understand what you and your bees are doing as well as with new beekeepers who need this grounding to start learning about bees.

Ep 149: Starting with a Nucleus Colony, for Newbees A guide with tips for someone starting for the first time (or starting again) with Nucleus colonies. Supporting Patrons have access to an 11 page PDF with more content and hints on how to give your nuc the best start. Note: you may need to log into Patreon so the PDF attachment will show at the bottom of the post.

The New Hampshire Dead Out Checklist: Even if you don't live in NH, this checklist is VERY thorough on the kind of info you can collect from your deadout. It's a great model imo for other clubs to track what their members are seeing in lost hives to see if there are patterns.

Maine Beekeepers share this article on things to look for in an autopsy.

Once you have gathered info from these checklists, it's a great time to discuss with your mentor or with an experienced and successful* beekeeper at your next club meeting.

*in this case, I mean successful at reliably keeping their bees alive over winter

Wishing you all the very best, no matter what you found or find in your bee yard coming out of winter. No matter what, if you love working with bees: Don't quit!! As a speaker told our group one time: FAIL stands for First Attempt in Learning. Hang in there!

A special thanks to all the supporting patrons who keep this podcast going!! And thanks to all of you who take the time to share the podcast with your beekeeping friends and associations. If you would like to support this podcast (as well as get bonus content) please join us at Patreon.com/fiveapple

kind regards, Leigh