Colorado Beekeepers Association
I (Tina) recently bought two Pol-line queens, hoping to add some great new genetics to my bees. I pulled nucs for them both, since that is so much surer as a way to introduce a new queen…get them accepted by a nuc, then insert the nuc into the full colony. I pulled the first nuc […]
The Traveling Road Show is a benefit from the Colorado State Beekeepers Association to affiliated clubs. CSBA will pay for time and travel expenses for an experienced beekeeper to visit your club and do an in-apiary day with club members. One of the comments heard most from participants is how much more confidence they feel […]
A bee club member called the other day, asking for help figuring out why his colony was weak. He hadn’t been in it recently, but when last checked, it seemed strong, and now it was down to about 3 frames of bees. Diagnosis always starts with history, so I asked how old the queen was.. […]
HOW TO IDENTIFY A SUSPECTED PESTICIDE BEE KILL AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT By: Pat Donahue Identifying a Suspected Pesticide Bee Kill. What the beekeeper will observe: A sudden large number of dead bees at the entrance of the hive and in front of the hive (more than 100/day is a normal average […]
This is splitting/ swarm control season across the state. I recently found a colony with queen cells in progress, and what looked like 50% drones among the adult bees, making it impossible to find the queen. This is no longer a stressful situation, since the Reverse Doolittle (or Fool-Proof Split) written about previously in this […]
You’ve seen the list of benefits of being a member of CSBA, but what does all of that mean to you as an individual beekeeper? Why do you want to belong to CSBA? Here are the reasons my club is affiliated, and through them, I am a member… Very high on my list of reasons […]
So you want to be a beekeeper! You’ll do your part to save the bees, and you’ll have honey on your toast every morning, right? My name is Ed Colby. I’m the president of the Colorado State Beekeepers Association (2016-2020) and a longtime columnist for Bee Culture magazine. Now take a deep breath, please, because […]
The easy way to collect clean propolis is to use a propolis trap late in the summer, when bees are already wanting to propolize everything in sight. It looks a lot like a a queen excluder (but different), and fits on top of the uppermost hive body. Once the bees get it filled with propolis, […]
Winter preparation of hives is the concern on everyone’s mind right now. Hopefully, everything is done already. The brood should be in the bottom hive body, and honey and bee bread consolidated in the box(es) above. The queen excluder should be removed, so that the bees can’t accidentally abandon the queen in moving to upper […]
We are getting on towards the end of August, and to our bees, it is almost fall. What makes the season “fall” to our honey bees? It is the slow-down of pollen coming into the hive. This change in pollen availability is what triggers our bees to raise the fat bees for winter. What makes […]
The Colorado Beekeepers Association shall be composed of Beekeepers of the State of Colorado and those interested in allied industries for the purpose of producing better beekeeping methods, better beekeepers, and a more unified system of apicultural work in Colorado.