Colorado Beekeepers Association
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 […]
Dangers of spring When our bees survive through Feb. we breathe a sigh of relief, but the biggest danger of spring is really only beginning. Honey bees use 1/3 of their honey stores during the winter, and the other 2/3rds are used after brood rearing really begins in earnest. Spring pollen flows trigger the bees […]
Happy Beeks! I am sure you have all seen that your bees will fly if it is over 45 degrees. That is pretty amazing, since they can’t even move out of the cluster unless it is at least 40 degrees. These bee biology facts help us understand what we can do for our bees, and […]
Never Take Anything for Granted I did my mite counts in August, for once, when they should be done. I was very proud of myself. Of course you know that the reason for doing counts by mid-August is so that mites can be controlled before the bees begin rearing the fat winter bees. I did […]
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.