Beekeeping

Bee communication is one of many aspects of honeybees that fascinates me. While we use words to communicate, honeybees use their sense of smell, body movements and the location of the sun to communicate.   Most people know that honeybees emit pheromones but few know what it really means to the honeybees. A honeybees’ sense of smell is 50 times stronger than a dogs and 100 times stronger than a human. Think about the miraculous ability of a diabetes service dog, make that 50 t

The layout and design of our apiary involved a lot of research and planning. My goals were to have a readily available and diverse diet for our honeybees, include all native plants to where we live (Park City, Utah) and have safe plants around our family. Our apiary site is on our property in the mountains at 8000’ of elevation, so finding hearty plants to grow was a bit challenging. We also had to consider the wildlife who live off our land and be sure the plants were safe f

Life has a funny way of getting busy. With young children and two large dogs, running a home, carefully designing an apiary and building our forever home … I could barely keep up some days. But I needed to set aside time to become educated about beekeeping and honeybees and get more connected in my community.   A quick internet search opened my eyes to the countless universities that offer learning opportunities through extension programs. Several offer beekeeping courses wit

How we got into beekeeping