The pen drawings represent my honey house as it stands today. I am not sending it to you because I think it is an ideal honey house by any means, but considering the surroundings it suits me very well. The surface of the ground around the house and bee-yard is perfectly flat and level, so there is no chance to build on two levels, or I would have built it that way. As it is I have tried to have things as handy as possible with everything on one level.

It may be safely said that any place where farming, gardening, or fruit raising can be successfully followed is adapted to the profitable keeping of bees. Many of these localities will support extensive apiaries. In addition to this there are, within the borders of the United States, thousands of good locations for the apiarist — forest, prairie, swamp, and mountain regions — where agriculture has as yet not gained a foothold, either because of remoteness from markets or the uninviting character of soil or climate. This pursuit may also be followed in or near towns and, to a limited extent, in large cities. It even happens in some instances that bees in cities or towns find more abundant pasturage than in country locations which are considered fair.

In Honey from the Earth we see the diversity of hives, bees and methods played out to its absolute extreme. There are plenty of the familiar wooden, frame hives here, close to the ground; easy to manipulate and move. But the sky is, quite literally, the limit. Beehives are made of any and every available material that can be fashioned into homes that bees will accept and occupy — lumber, hollow logs, live trees, straw, reeds, bark, mud and plastic are all used according to the unique local situations in which bees and their keepers find themselves.

Our hillside cellar was dug in the late 1880’s and is still in good shape today. An entry-way with double doors creates some dead air space between the cellar and the outside environment, making excellent insulation. It’s a big cellar, and several of our neighbors have used it for storing apples, potatoes, onions, etc. But one year some adventuresome wild bees decided to make their nest between the double doors, creating a major obstacle for anyone trying to go in or out.

If the general public finally becomes convinced of the purity and wholesomeness of extracted honey, this will become a staple article of food. Comb honey to command the higher price – proportionate to the greater cost of production – must justify the extra cost to the consumer by its finer appearance. The consumer of extracted honey is not concerned as to the straightness or finish of the combs in which it was originally stored, but by virtue of its appearance there will probably always be a good demand for the finest grade of comb honey where appearance is the chief consideration.

The honey bee is arguably the weakest link in the U.S. food supply chain and on this tenuous link is born the heaviest burden. Fully 40% of what we eat, to one degree or other pivots on the work of bees. Along with honey, most of our fruit, fruit juices and wines, as well as our nuts, berries and vegetables depend of bees. While not the primary pollinator of alfalfa, honey bees do contribute to its pollination. To a lesser degree the livestock that eat alfalfa; our milk, beef, sheep, goats and even chickens all depend on the honey bee. Imagine dinner time without honey bees; our diet would be so uninspiring that it would take the joy out of a pleasant meal at the end of the day.

Moving beehives from one location to another is often a necessary step in apiary management. Commercial beekeepers routinely move large numbers of hives often during a season, to pollinate crops, avoid pesticide applications or to utilize specific honey flows. Beekeeping hobbyists may also move bees to distant honey flows or pollination sites, or to bring home a newly purchased hive.

Mullein is a hardy native, soft and sturdy requiring no extra effort to thrive on your part. Whether you care to make your own medicines or not, consider mullein’s value to bees, bumblebees, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, who are needing nectar and nourishment that is toxin free and safe to consume. In this case, all you have to do is… nothing. What could be simpler?

As most of us know, bees swarm — that is, leave the hive en mass — for several reasons. The most common reason is a lack of room to grow, when there are plenty of blooming plants in the vicinity. When bees swarm, they hatch out a new queen and follow her to find a place to build a new hive. By contrast, in Colony Collapse Disorder the bees slip away as individuals, leave their posts and duties, signalling some kind of failure. Perhaps they only leave in a last desperate urge to avoid fouling the nest with their corpses.

Hundreds of new chemicals are released every year in the U.S., most of them with little testing. Furthermore, some chemicals that do get tested are tested by the company that manufactures them, in biased and unscientific conditions. Researchers on the subject of CCD are still combing through lists of newly released chemicals pertaining to agriculture, attempting to find ones that are used in countries that have CCD, but are banned in Canada, Mexico, France, and Italy. This type of research is more difficult than it might sound, because there is no one comprehensive list of all these chemicals.

It is my bees, however, which afford me the most pleasing and extensive themes; let me look at them when I will, their government, their industry, their quarrels, their passions, always present me with something new; for which reason, when weary with labour, my common place of rest is under my locust-trees, close by my bee-house.

It is well known that the value of pollination and its resultant seed set and fruit formation outweigh any provided by honey bee products like honey and beeswax.

The economics of commercial beekeeping on a small scale is changing rapidly as well. All the problems honeybees are facing, here and worldwide, have sent the value of bees and bee products trending sharply up. Weather problems, and a huge global expansion of the corn and soybean monster has killed the world’s surplus of honey. In the U.S., commercial beekeepers are focused like zombies on pollinating the California almond crop, and so have further reduced their ability to produce surplus honey and bees for sale. At the same time that U.S. commercial beekeeping is circling down in a death spiral, hobby beekeeping is booming and almost every beekeeping club in the country has at least twice as many members as it did twenty years ago. What this means is that if you are fortunate enough to live in a place with relatively clean and varied sources of pollen and nectar, the potential for a successful family-sized commercial apiary is better now than it has been for many decades.

At the same time that U.S. commercial beekeeping is circling down in a death spiral, hobby beekeeping is booming and almost every beekeeping club in the country has at least twice as many members as it did twenty years ago. What this means is that if you are fortunate enough to live in a place with relatively clean and varied sources of pollen and nectar, the potential for a successful family-sized commercial apiary is better now than it has been for many decades.