Thank you for taking a class or workshop with us! Below are a few resources intended to help you in your journey.
If you enjoyed Tara’s teaching style, please check our her book, “For the Bees: A Handbook for Happy Beekeeping”!
Looking for more hands on help? We were the first to offer a 50+ hour immersive beekeeping course in Texas, and we are currently in our 16th cohort (our 8th year!) This beek apprenticeship program is only offered twice a year. The class most always sells out, and you can register or sign up to be notified when the next cohort is available at the link below. All classes take place at the Honey Ranch just east of Austin, and half of your time will be spent in bees. Each class is capped at 20.
Honey Bee Biology
- Video from the movie “More than Honey” showing the mating of a queen bee and a drone bee.
- NatGeo one minute time lapsed video of the 21 day development cycle of worker bee.
- Here is a link to an article I wrote on 10 mistakes I find new beekeepers are most likely to make
- Here is a link to our blog posts providing lots of beekeeping advice for new beeks!
Honey Bee Nutrition and Feeding Bees
- Mountain Camp Feeding: If you’re going into winter and concerned about your bees not having enough food, click this link to learn more about mountain camp feeding over winter.
- Recipes: Here are several recipes and guidelines for sugar syrup and pollen patties.
Pests and Disease
- Methods to Control Varroa Mites: An Integrated Pest Management Approach:This link sends you to a Penn State article providing a brief overview of varroa mites along with various preventative and treatment measures from across the Integrated Pest Management triangle. Your best line of defense is starting with good genetics: specifically a varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) queen.
- Honey Bee Health Coalition Varroa Management Decision Tool: This is a tool to guide you through various chemical treatments if your varroa mite load is above the recommended threshold. PLEASE NOTE: This tool used to provide options outside of chemical treatments, but it no longer provides those options. If you would like to explore other options instead of or in addition to treating with chemicals (and I strongly encourage you to do this) please visit the above link from Penn State.
- Testing/Monitoring for Varroa Mites: There are three primary ways to test for varroa: you can employ a sugar shake, alcohol wash, or use a CO2 cartridge. Each of these isolates the mites from the bees in a sample and allows you to extrapolate the total. Here’s a video demonstrating: the sugar shake test. You can learn more about all of the methods and at what levels experts recommend action in my book. Another helpful resource is this blog post excerpted from my book.
- A Quick Reference Guide to Honey Bee Parasites, Pests, Predators, and Disease: Another Penn State paper giving a brief overview of some of the more common pests and diseases.
