Who’s ready to kick off the beekeeping season in style? 🐝
Our first webinar of the year is happening on March 31 at 11am ET. Join us for a practical check-in on all things 2026 season preparation, plus hear how James’ bees overwintered.
Register via the link in our bio. We can’t wait to see you there 🌼
Ever heard of propolis? It's one of the natural products that honey bees create in the course of taking care of their hive, and it is harvested by beekeepers and used in natural throat remedies. You should try some 😋
Prepping for the coming bee season on this warm, sunny Saturday morning. An essential part of any beekeeping operation is keeping the equipment operational and leveraging resources to maximize the bees effort. That means utilizing drawn comb and honey leftover in frames from a hive that has died. Just like the bees don't waste much effort, we try to do the same.
Max Rünzel is the CEO and Co-Founder of HiveTracks, a Boone-based tech company using bees as biosensors to track hive health and biodiversity across 150+ countries. Originally from Germany, Max left a dream job at the United Nations in Rome when two beekeepers from the High Country convinced him to join them in building something new. In this episode, he shares the wild story of how HiveTracks came to be, the science behind using bees to monitor our planet, and what it’s like to build a global company from rural North Carolina.
Click the link in our Bio to listen to the full episode today!
If you've never seen bees do a waggle dance, take a look at this. The bees communicate distance, sun angle, and intensity of food sources through the dance to their nest mates. These are communicating the location of pollen sources, which are mostly maple trees right now based on the color of the pollen.
Late winter is about understanding where your colony is right now. 🐝🧐
By this point, stores are at their lowest, winter bees are tired, and brood rearing is beginning again. That overlap is why timing matters.
A simple check-in now helps you:
• assess food availability
• gauge population strength
• spot early brood activity
• plan feeding and inspections with confidence
What you notice at the end of winter sets the tone for the whole season ahead. 🐝
Before landscapes look green again, bees are already working 🌿🐝
Early spring forage provides the pollen and nectar needed to restart brood rearing and rebuild colony strength, especially after a long winter.. 🌼
Knowing what blooms first helps you understand what’s fueling your bees right now.
What are your early-spring bee-savers?
Not every busy-looking hive means foraging has begun 👀
Orientation flights are how young bees learn where home is, before real work starts. 👶🐝
Slow loops. Facing the entrance. Short flights.
Often confused with cleansing flights, but serving a very different purpose.
Knowing the difference helps you read what your colony is actually telling you. 🐝
The countdown is on! 🌼🐝 But which count do you track? Some count down to the equinox, others to March 1, and some say spring starts the moment it feels like it does.
With cold snaps still rolling through, we’re already looking ahead to longer days, new growth, and that quiet shift in the air that says change is coming. Swipe to compare the countdowns 👉
And let us know below when spring starts for you! 👀
Snow can feel harsh, especially when you’re watching hives wait out the cold.
But beneath that frozen surface, the system is quietly doing its work: insulating soil, protecting roots, preserving microbes, and setting up the conditions bees will rely on in the months ahead.
Winter doesn’t stop the cycle.
It steadies it. 🐝❄️
For bees, stability matters more than temperature. It’s fluctuation and disturbance, not cold itself, that creates stress. How do you manage cold snaps where you are? ❄️🐝
#beekeeping #hivetracks #bees #knowyourbees #beekeepers #pollinators #honeybees #biodiversity
