Living Systems Institute

<== Honeybee

Yellowjacket ==>

Don Studinski, Beekeeper and Teacher, is acting as mentor for beekeeping students.  Some are local to the Denver metro area, others are remote.  Many of the lessons happen during face-to-face encounters with the honeybees.  Others happen via written exchanges with the students.  These writings are being captured and edited into this series of chapters intended as handy reference materials for beekeepers, especially beginners. 

Honeybee Swarm ==>

In the spirit of expanding LSI's community sufficiency technologies, I am choosing to make this material freely available.   I hope that you will take some time to further explore this website and learn what LSI is doing as we build a strong and vibrant community locally and around the world. 

If you are interested in the Mentor Program or one-on-one time with Don, please check Beekeeping Services in the menu above.  Here's a fifteen minute video about hugelkultur at LSI.  Here's a two minute video, What If The Bees Stop Buzzing? with photos of the Van Gordon girls and remaining frames after death, 2011.  In this 30 minute interview, A Beekeeper's Perspective On CCD: Mystery? Disease? Symptom?, Don discusses his personal experience with CCD.

Feedback is always welcome and encouraged.  Please contact Don directly using dstudin@yahoo.com when providing feedback about this website.  Thank you in advance for your participation.

Beekeeping:  Mentor in a Book

Here is the story of 2012, just as it happened, laced with general honeybee knowledge and valuable topical discussion.  Imagine yourself as a student having dialog with your mentor.  Use the pictures to imagine yourself at the apiary seeing and doing what you are reading about.  The reader can learn what a beekeeper needs to be thinking and doing in any specific time of year.  This requires you to use your imagination and adjust to your climate and seasonal changes.  The reader can also learn from real experiences that happened to the author and his students during 2012 which can provide examples about the beekeeper's life. 

For any given month of activities, extensive preparation and planning has been in prgress, sometimes for several months, in advance.  Let's say you want to learn about splits and you see that it's covered in Chapter 7 which covers April.  You should also review the information in the several months leading up to April because that's when all the planning happened leading up to April splits.

I am in the habit of naming my colonies.  This aids in our student discussions.  Over time, you will learn where each colony is and we can talk about them specifically by name.  For example, Saturday, we worked with Pumpkin 1.1.  That's the split off of Pumpkin 1.  Other colonies out at Rock Creek Farm are Pumpkin 2, Arapahoe, Cherokee and Quay 2.

This is really two books in one.  Every other chapter is the story of beekeeping in 2012.  Student names are fictional, not intended to refer to or imply any real living person, however, the events are real and real students participated as indicated.  This story is interrupted every second chapter to provide educational material not specifically related to the 2012 beekeeping season.  Chapters are intentionally short with plenty of photographs.  They are meant to be read in a single engagement with the book.  Then, the reader can walk away and let the material sink in over time.  An extensive index is included for when you need to find information on a specific topic.

Table of Contents

1. January - Beekeepers Plan and Plan 
   Living colonies & changes
   Blown Over Hive
   Dealing with disaster
   What should be ready now
   Early Spring thinking
2. Honeybees:  Facts You Should Know
   Queens, Workers and Drones
3. February - Anticipating Spring
   Orientation
   Hive Relocation
   Swarm Preparations
   Planning Splits
   Exterior Hive Seal
   Interior Hive Seal
4. Know Your Cells
   Queen Cell
   Drone Cell
   Worker Cell
   Capped Honey
5. March - The Most Exciting Time of Year
   First Inspection
   Swarms
   Packages and Nucs
   Thoughts about Splits
   Dead-out Inspection
   First Inspection
   The Swarm Cycle and Preventing It
   An Opportunity to Clean Up
6. Tools of the Trade
   Bee suit variations
   Gloves
   Washing
   Treating a Sting
   Foot protection
   Hive tools
   Smoker
   Attitude
7. April - Swarms, Nucs and Packages
   Inverting Deeps
   Acknowledge Beekeeping Challenges
   4/7/12 Splits step one
   Extra Queen Cells
   Queen Cells
   Split Progress
   Unplanned Split
   Swarm Season Kickoff
   First Swarm of the Year
   Package Installation
   Tour Some Hives
8. Types of Honeybees
   Africanized
   Buckfast
   Carniolan
   Caucasian
   German-European-Western-Dark
   Italian
   Italian-Cordovan
   Russian
9. May - Building Comb
   Brood Pattern, Managing Comb
   Concerning Drones and Mating
   Identifying Laying Worker / Drone Layer 
   Queen Health Inspections
   Deeps and Supers
   Queen Difficulties
   Queen Health Inspection Timing
10. Honeybee Forage
11. June - Quiet Time
    Smoker Fuel
12. Superorganism
    Hive mind
13. July - Mite Control
    No Poison Required
    Living with Varroa Destructor
14. Pesticide Spiral
    EPA Fails to Protect Honeybees
    Bayer Pollen Kills Honeybees
15. August - Harvest Preparation
16. Apitherapy
17. September - Honey Harvest
18. Beekeeping Income
19. October - Finalize Winter Preparation
20. Honeybee Sources
21. November - No Peeking!  Make Candy
22. Honeybee Candy:  Winter Feeding
23. December - Candy Installation
24. Beekeeping Transition

Glossary -  in his own words

Don's handy to do list:

Spell Check entire text
ch 1 done.
ch 2 done.
ch 3 done.
ch 4 done.
ch 5 done.
ch 6 done.
ch 7 done.
ch 8 will take a long time.

Finish unwritten chapters

Identify 1st use of Glossary terms and highlight / link them

Make Glossary links go directly to correct term

© Copyright License Information