My 19 year old daughter did beekeeping on our land during COVID. She used Dr. Leo's book building the hives. Loved his method and had great success. We were so proud of her building and doing this all on her own and reaped the benefits...honey!
I have watched many videos of Dr Leo collaborating with Doug and Stacy and I would reccommend you go watch that as I love his philosophy and his horisontal boxes. As far as I'm concerned, Dr Leo is The Bee Whisperer
I have kept bees for several years. I absolutely love it. Working with my bees actually calms and relaxes me. And I talk to the bees all the time. And they know when someone differently is in their bee yard and they will show it. They do get attached to the ones taking care of them.
My 10 year old is listening to me listen to this and she pipes up and says, "and learn something old!" It cracked me up! We love listening to the Honeystead videos. It has been fun to have both people I watch together ❤️ ☺️
On the varroa topic, we take preventive measures by grinding organic sugar into powered sugar (store-bought powdered sugar usually has corn starch for anti-caking) and dust the bees once in the spring, once in the summer and twice in fall. What happens is that the bees clean themselves and then clean spots on eachother that they can't reach and knock the varroa mites off. The varroa mites fall through the hive to a sticky bottom that we put down so they can't crawl back up. Just something to perhaps look into! Great video!
We started with one hive this spring and harvested 2 supers of honey this year. We love this new hobby. We feel such a parental obligation to our "girls" to support them through the recent robber bees attempt as well as the winter. 🙏 lots to learn through books and my husband took a beekeeping class at our local community College.
Dear Caroline "humming along" my beloved wife and I are both so blessed by you and your family, but we both looked at each other and said I thought she was going to say "buzzing". Too funny, you really are a big blessing to us folks ready to step into our 7th decade God willing. Blessings from deep in the Mt of western NC and eastern TN.
Thank you ladies You are both my favourite homesteaders. We live in Australia and are living our homesteading lifestyle. Bees are our new addition finally. Growing all our own herbal medicine too. I have learned so much from both of you. You are both an absolute delight to watch Thank you for sharing all your wisdom and love of nature and animals
I am a Beekeeper in Northern Nevada and we just stacked three small colonies one on top of another each with a candy board, Queen excluder between each colony, and an quilt box and then added insulation around the outside and strapped it down, the next day we had 60 mike an hour winds, a storm blew in and it snowed, so we were just under the wire getting them ready for winter.
When we lived in the thumb of Michigan, we had bees. We sold them when we moved north because we figured it was too cold here for them. Well we are learning that there are people around us who keep theirs year round as well as those who send them south for the winter. We are considering restarting our hives. My biggest tip is this. Leave the hives alone on cloudy, windy, rainy days. Bees are cranky when the weather isn't good. If it's warm and sunny you can pretty much to anything with them and they won't care. My father-in-law didn't pay attention to the weather. Of the years that we and he had our bees, (different properties), my husband was only stung once and my father-in-law ....many times. The one time?....Don't mow around the hive on a bad weather day.
I just love your interview style/skills. I always feel like you cover so much and in such a wonderfully warm and inviting way. I am so trying bees next!!
This was the best video ever. Bee’s are what I am going to start back up.thanks so much! I watch honeystead every video by them. Only people that are just like me! Excellent
Hi, so nice seeing Kaylee on ur channel. I have been keeping bees now for 7 years. We live in a very remote area in the Rickey mountain trench. Our bees doing great just on native trees and plants and no endless fields of crops. You will be amazed at the amount of honey you can get just from tree and wildflower nectar. I am excited for you guys thinking about getting bees. You are going to love it. Great video 🇨🇦🌷
Carolyn: You may want to consider bringing in some bumble bees that are native to your region. While it its true that they don't produce honey they are excellent pollinators for your plants as are carpenter bees. The good thing about bumble bees is that they sleep peacefully under ground during the winter months and do not require sheltering like honey bees do. You may also want to consider going to a neighboring homestead where bees are present in your area and setting up a bee trapping box baited with an old piece of honey comb and some lemon grass oil. If you have any questions you can contact Doug and Stacy as I have seen Stacy in one of your videos where she visited your homestead. They can put you in contact with Dr. Leo the bee scientist. If you capture bees from the area near where you live they will already be adapted to the local climate and pests and are more likely to survive the conditions where you live. And the cost of trapping is very low. If you purchase you probably want a bee variety that is native to northern Europe as opposed to Italian bees that are better adapted to more warm climates. We all love the gently Italian bees, but they don't fare well even in Missouri winters and I know you are much further north. Hope this info is helpful.
🐝🐝Queen honey bees live on average 1-2 years 🐝🐝workers live on average 15-38 days (2 weeks , 1day - 5 weeks) in the summer and 🐝🐝workers live on average 150-200 days (4 - 6.5 months) in the winter. 🐝🐝 A single bee can produce 1 tablespoon of honey in its lifetime. 🐝🐝 Field bees visit 50 to 100 flowers during each trip. 🐝🐝 Honey bees fly 12 and 15 miles per hour. 🐝🐝 Honey bees flap their wings 12,000 times per minute.
I fell in love with a visiting swarm of bees this summer. They were so sweet ♡ Pain in the butt got into EVERYWHERE & I was happy when they left. ...and then i started studying up on bee keeping.
My grandpa (my dad's dad) use to keep bees . He died when I was only 11 months old so I never got to watch him in his hives. They tell me that he could walk into his and not suit up after working them for a few years. I have always wanted to keep bees. Hoping that I can start next spring.
I work part time for an organic beauty company who buy hives and bees for struggling farmers in poor countries and their yields have increased a lot as well as having the benefit of wonderful bee products
Great topic! We have been talking about whether or not to keep bees, and recently started making honey ferments. Honey is such a wonderful, natural food and medicine!
Might be advantageous to put some poles with reflector on that bend of the road on your side of it to maybe give a better alert that there is a bend in that road to such not so cautious drivers.
2 of my favorite ladies! I can't wait to see if you start bees on the family homestead. I too am considering a couple of hives and now have so much great info to hit the ground running. Thanks to both of you
I thought about doing bees, my neighbor has them and some of his got loose and swarmed one of our trees. It was an experience watching him corral them all back in the hive.
The way I see it, bees are homesteaders, just like you. They work long and hard to make all that honey to feed themselves through the hard seasons. How would you like it if someone came in and took all that food that you raised/grew, processed, and stored for future use, and then just gave you substandard commercial crap in its stead? I love Kaylee's respect for the work that her "girls" DO, and her honoring that by not taking it all. If you do your due diligence, there's plenty to go around! Don't be greedy, folks!
I have a beekeeper not far from where i live, his bees polinate everything for me. I have a gfeenhouse for my tomatoes and cucumber and I just lever the Doors open and they are there Evert Day. Its Nice to look at them and listning to them buzzing around.
2nd. Love the bee keeping information, like the essence of a thousand flowers and honey...I want to learn more now. What are some good starter resources? 😀🌱🐢
I can sadly identify with your car crashing story...Sunday about 6 am, I heard a crack and crash. I thought it was a tree falling, as we have several 60+ foot tall trees next to our house. It was a pickup truck that didn't know ours is a dead end road and the driver came over the embankment onto our property and almost rolled. He could not get out (although he tore up a lot of things trying) and requested I call an ambulance. He seemed uninjured but I told my sister there's never a dull moment here.
Good morning. I will try to tell you our story with bees. My husband always wanted to have bee hives. We moved to Michigan couple years ago and finally we got property where we could have bees. Hurray 😍😍. 2018 we both 2 bee hives and we were so excited. First year was so great. Next year started pretty good. Meantime my husband got stung couple times and everything was ok. Until July 22 2019 I will never forget that day. He got stung and ended in hospital unconscious. A lot of scary hours in the hospital. Long story short he was diagnosed with heavy allergies to the bees. That was a big drama for us. Unfortunately I that was the end for us been bee kippers.
I would like to know if Kaylee recommends starting with a Langstroth hive. She mentioned wanting to have a different kind. Planning to start bees in the spring and would like to know her thoughts before I purchase hives. I love the concept of the Flow Hive but they are pricy. The beekeeper that is giving classes has Langstroth hives. Thanks for a great interview. Very informative.
One thing they did not talk about it how much it cost to get into bee keeping. As a bee keeper you can expect to pay about $500 just to get started, unless you can get used equipment. Verroa mite control is also an expense you need to consider. It is an on going treatment both spring and fall. And all hives do not produce enough honey to be harvested every year.
Hi, a few pantry chats ago you mentioned a nutritious gluten-free bread course but I have not been able to find it again. Would you be willing to share the link? I would love to participate.
We don't keep bees, bees keep us. THAT is the one fact to remember when you start beesteading. :) Bees are livestock, your hive will adapt its own personality just like your children, chickens, pigs, cows, ducks and every other animal on the stead and the two of you will establish a relationship. They are super intelligent. Bees will need a little support and love from you, and they will return in kind. You will need to provide them with a few things along the way but all in all they will maintain themselves, just like your livestock does. They will need simple respect from you and they will give you the same. Just like your livestock there are times you don't mess with them and there are times they need your attention/interaction. They will interact with you while you are out and about just like other livestock does. In fact, you will often feel like they are following you around the farm at times and guess what... they probably are. One negative to mention- Grouchy bees are not uncommon so if you get a hot hive find a beekeeper who doesn't mind grouchy defensive bees and save yourself the turmoil of trying, especially since you have children.
I heard someone say recently that they had to stop keeping bees because they could no longer lift 80 lbs. I never realized that harvesting the honey required that much strength! Is that true?
Your honey harvest will depend 100% on the size of your colony. The colony size determines how much comb will be used for storage. And then there’s how much you can retrieve without causing hardship for them. Assuming the hive is of normal / average size and functioning well, how much (estimated) honey can one harvest? This is what I’d like to know as well.
New beekeepers should check out Frederick Dunn's RUclips channel "The Way to Bee" he takes questions from backyard beekeepers and gives his take on it every Friday. It's up to episode 183 this last week I think. Great stuff. Many other channels out there on backyard beekeeping.
My 19 year old daughter did beekeeping on our land during COVID. She used Dr. Leo's book building the hives. Loved his method and had great success. We were so proud of her building and doing this all on her own and reaped the benefits...honey!
I have watched many videos of Dr Leo collaborating with Doug and Stacy and I would reccommend you go watch that as I love his philosophy and his horisontal boxes. As far as I'm concerned, Dr Leo is The Bee Whisperer
I second this. I attended a class he did for the Homesteading Expo and came away enthused and with plans rolling around in my head.
I have kept bees for several years. I absolutely love it. Working with my bees actually calms and relaxes me. And I talk to the bees all the time. And they know when someone differently is in their bee yard and they will show it. They do get attached to the ones taking care of them.
Thanks for sharing!
My 10 year old is listening to me listen to this and she pipes up and says, "and learn something old!" It cracked me up! We love listening to the Honeystead videos. It has been fun to have both people I watch together ❤️ ☺️
Love it!!
Me too!!
On the varroa topic, we take preventive measures by grinding organic sugar into powered sugar (store-bought powdered sugar usually has corn starch for anti-caking) and dust the bees once in the spring, once in the summer and twice in fall. What happens is that the bees clean themselves and then clean spots on eachother that they can't reach and knock the varroa mites off. The varroa mites fall through the hive to a sticky bottom that we put down so they can't crawl back up. Just something to perhaps look into! Great video!
We started with one hive this spring and harvested 2 supers of honey this year. We love this new hobby. We feel such a parental obligation to our "girls" to support them through the recent robber bees attempt as well as the winter. 🙏 lots to learn through books and my husband took a beekeeping class at our local community College.
Dear Caroline "humming along" my beloved wife and I are both so blessed by you and your family, but we both looked at each other and said I thought she was going to say "buzzing". Too funny, you really are a big blessing to us folks ready to step into our 7th decade God willing. Blessings from deep in the Mt of western NC and eastern TN.
Thank you ladies
You are both my favourite homesteaders. We live in Australia and are living our homesteading lifestyle. Bees are our new addition finally. Growing all our own herbal medicine too. I have learned so much from both of you. You are both an absolute delight to watch
Thank you for sharing all your wisdom and love of nature and animals
Thanks for sharing!
I am a Beekeeper in Northern Nevada and we just stacked three small colonies one on top of another each with a candy board, Queen excluder between each colony, and an quilt box and then added insulation around the outside and strapped it down, the next day we had 60 mike an hour winds, a storm blew in and it snowed, so we were just under the wire getting them ready for winter.
When we lived in the thumb of Michigan, we had bees. We sold them when we moved north because we figured it was too cold here for them. Well we are learning that there are people around us who keep theirs year round as well as those who send them south for the winter. We are considering restarting our hives. My biggest tip is this. Leave the hives alone on cloudy, windy, rainy days. Bees are cranky when the weather isn't good. If it's warm and sunny you can pretty much to anything with them and they won't care. My father-in-law didn't pay attention to the weather. Of the years that we and he had our bees, (different properties), my husband was only stung once and my father-in-law ....many times. The one time?....Don't mow around the hive on a bad weather day.
Two of my favorite YT channels collide! Thank you for this collaboration and the information! 🐝
Love listening to these intelligent beautiful ladies ♡♡
Yay!! Cailee from Honeystead!! Love you lady!! She is a wealth of information!! She has helped me know about so many things!!
I just love your interview style/skills. I always feel like you cover so much and in such a wonderfully warm and inviting way. I am so trying bees next!!
Thank your husband for me Kaylee for his service!
This was the best video ever. Bee’s are what I am going to start back up.thanks so much! I watch honeystead every video by them. Only people that are just like me! Excellent
Glad it was helpful!
Hi, so nice seeing Kaylee on ur channel. I have been keeping bees now for 7 years. We live in a very remote area in the Rickey mountain trench. Our bees doing great just on native trees and plants and no endless fields of crops. You will be amazed at the amount of honey you can get just from tree and wildflower nectar. I am excited for you guys thinking about getting bees. You are going to love it. Great video 🇨🇦🌷
Carolyn: You may want to consider bringing in some bumble bees that are native to your region. While it its true that they don't produce honey they are excellent pollinators for your plants as are carpenter bees. The good thing about bumble bees is that they sleep peacefully under ground during the winter months and do not require sheltering like honey bees do. You may also want to consider going to a neighboring homestead where bees are present in your area and setting up a bee trapping box baited with an old piece of honey comb and some lemon grass oil. If you have any questions you can contact Doug and Stacy as I have seen Stacy in one of your videos where she visited your homestead. They can put you in contact with Dr. Leo the bee scientist. If you capture bees from the area near where you live they will already be adapted to the local climate and pests and are more likely to survive the conditions where you live. And the cost of trapping is very low. If you purchase you probably want a bee variety that is native to northern Europe as opposed to Italian bees that are better adapted to more warm climates. We all love the gently Italian bees, but they don't fare well even in Missouri winters and I know you are much further north. Hope this info is helpful.
🐝🐝Queen honey bees live on average 1-2 years
🐝🐝workers live on average 15-38 days (2 weeks , 1day - 5 weeks) in the summer and
🐝🐝workers live on average 150-200 days (4 - 6.5 months) in the winter.
🐝🐝 A single bee can produce 1 tablespoon of honey in its lifetime.
🐝🐝 Field bees visit 50 to 100 flowers during each trip.
🐝🐝 Honey bees fly 12 and 15 miles per hour.
🐝🐝 Honey bees flap their wings 12,000 times per minute.
I am so very thankful for beekeepers ♡ I'm 60 now so I really don't think I'll ever get to be set up for it
Love both your channels! Sweet surprise to see you both. ❤❤
Great to hear so much info on beekeeping. In northern Idaho, you may want to install electric fence around the hives if you have any bear in your area
Such an important video ! Thank you 😊 so educational. I'm sharing this on fb
' it's completely beautiful ' ♡
This discussion was so informative! Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
Oh we needed this!!!
I fell in love with a visiting swarm of bees this summer. They were so sweet ♡ Pain in the butt got into EVERYWHERE & I was happy when they left. ...and then i started studying up on bee keeping.
I love it when two of my favorite channels collaborate!
Such a great video. You two are always inspiring, but making sure things are applicable & tangible.
My grandpa (my dad's dad) use to keep bees . He died when I was only 11 months old so I never got to watch him in his hives. They tell me that he could walk into his and not suit up after working them for a few years. I have always wanted to keep bees. Hoping that I can start next spring.
I work part time for an organic beauty company who buy hives and bees for struggling farmers in poor countries and their yields have increased a lot as well as having the benefit of wonderful bee products
Another way for me and my children learn about animals and bee Keeping is to join 4-H. I can learn with my children.
I totally understand Kaylee, I was that kid too ♡
Kaylee knows her bees ❤️
Another way to learn is to check if your town has extension classes on bee keeping.
Great topic! We have been talking about whether or not to keep bees, and recently started making honey ferments. Honey is such a wonderful, natural food and medicine!
That is awesome!
Thanks. This was great!
does she have a podcast: I could listen to her speaking about this all day: soooo relaxing
Are you talking about Kaylee? If so she has a website, blog and a RUclips channel called the honeystead.
Where I live in Washington North 40 works with some beekeepers and sells hives in the spring.
Great talk ladies. Thank you very much and God bless you both.
Thanks for listening
what a beautiful story to beekeeping
Omg, I didn’t realize you lived so close. We love our bee’s and they have such an array of food in our area.
Might be advantageous to put some poles with reflector on that bend of the road on your side of it to maybe give a better alert that there is a bend in that road to such not so cautious drivers.
2 of my favorite ladies! I can't wait to see if you start bees on the family homestead. I too am considering a couple of hives and now have so much great info to hit the ground running. Thanks to both of you
So happy for you!
I just lost my bee colony, have to start over next year. Good luck to you.
I thought it was going to be about herbalism. I love Honeystead's channel
I thought about doing bees, my neighbor has them and some of his got loose and swarmed one of our trees. It was an experience watching him corral them all back in the hive.
The way I see it, bees are homesteaders, just like you. They work long and hard to make all that honey to feed themselves through the hard seasons. How would you like it if someone came in and took all that food that you raised/grew, processed, and stored for future use, and then just gave you substandard commercial crap in its stead? I love Kaylee's respect for the work that her "girls" DO, and her honoring that by not taking it all. If you do your due diligence, there's plenty to go around! Don't be greedy, folks!
I have a beekeeper not far from where i live, his bees polinate everything for me. I have a gfeenhouse for my tomatoes and cucumber and I just lever the Doors open and they are there Evert Day. Its Nice to look at them and listning to them buzzing around.
Excited about this episode! Love you both and 2 more things on my homestead wishlist are IPP’s and 🐝! ❤ y’all, Kristy in Missouri zone 6b 😃🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
IPP‘s are the best! 😍
Very informative, great conversation!
Glad you enjoyed it!
We live across the state line from you in Montana. The University of Montana has an online beekeeping program that is very worthwhile.
21:51 The more you learn, the more you will realize just how little you actually know!
2nd.
Love the bee keeping information, like the essence of a thousand flowers and honey...I want to learn more now. What are some good starter resources?
😀🌱🐢
I can sadly identify with your car crashing story...Sunday about 6 am, I heard a crack and crash. I thought it was a tree falling, as we have several 60+ foot tall trees next to our house. It was a pickup truck that didn't know ours is a dead end road and the driver came over the embankment onto our property and almost rolled. He could not get out (although he tore up a lot of things trying) and requested I call an ambulance. He seemed uninjured but I told my sister there's never a dull moment here.
Good morning. I will try to tell you our story with bees. My husband always wanted to have bee hives. We moved to Michigan couple years ago and finally we got property where we could have bees. Hurray 😍😍. 2018 we both 2 bee hives and we were so excited. First year was so great. Next year started pretty good. Meantime my husband got stung couple times and everything was ok. Until July 22 2019 I will never forget that day. He got stung and ended in hospital unconscious. A lot of scary hours in the hospital. Long story short he was diagnosed with heavy allergies to the bees. That was a big drama for us. Unfortunately I that was the end for us been bee kippers.
Wow.
Hives built bees ordered starting next April.
My husband told me yesterday that I need to start raising bees. I said ok.
I wonder if he saw the hive I bought last fall on sale ?😅
I would like to know if Kaylee recommends starting with a Langstroth hive. She mentioned wanting to have a different kind. Planning to start bees in the spring and would like to know her thoughts before I purchase hives. I love the concept of the Flow Hive but they are pricy. The beekeeper that is giving classes has Langstroth hives. Thanks for a great interview. Very informative.
The update of Keeping Bees with a Smile reads easily. The new one is on his website now.
One thing they did not talk about it how much it cost to get into bee keeping. As a bee keeper you can expect to pay about $500 just to get started, unless you can get used equipment. Verroa mite control is also an expense you need to consider. It is an on going treatment both spring and fall. And all hives do not produce enough honey to be harvested every year.
Hi, a few pantry chats ago you mentioned a nutritious gluten-free bread course but I have not been able to find it again. Would you be willing to share the link? I would love to participate.
Coming soon!
I am interested too!
You should check out off grid with Doug and Stacey. They have several bee tutorials on their channel.
💖
We don't keep bees, bees keep us. THAT is the one fact to remember when you start beesteading. :) Bees are livestock, your hive will adapt its own personality just like your children, chickens, pigs, cows, ducks and every other animal on the stead and the two of you will establish a relationship. They are super intelligent. Bees will need a little support and love from you, and they will return in kind. You will need to provide them with a few things along the way but all in all they will maintain themselves, just like your livestock does. They will need simple respect from you and they will give you the same. Just like your livestock there are times you don't mess with them and there are times they need your attention/interaction. They will interact with you while you are out and about just like other livestock does. In fact, you will often feel like they are following you around the farm at times and guess what... they probably are. One negative to mention- Grouchy bees are not uncommon so if you get a hot hive find a beekeeper who doesn't mind grouchy defensive bees and save yourself the turmoil of trying, especially since you have children.
I heard someone say recently that they had to stop keeping bees because they could no longer lift 80 lbs. I never realized that harvesting the honey required that much strength! Is that true?
Your honey harvest will depend 100% on the size of your colony.
The colony size determines how much comb will be used for storage. And then there’s how much you can retrieve without causing hardship for them.
Assuming the hive is of normal / average size and functioning well, how much (estimated) honey can one harvest? This is what I’d like to know as well.
👍🤗
New beekeepers should check out Frederick Dunn's RUclips channel "The Way to Bee" he takes questions from backyard beekeepers and gives his take on it every Friday. It's up to episode 183 this last week I think. Great stuff.
Many other channels out there on backyard beekeeping.
Are you friends with the channel called WHITE HOUSE ON THE HILL? They have bees
I want to raise bees.... but im allergic to bees... just doesnt seem smart unless i own a truck load of epipens
Nature is ' in tune' with God's truth ♡ unlike us most of the time
👍👍😊🐝🐝