by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2019 | 2019 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post ← View Previous Post UPDATED DATES JAN 2019: Every year I get many requests to visit and/or to work here in the apiary– to see in person an apiary operating successfully for many years without treatments, and to learn something...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2016 | 2016 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → January 2016: FERAL AND MANAGED COLONIES (I was hoping to publish this essay together with a description of feral bees by another author who has studied them quite extensively. When I could see that the companion article...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2014 | 2014 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → (An edited version of this was first published in the Small Farmer’s Journal, Spring and Summer issues, 2014. This is the complete text. The original essay: “The Best Kept Secret”, is now on the website...
by kirkwebster | Mar 1, 2012 | 2012 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → With EAS (Eastern Apicultural Society conference) coming to Vermont this year, and many inquiries coming in from customers and friends who are members, I’ve decided it’s time for me to post in a public place...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2011 | 2011 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → I’m embarrassed to admit that I can only remember three specific things that I learned in the Ecology program that I attended for a semester at the Evergreen State College many years ago. The first is that...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2011 | 2011 Writings, View All Posts
← The Best Beekeeping Meeting I Ever Attended Helping Honeybees Refill Their Niche - The Apiary Farm → At the Treatment-Free Beekeeping Conference in Leominster last July, it was very clear that the people who have succeeded in keeping a productive apiary...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2011 | 2011 Writings, View All Posts
Since the arrival of tracheal and varroa mites, beekeeping meetings have for the most part reflected the industry’s depressed state of mind, and more recently they leave one with the overall impression of individuals or small groups of beleaguered soldiers,...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2010 | 2010 Writings, View All Posts
The Best Beekeeping Meeting I Ever Attended → Maybe we’re asking the wrong questions, or asking too many small questions instead of facing up to the bigger and more important ones. The current decline of honeybee numbers and vitality apparently has several...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2009 | 2009 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → As a change of pace from my other contributions for 2009, I thought I would share with you a few stories about my mentors and how they shaped the way I conceived and developed the apiary I’ve described in this...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2009 | 2009 Writings, View All Posts
← What's Missing From The Current Discussion And Work Related To Bees That's Preventing Us From Making Good Progress? Nature Has All the Answers, So What's Your Question?* and A Page From a Treatment-Free Beekeeping Diary → Hobby beekeeping in...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2009 | 2009 Writings, View All Posts
Nature Has All the Answers, So What's Your Question?* and A Page From a Treatment-Free Beekeeping Diary → For several years, back aways now, it was unbearably dreary and frustrating listening to discussions between beekeepers, reading the bee journals, and...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2008 | 2008 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → This was written in preparation for a talk at the 2008 National Beekeeping Conference in Sacramento, Ca. The actual, give and take session was likely somewhat different… The paperback dictionary on my desk defines...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → So, after almost a year, we’ve arrived back where we started this column, doing the very last outdoor job of the season—melting the cappings wax on a nice day in December. It’s a good job to end the season with. There’s...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → When November arrives, I start packing, beginning with the 2-story honey producing colonies. If, early in the month, there appear to be a good percentage of these with PMS symptoms or non-viable clusters, I will spend a...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → With a good honey crop, extracting will continue for the whole month of September. This month usually begins as the end of summer, and finishes as the beginning of autumn. We like to push steadily on during this time, so...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → Around here the most likely time to have very hot and humid weather is during July. One of my farming friends always crosses out the word “July” on his calendar, and writes in another four-letter word. It can be just as...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → Around here, our honey crop—the excess honey we can sell—comes from the various clovers, birdsfoot trefoil, purple vetch, alfalfa and basswood. Because most of the open land is actively farmed or grazed, and has a heavy...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → Beekeeping has been present in this part of Vermont almost as long as European settlers have been here—that is, since the 1790’s. During all of that time, beekeepers made up most of their new colonies during May and...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → I know that summer doesn’t officially begin until June 20 or so; but around here we really need to have all of June as a summer month. Otherwise our only warm season would be too short and we would get very depressed....
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → The last two weeks of April and the first week of May are one of the most interesting and critical times of year in this apiary, where lots of nucleus colonies are carried through the winter, and the most promising of...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → You often hear it said around here: “April is by far the cruelest month”. At this time of year we can spend one whole day outside in the warm sunshine, and then look out the next morning to see a blizzard in progress,...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → Interest is really building now for a more self-sufficient, healthy and resilient style of non-migratory beekeeping in the northern states. Unstable honey prices, mites, africanized bees, and the misguided efforts to...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2007 | 2007 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → Interest is really building now for a more self-sufficient, healthy and resilient style of non-migratory beekeeping in the northern states. Unstable honey prices, mites, africanized bees, and the misguided efforts to...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2006 | 2006 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → Now I come to the last of this year’s essays, and the most difficult of all to write. It’s also perhaps the most important one because many times the economic, social and spiritual elements, which are enormously...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2006 | 2006 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → I have a favorite book from the 1940’s: The Farming Ladder, by George Henderson. It’s a great story of two brothers from London, who set out at age 15 and 16—with no money—to learn farming and eventually have their own...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2006 | 2006 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → OR: WILL THE NORTHERN STATES SUPPLY THE NATION’S SURPLUS BEES AND QUEENS IN THE FUTURE? I have to admit, I don’t understand why all beekeepers don’t raise their own queens, or at least let the bees do this for them....
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2006 | 2006 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → We all know that honeybees in North America (and much of the rest of the world) are having really serious health problems; and that these problems have greatly reduced honeybee colony numbers, driven many beekeepers out...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2006 | 2006 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → View Fullscreen Having trouble finding support for NATURAL practices in the current predatory and destructive American culture? You’re Not Alone. And We're Here to Help! If you would like to receive updates from...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2006 | 2006 Writings, View All Posts
View Next Post → To most of us who were keeping bees twenty and thirty years ago—as either a hobby or a livelihood- two of the chief attractions were the opportunity to work closely with the world of nature, and the seemingly miraculous qualities of the bees...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2005 | 2005 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → View Fullscreen Having trouble finding support for NATURAL practices in the current predatory and destructive American culture? You’re Not Alone. And We're Here to Help! If you would like to receive updates from...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 2005 | 2005 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → View Fullscreen Having trouble finding support for NATURAL practices in the current predatory and destructive American culture? You’re Not Alone. And We're Here to Help! If you would like to receive updates from...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 1999 | 1999 Writings, View All Posts
← View Previous Post View Next Post → The Best Kept Secret–Part 2 (First published in the Small Farmer’s Journal, Fall 1999) It’s all very well to speak and write about the thoughts and ideas that develop from working on something for a long...
by kirkwebster | Jan 1, 1999 | 1999 Writings, View All Posts
View Next Post → The Best Kept Secret–Part 1 (First Published in the Small Farmer’s Journal, Summer, 1999) Surely the best kept secret in the U.S. today is the wonderful way of life that’s possible with full-time farming on a small place. If more...
