So you decided that bees are awesome, and that learning to manage a colony of 40,000 stinging insects sounds like you!  Congratulations, and welcome to the beekeeping club!  The post below has a few sweet ideas and a beekeeping parts list to help you get started. Bees are a key supporter and indicator species for Read more about Beekeeping Parts List for Beginners[…]

Talk Title: Measuring Honey Bee Health using Robots Hear how an old beekeeping technique for observing hive health inspired the development of an autonomous bee health monitor, and the discovery of bee activity patterns directly tied to the colony and queen’s health. With over three years of bee activity data and video measured every 3 Read more about Measuring Honey Bee Health using Robots – Sonoma County Beekeepers Association[…]

Honored to be invited to present our Eyesonhives project to the Central Valley Beekeepers Association “Day for Beekeepers” meetup! Event Details The event will be hosted in Dadant’s Fresno location.  Event details: Time: Saturday Feb 18th, 2017.  Eating starts 11:30am.   Speakers start 1:30pm Location: Dadant & Sons Beekeeping Supply Co. Address: 3914 N. Winery   Fresno  CA  Read more about Eyesonhives at Central Valley Beekeepers Association Day for Beekeepers[…]

Our goal for EyesOnHives is to remotely measure and monitor the health of a bee hive, and alert a beekeeper when something is wrong, so that beekeepers can be in the right place at the right time and help save their bees.  The Orientation Signal is the surprising breakthrough we discovered is the key to monitoring hive Read more about The Orientation Signal – the Pattern of Beehive Health[…]

Many beekeepers will tell you ants only clean up a dying hive, rather than cause its death.  But they don’t have EyesOnHives.  Check out what we saw after moving an otherwise perfectly healthy hive: Do cinnamon sticks prevent ants from attacking a bee hive? Placing cinnamon sticks is an often recommended method of deterring ants, at least Read more about How to stop ants attacking bees and protect your bee hive[…]

“As we carefully pried open the hive together, we forgot all about mentoring, market strategy and startups. I could see David sharing in what I call the ‘Bee Zen’ experience. In that moment, he felt the same connection with the bees that I did. As we peered into the hive, I found the queen I Read more about When bees get involved, mentoring becomes a friendship[…]

Imagine if a bill was passed that offered farmers the option of installing bee colonies on their land in exchange for tax deductions – Jonathan O Do you remember the people who encouraged and supported your ideas?  I was reminded of the goodness of answering questions constructively recently when reading a great answer on Quora Read more about Tax deductions for bees?[…]

Washboarding: a curiosity of beekeeping? Washboarding is an interesting behavior where bees walk back and forth in a ‘washboarding dance’, for reasons apparently unknown to beekeeping. Some speculate the bees do this when food sources are unavailable, or the bees don’t know where to find them. What does observation tell us? EyesOnHives allows us to visually Read more about Washboarding Bees[…]

National Honey Bee Day is August 20th Join EyesOnHives at the Oregon Honey Festival for National Honey Bee Day, this Saturday August 20th. Happy National Honey Bee Day! Plant flowers, thank a bee! Did you know that National Honey Bee Day became official in 2009?  You can view the proclamation of National Honey Bee Day Read more about EyesOnHives at the Oregon Honey Festival 8/20[…]

Check out the 45minute livecast and Q&A session with EyesOnHives project lead Kelton Temby. Livecast date: June 30th. Title: Citizen Science & Tech Helping Bees Livecast – EyesOnHives Length: 46mins, transcript below. Starting with Citizen Science In this introduction livecast we share the story of EyesOnHives!  We outline why we started, then launch in to how beekeepers Read more about Citizen Science & Tech Helping Bees Livecast – EyesOnHives[…]

This beautiful bee is Bombus Vosnesenskii, the native Yellow Faced Bumblebee. You can imagine our surprise and joy to see this amazing creature dancing from flower to flower in the protected coastal meadows of Cambria California last weekend! The flower in these pictures is a coastal California native too – erigeron glaucus known as “Seaside Daisy”.  You can Read more about Yellow Faced Bumblebee Bombus Vosnesenskii[…]

Ever wonder if there’s a bee Picasso inside your hive, creating works of art with her palette of bee pollen? A hive inspection often includes joy and surprise at the simple beauty of the inside of the bees’ hive. These great colors show the diversity of pollen from local flowers organized meticulously in comb near the Read more about Fermentation: Bee Pollen to Bee Bread[…]

EyesOnHives quantifies flight activity levels – the signal creates a record of forager activity, orientation, swarming, robbing etc. You can look for things like what’s happening on the landing board, and pollen income in the videos too since you can actually see the bees (a little easier to interpret than scale weight data!). The tech also makes it Read more about What’s on the Beehive’s Landing Board?[…]

If you haven’t seen or heard about a few bee swarms yet, then you probably don’t live in the southern part of the United States.  Swarm season is in full overdrive this month here! Are you prepared for bee swarms? Swarm traps are a heck of a lot better than the unprepared alternative I threw Read more about Of Mice, Men, and Bee Swarms[…]

Most of the cranky hives right now have cranky bees because their brood nest is filling up with honey, and they’re preparing to swarm. How to know the bees are preparing to swarm? Time of year, experience and observation through hive inspections.  Also helps when you have EyesOnHives alerting you of nearby hives which are also Read more about Cranky Bees? Don’t get mad at them, find out why![…]

It’s swarm season to be sure, but it’s certainly also splitting season!  Bees being in swarming mode means we can also have an easier time raising queens! My Queen rearing is going very well – all hives are progressing nicely with healthy queens and a good brood pattern.  I’m now raising an additional two queens.   Read more about Raising Queens the Easy Way[…]

It’s not every day we get to discover something amazing about honeybees, humans have kept them for thousands of years.  But over the last 3 weeks we have detected the ‘swarming signal’ on hives swarming all over town. Here’s the timelapse video of the third hive detected to be swarming, where the bees actually clustered underneath Read more about Swarming Signal Detected in Real Time with EyesOnHives[…]