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D&D Honey Welcome to the home of honey harvested from D&D Apiary!

10/06/2026

Bonus footage! I was trying to get a video of feeding the bees and a few fell in! Hopefully they make it back into the hive before the cool night air gets to them! (Don’t worry, I rescued the other one too!)

The world of beekeeping is consistently becoming “1 step forward, 2 steps back”. Mites are still the number 1 killer of ...
10/06/2026

The world of beekeeping is consistently becoming “1 step forward, 2 steps back”. Mites are still the number 1 killer of hives, wild and “kept”. The mites weaken the bees and spread diseases. Wild honey bees face loss of habitat and pesticides. Kept bees face those challenges along with small hive beetles, wax moths, and disease. I haven’t been keeping long, but this is the first year we almost lost a hive to starvation in the fall, plants lush with leaves, but not nectar. All 4 of our hives are easily consuming 1.5 gallons of sugar water every 2-3 days(12 -16 lbs of sugar added to a gallon of water!) That’s easily $70-$80 of sugar a week! Keepers can’t afford the upkeep of treatments, feed, and equipment when the bees don’t even have enough nectar to feed themselves, let alone make extra honey. Long story short, support your local keepers when you can. (This is not a request for help for me. I’m a hobbyist with a budget and I enjoy the experience, but there’s lots of keepers out there that rely on the funds they make selling to keep their keeping going!) You can also support programs like Save The Bees USA that directly support keepers like me to care for my hives and support bringing the experience to the classroom!

09/18/2026

Looks like a lot of the girls from the frame the other day have “hatched”!

The new Queen has been busy! I didn’t pull all the frames, just enough to get to this. All that brown is capped brood. S...
09/13/2026

The new Queen has been busy! I didn’t pull all the frames, just enough to get to this. All that brown is capped brood. So each cell had an egg that turned into a larvae, and now it’s in a cocoon like state before an adult bee comes out. If you want to save yourself some time counting, there’s over 3,000 cells PER side of the frame! That’s a lot of bees!

09/06/2026

Bees are NOT nocturnal, but sometimes they are attracted to lights if they return to the hive late. I have red tape over my porch lights, but sometimes the newer foragers still are attracted. This one was one of those. Fed her some honey and she may make it to sunrise. If not, there’s some cardinals that clean up each morning. Circle of life and all that 😔

They released the queen!(one nosey girl still checking it out). Did some leveling while I was at it and added some “moat...
09/05/2026

They released the queen!(one nosey girl still checking it out). Did some leveling while I was at it and added some “moats” to try to keep the ants out of the feeder. Also leveled the hive. You want a forward tilt, mostly for winter time. If condensation builds up in the hive, you don’t want it drip back down.

All hail the new queen! Arrived and installed. Next they need to chew out the sugar plug, which allows time for her pher...
08/27/2026

All hail the new queen! Arrived and installed. Next they need to chew out the sugar plug, which allows time for her pheromones to take over the hive so they are more likely to accept her. I’ll take a quick peek in about 4 days to be sure she’s been freed. Then we wait for new eggs/larvae to appear! (She is marked with a small white dot. Inside the cage are also attendants that take care of her while she is caged).

Thanks to Save The Bees USA for proving an Apimaye hive, these bees now have a fighting chance. This was a late spr...
08/27/2026

Thanks to Save The Bees USA for proving an Apimaye hive, these bees now have a fighting chance.
This was a late spring split. Recently, it became queenless for reasons unknown. This means population increase came to a halt. Less population means less workers which means less honey for them to prepare for winter(as well as a hive weak against attacks).
This year I put Apimaye bottom boards and tops on my wood boxes and they work great for both the keeper and the bees. Even with the high temps we saw less bearding(means they weren’t too hot) and feeding was much easier. By using an Apimaye hive body this hive will now be able to waste less energy regulating temps(high and low) and more energy growing and gathering. This winter it will provide much needed insulation for the hive to use less energy to stay warm, even if they are a smaller hive. It also has a latching system that will better seal the hive and protect from pests and robbing.
I transferred the girls this morning and a new mated queen arrives today. With these additional supports, it will hopefully give them the ability to bounce back and prepare for winter!

“If you build it, he will come”. So not quite a field, but a patch of buckwheat and the pollinators are arriving! This i...
08/07/2026

“If you build it, he will come”. So not quite a field, but a patch of buckwheat and the pollinators are arriving! This is the first season we are trying out buckwheat. A much larger patch at one apiary, this one smaller. It’s a high nectar plant that is quick growing and blooming and easy to grow. If plant enough and they use the nectar for honey, it makes for a richer, darker honey. Main purpose we want to use it for is during “dearth” periods when no native plants are blooming.

08/01/2026

Washboarding! We don’t know exactly why they do it, but likely simply cleaning the outside of the hive. Usually happens when things are slow, around this time of year between nectar flows. (Pick a bee and watch their behavior)

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