What you see in the photo above are bees hanging down from the front of their hive at our ranch. This is called “bearding” because it kind of looks like a beard added to the bottom of the hive’s face. Why do bees do this? There are at least three reasons we know. First, during
As part of preparing the ranch apiary for winter, we removed the honey supers (the third box) from each hive that had one. This will make it easier for the hives to stay warm in a smaller space. What did we do with the extra honey? The super that had the most honey was transferred
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Stewart Ranch Services has become an essential part of our ranch’s land management plan. We’ve retained them on several projects, including forestry mulching, road building, excavation, and pond improvements. Please note that the demand for their services is great. So you may need to be flexible when hiring them. However, they do great work, promptly,
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Fine Cut Land & Construction, LLC is our recommended vendor for construction of metal buildings, fences, etc. We are very pleased with the quality of their work and service. And their prices are competitive. In addition to building our ranch barn (see photo above), they’ve constructed the apiary for our beehives, and will be handling
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As part of our wildlife management, we do things at Hokkaido Ranch to make it a safe haven for deer. Based on our census counts, there appear to be 8-10 deer that graze at our ranch at any given time. Because they hop fences without issue, they also roam over neighboring ranches too. In addition
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In a perfect world, our honeybees would have all of the food and water they’d need to survive and thrive. As a practical matter, many of our planet’s bees die from starvation or thirst. We proactively take steps to ensure that doesn’t happen to our bees. For water, we have a nearby 3/4 acre pond
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Snow on the Prairie is a mixed blessing when it comes to honey bees. On the bright side, those white blooms in August signal a break from the Texas summer dearth when there are few wildflowers for the bees. So, it makes the bees happy and lets us cut back on supplemental feeding. However, on
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There comes a point during the Texas summer (typically July), where there’s a scarcity (dearth) of wildflowers for the honey bees to use as pollinators. During this period, our Hokkaido Ranch beekeepers supplemental feed the bees. With honey harvested from the supers as the dearth begins, it’s important to make sure the bees don’t go
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When the initial 16 nuc colonies of Golden Cordovan honey bees arrived at Hokkaido Ranch in April, we knew it would be a while before we could harvest honey for resale. Because you want your beehives to grow strong, it typically takes a year to build them up. However, the wet spring with lots of
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Part of operating our Texas honey bee ranch involves wildlife management for other animals. This includes serving as a deer sanctuary. The picture above is from one of our security cameras we use to track wildlife for their protection and census counts. We have no plans to permit deer hunting on the property. In fact,
