Blue Ribbon Bees & Honey

03/07/2024

Bees are making lots of delicious honey, despite all the rain! Here’s a photo of the Peach Hive queen bee taken yesterday. She’s big and golden/copper color!

28/02/2024

A little honey bee advice …. 🐝

22/12/2023

The bees had a good year making honey. So they donated 6 cases of honey to the ICA food shelf - a total of 113 pounds! 🎄😊🐝

23/08/2023

It’s still 94 degrees F, with high humidity, at 6 PM. Our Minnesota bees are bearding on their hives. They’re hanging out in the front porch trying to cool off!

16/08/2023

BEESWAX 🐝❤️

BEESWAX 😍
Made from the honeycomb of the honeybee, beeswax is the purest and most natural of all waxes. For each pound of beeswax provided by a honey bee, the bee visits over 30 million flowers. To produce one pound of wax requires the bees to consume about eight to ten pounds of honey. They secrete the beeswax from the underside of their abdomens, and then use the wax to construct a honeycomb.

The youngest bees cluster in large numbers to raise their body temperature. Wax-producing glands under their abdomens slowly secrete slivers of wax about the size of a pinhead. Other worker bees harvest these wax scales and take them to the part of the hive requiring the new wax. Bees use about 6 lb of honey to produce 1 lb of wax. Bees can produce 8 wax flakes in around 12 hours so that gives you an idea of how patient and arduous they are in building comb for their babies and food.

08/08/2023

We have small-batch honey available!

Made with love by the bees. Bottled by local honey enthusiasts!

23/06/2023

90 degrees and the bees are cooling off on their front porch. Bees are taking a break from making all that honey! 🐝

25/11/2022

09/06/2022

Honey is the 3rd most faked food in the world, behind milk and olive oil. Support your local beekeepers! https://www.worldhoneymarket.com/post/when-fake-honey-becomes-a-real-problem

Fake or adulterated honey is a huge problem plaguing the beekeeping industry and consumer confidence.

06/01/2022

The healing powers of honey.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-healing-powers-of-honey/507770/?fbclid=IwAR1YRK24KqCNAJhyQchrRIzihB0P9AFAaU5Biq8t9sFA-llH-tinDHn-wyw

Thousands of years after the ancient Egyptians dressed their wounds with the sweet stuff, modern medicine is still exploring honey's antibacterial properties.

31/12/2021

A delicious recipe for Beeswax Balm!

It's winter in Minnesota and the weather forecast is for sub-zero air temperatures and wind-chill! The extreme cold and lack of humidity creates painfully dry skin. I thought it would be fun to make my own skin cream or ...

25/12/2021

Merry Christmas to all from Blue Ribbon Bees & Honey! ~ Bee joyful! 🎄🐝

01/12/2021

HONEY SALE - BUY 2 JARS, GET A 3rd JAR FREE!

01/11/2021

Brace yourself, winter is coming!

Brace yourself, winter is coming! Even though it's been a mild fall, and it's easy to be lured into believing it will continue, all things have a season. Now is the time to prepare the bees for a long rest during the wi...

30/09/2021

Beeswax is used for crafts and cosmetics and is as valuable as honey. Who knew?!

Blue Ribbon Bees & Honey had a wonderful season this past summer. The long hot summer days and warm nights contributed to a harvest of more than 800+ pounds of honey from eight hives!

30/08/2021

Want honey?! We got it!

This has been an extraordinary year for our small-batch honey! An early spring with plenty of rain produced profuse and flourishing tree and floral blooms. By June, we'd transitioned to hot summer-like days and nights, e...

22/08/2021

Happy National Honey Bee Day!

14/07/2021

Hot weather and drought has contributed to one of the most delicious honey harvests in years!
https://blueribbonbees.com/f/july-2021-honey-and-the-drought

28/06/2021

Honey, Honey! Read about it in the blog ....
https://blueribbonbees.com/f/june-2021-honey-honey

Honey, Honey! We have a nectar flow! A visit to the bee yard this weekend showed us the bees are busy storing nectar from flowers, converting it to honey, and capping the honey with pure white beeswax.

21/06/2021

Their little bee brains are like a sundial!

Honey bees can tell time, but the ways they do so are still fairly mysterious. One new way: by taking the temperature in their hive.

09/06/2021

Bees are on the ‘front porch’ of their hives, cooling off from the heat!

31/05/2021

Our Yellow Hive over-wintered so well, we knew it would have to be 'divided' or 'split' to mimic the swarm impulse. Bees swarm when they feel over-crowded and they decide to leave the hive to find a new place to live. Ou...

21/05/2021

World Bee Day, 21 May 2021 🐝

13/04/2021

Honey bees can see color and we've painted their bee hives pretty colors so they can find their way home! Read all about it in the blog.

Last week, we painted our beehives to prepare for new bee families who will soon live here. We like to paint our wooden beehives pretty pastel colors of pink, aqua, beige, yellow, grey, violet and peach.

18/03/2021

The inner workings of a beehive 🐝

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a honey bee? These new video clips, taken from within a beehive, will give you a good sense.

08/03/2021

Bees are happy today! 🐝🐝🐝

01/02/2021

Today we fed the bees winter patties! Read about it in today's blog.

Today we visited the bees and gave them winter patties. After a difficult autumn, when several hives absconded on us, we entered winter with three hives that looked strong and healthy. It’s been a mild January – no sever...