Sweet Lips Honey BeeKeeping, Teaching, & Products

10/17/2021

Great successful day at the Port Saint Joe Salty Air Market. Thank you everyone who purchased a jar of Sweet Lips Honey. Your purchase goes towards keeping my honey bees alive.

09/24/2021

Another successful show for Sweet Lips Honey at the Georgia Beekeepers Conference this weekend. Placed in 5 out of 7 entries. Those that know me personally, understand how wired-up I get while getting ready for this show. I like to read the judge’s comments so I continue to learn how to get better and better. I love ribbons!!

08/06/2021

Reporting a beautiful sunset at Sweet Lips Honey Apairy tonight. Vacuumed a little swarm out of a nearby tree. Enjoyed photographing various bugs on a Maypop bloom and milkweed bloom. Great day to be alive.

07/15/2021

Checked out the hive on the porch today. This was a swarm from 2-3 months ago. The brood box is pretty much solid brood pattern. Awesome job by a swarm. Added an extracted wet super so the queen would have additional space to lay. Added mite treatment and then enjoyed watching the bees bring in orange pollen.

05/24/2021

Stacking the supers higher than they’ve ever been. This is going to be an interesting honey harvest this year.

05/24/2021

Couple of new friends interested in Beekeeping. They got more than they bargained for their first day. The hive that I inspected was full of queen cells. I was able to make two splits. Checked them today and both have a new queen.

05/24/2021

 if you look very closely at these bees you will see them producing wax on their underbelly. Not often you get to see this kind of behavior. This was the swarm captured by a couple of my students. As you can see they left a frame out and the bees have created a mess for me. I was just grateful they were there to catch this little swarm.

05/16/2021

Worth sharing again.

05/16/2021

Worth sharing! People need to know the truth!! Thanks MABA!!

05/16/2021

Swarm season is in full swing in East Tennessee. My luck was pretty good this week. Walked outside just in time to see this large swarm land in our tree. So big had to add a super!

04/07/2021

Springtime in East Tennessee

Springtime in East Tennessee

04/07/2021

Stacking up the beehives. Good nectar flow in East Tennessee. Going to take some helpers to get those supers off that are above my head.

03/17/2021

After 7 years of beekeeping, frames in various stages start to stack up everywhere. Some need foundation, some need cleaning, many just need putting together. I saw this idea and finally got around to putting it together. How do you manage your frames?

03/17/2021

Haven’t tried these swarm traps before. Put together using a few ideas as bait. Melted and rendered wax capping then painted inside the trap. Added a vile with lemongrass as well as a queen cell. Touch of  propolis and brood comb with honey rounded out my concoction. Mounted the traps to boards and used ratchet straps to tighten them on trees. Welcome any success stories or suggestions for a successful swarm. Can’t wait to see if this works.

03/11/2021

Sweet Lips Honey will be at Jonesborough Flea Market on Sunday. Come purchase a sweet jar of honey and support your local beekeeper. Melting wax, painting and putting together frames, all part of getting ready for the spring nectar flow. Honey is filtered and jared. See you are the market Sunday.

03/11/2021

Bees are flying at Sweet Lips Honey Apairy. First inspection for 2021. Went into winter with 7 hives. Seven hive are thriving! Red maple trees are in full bloom and the East Tennessee weather has warmed enough for the bees to collect their sweet nectar. Multiple array of colorful pollen arriving to the hive by way of the worker bees pollen baskets, good indication that there is a lying queen in the hive.
As I’m wrapping up my inspections, the sun is setting, a worker bee, too tired to make it to her landing board, rests on my veil for a moment before taking her final load into the hive. Life is GOOD!
Healthy Bees, Healthy Planet.


03/11/2021

East Tennessee beekeeping in Sweet Lips Honey Apairy. First inspection for 2021. Went into winter with 7 hives. Seven hives are thriving!! Red maple trees are in full bloom and the weather is warm enough for the bees to fly and collect their sweet nectar. Multiple color array of pollen coming into the hive on the bees pollen baskets. Proof the hives have a laying queen. As the sun starts to set, the bees, to tired to make it straight to the hive, land on my veil, to rest, before making it into the landing board to climb up into the hive to deposit her last load of the day.

10/27/2020

Miss spending time with my queens.

09/11/2020

September in East Tennessee brings hot dry weather. With this environment and location blooms many varieties of wild flowers in the fence rows and cow pastures. The Golden Rod, Wingstem, Ironweed, and Chicory are in full bloom for our loved honey bees. My late crop of honey produced last year, from this wildflower variety, I’m told, was very delicious honey. I’m going to be selling my Fall and Spring honey at the Jonesborough Flea market this Sunday morning. Come by for a free sample and enjoy the treasure hunting at this delightful and fun market. 

08/14/2020

Ever put a super on upside down? Interesting problem to solve. Bees didn’t care. They filled it up just fine.

07/02/2020

Swarm in the Air

Not the best time of year for beekeeping. It’s hot, the bee’s don’t have much to collect, and varroa counts starts creeping up, which  irritates the bees. Lots of, “Veil kamikaze”. Time of year where it takes true courage and dedication to want to be a beekeeper. Still loving it! 

07/02/2020

Reporting from Sweet Lips Honey Apairy in East Tennessee location. The bees have been growing strong and collecting delicious Tennessee wildflower nectar. Harvest around 120 pounds of cured honey. Varroa testing showed high counts in second and third year hives and very little Varroa in first year hives. Treating for varroa where needed. Added extracted wet supers back to the hives while expecting maybe a light early fall flow. UPDATE: 166 pounds plus comb honey!!

07/02/2020

Swarm while working my bees. Hardly worth the time because they are so small.

06/13/2020

Sweet Lips Honey, Florida division doing well as possible considering our conditions. The area is not experiencing much of a nectar flow. Whatever the bees have put in the hive will have to last until February. We’ve lost hundreds of acres to cattle ranches and a hurricane. This picture shows what the bees will do if a frame is missing. Bees enjoying a little circle drink.

04/28/2020

During a hive inspection yesterday, on the hive that swarmed, two queens flew back! One landed on me!! I had two cages and caught them both! There were also 4 queen cells. I made 3 splits and now what to do with these queens? They care nothing about making honey, just queens. #beekeeping

04/27/2020

Oh my oh my where should I put all this pollen? I know my hive is here somewhere.

04/26/2020

Bees 1, beekeeper 0. My helpful side kick not only was a great bucket holder but also a great sport when she tumbled out of the side by side as well as the hive, end over end. Once gathered, with nothing broken, we went right back to swarm work. Let’s see tomorrow if they decide to stay.

04/12/2020

This is a quick test to get a feel of varroa levels in your drone brood. The female varroa prefer drone because she has an additional 3 days over worker brood to mature her offspring. This is no way an acceptable test to get a true count of your hives varroa levels.

04/12/2020

This Queen gets the Blue Ribbon for spring pattern. Look forward to working with her all season and breeding little Queens from her stock.

04/04/2020

 Varroa destructor is an external parasitic mite that attack and feeds on the honey bees Apis cerana and Apis mellifera. The disease caused by the mites is called varroosis. The Varroa mite can reproduce only in a honey bee colony. It attaches to the body of the bee and weakens the bee by sucking fat bodies. Wikipedia

Here I’m picking drone brood to check the mite levels. The female mite prefer the drone brood because of the longer incubation period but will also use worker brood. It’s easy to see the small red mite if there is a problem.

04/04/2020

Can you find the queen walking around laying eggs?

04/04/2020

The bees and I love this time of year. Things are blooming, the weather is warming, and the bees are thinking of swarming. Now’s the time to split your hive before they make Queen cells and split on their own. I prefer taking the queen to make my split and leave the mother hive to make a new queen. The bees prefer to build their own comb. I really enjoy seeing all the white fresh pulled comb.

03/12/2020

Sad day in the apiary last week. In November, 13 hives were doing great, today only 6 remain. After analyzing the failed hives, I’ve tried to figure out why they are empty. There was plenty of food remaining on each hive. I’m trying to switch over to all natural beekeeping with the thought of building a stronger bee instead of a better Varroa, a mite, so I wasn’t as  diligent about treating. I’m taking a chance of loosing bees that haven’t quite figured out how to control the mite themselves. Maybe this is part of what happened.
If this is what happened, I would expect lots of bodies on the inside bottom board from bees dying of the varroa virus. All 7 had less then a handful of bees dead inside the hive. Also, the inserts I used for the screened bottom boards on 4 hives showed very little varroa drop. The other 3 showed high counts.
This is a true example of Colony collapse disorder ( CCD). I’ll move forward and make splits in the hopes that my remaining bees will be survivors of the Varroa and beekeeper errors.
I did noticed one thing I can control; the inserts in my screened bottom boards could have been too drafty and the bees just left. 
This is the largest failure I’ve ever experienced. Here’s hoping I can recover with my remaining hives.
For you that purchase my honey, thanks for the support. I still enjoy beekeeping very much and refuse to give up when I experience this kind of news. Please be careful when using chemicals in your yard. Our lives may depend on this. 

02/22/2020

Beekeepers just wanta have fun with a buzz.....

02/22/2020

Soooo, another great time at the Georgia Beekeepers Assocation Spring meeting in Augusta, Georgia. As many of you know I enjoy entering the honey show contest. Well, scored a few more pats on the back, ribbon, and money.

The traditional honey cake was a last minute thought. Everyone follows the same recipe. There was no first place. I scored the Second place ribbon!

Also got noticed for my kombucha.

Always good to see all my beekeeping Georgia friends. Thanks to everyone’s hard work putting these events together.