Gracious words are like a honeycomb,
Sweetness to the soul and health to the body

Proverbs 16:24

One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees...

-Leo Tolstoy

He is not worthy of the honey-comb
That shuns the hives because the bees have stings

-William Shakespeare

Handle a book as a bee does a flower, extract its sweetness but do not damage it.

-John Muir

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.

-Henry David Thoreau

Seasonal Information for February

Specific recommendations for Deep East Texas beekeepers by Robert Jones

February is normally another mixed cold winter month. In Deep East Texas below freezing cold days or weeks can be followed by a day or week of warming. The idea is still to keep that feeder full for each colony. Failing to do so could lose the hive. The earliest honey producing flows will come this month in the first to third week from the May-haws in the rivers and streams of Deep East Texas along with fruit trees (peaches, apples, blueberries). Even though this early resource is there do not stop feeding. Some of the most extreme and devastating deep cold freezes happen in this month while the hive is trying to expand.

Two things you may notice during this month are colony loss from long freezing cold periods and dead bee larva dumped out front of the hive porch. This should be the hardest month for survival for the colony. At the end of the month hives should be inspected for the presence of drones. This is the time for deciding when to set up cell building colonies. Without the presence of plenty of drones there is no need to make a queen building colony. This is the key factor one would look for to set the builders and do the grafting.

Traditionally in Deep East Texas builders are set up the last week of February into the First week of March. If you medicate your colonies, the end of this month on a warm day would be the best time to do so.


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Our Mission

Our Theme is Service

Our Association’s Mission is first dedicated to honey bee education including all the different facts about and pleasures of keeping these wonderful creatures of God. Secondly, we are dedicated to the mission of service to others through internal mentoring and education of our club members as well as external programs to the general public. It is to these two missions we commit our combined efforts as an association to place into others, by mentoring, education, and apprenticeship, our love and passion for beekeeping. Our membership offers to all the much-needed experience that even beginners can have - the pleasure and joy we have personally each time we visit a beehive.

Our Purpose

  • Provide for the dissemination of good beekeeping practices and knowledge to its members.
  • Provide educational programs designed to improve production and marketing of honey bees and honey bee products to its members.
  • Disseminate to the public information as to the importance of honey bees and beekeeping activities in the production of food crops.
  • Support educational programs and projects in beekeeping.