Welcome to acbees apiaries web site!
This was how I opened the home page over 10 years ago. Past time for an update. Much of the original will stay, just adding some new information, photos, and videos.
"Hi Folks! Thanks for stopping by my website. My name is Arvin Pierce. I have been keeping honeybees since 2003. Other than wintergreen grease patties the first year, I haven't used any kinds of treatment or chemicals in our hives. I started beekeeping mainly because we were trying to improve our diet and it made more sense to have a couple of beehives of my own than to be buying all the honey we were using. I bought 2 nucs of Russians the first year, have kept up to 70-80 hives. After I found out how interesting and amazing these little creatures were, 2 hives just weren't enough.
Photography is a hobby of mine that fits in well with keeping bees. I've taken many photos and videos over the years and will be using them on this site to help show what I've been doing with the bees and hopefully help you understand a little more about honeybees. Maybe you'll even get interested enough to get some honeybees of your own if you don't have some already! In the following pages I'll be posting some information, photos, and videos of queens, workers, and drones, some pests (some more harmful than others) of honeybees and annoying to beekeepers, and various removals of swarms & colonies. There will also be some links that I've found useful that you might enjoy.
You might notice in the captions of the photos or in the other writing on this site I use a lot of words like "usually, normally, often, generally, or rarely". I apologize for that, but there is a reason for it. It is usually (there I go again) a mistake to speak about bees and their behavior using words like "always or never". That's just the way it is. If you like "flying by the seat of your pants" you'll make a great beekeeper!
I hope you can take the time to check out the site. Maybe one day we'll be able to meet and talk face to face about bees...'cause I just love to talk about bees!
You can also follow what I'm doing on Facebook at this link: Personal page-Arvin Pierce"
A lot has happened since. I had the opportunity to be an Illinois apiary inspector for 7 years. I've lifted more lids, removed more colonies, captured more swarms, took more photos and videos, and have given more talks and presentations. I'm still a hobby beekeeper, only older with fewer hives. I've had to stop a couple of things, change how I do some things, but I still don't treat my bees. I have yet to see a reason why I should.
At Blackburn College, a work college in Carlinville, Illinois, Blackburn Beekeepers have been keeping bees since spring 2017. We usually have 10-15 hives. We've never treated our bees. We have yet to see a reason why we should.
"Hi Folks! Thanks for stopping by my website. My name is Arvin Pierce. I have been keeping honeybees since 2003. Other than wintergreen grease patties the first year, I haven't used any kinds of treatment or chemicals in our hives. I started beekeeping mainly because we were trying to improve our diet and it made more sense to have a couple of beehives of my own than to be buying all the honey we were using. I bought 2 nucs of Russians the first year, have kept up to 70-80 hives. After I found out how interesting and amazing these little creatures were, 2 hives just weren't enough.
Photography is a hobby of mine that fits in well with keeping bees. I've taken many photos and videos over the years and will be using them on this site to help show what I've been doing with the bees and hopefully help you understand a little more about honeybees. Maybe you'll even get interested enough to get some honeybees of your own if you don't have some already! In the following pages I'll be posting some information, photos, and videos of queens, workers, and drones, some pests (some more harmful than others) of honeybees and annoying to beekeepers, and various removals of swarms & colonies. There will also be some links that I've found useful that you might enjoy.
You might notice in the captions of the photos or in the other writing on this site I use a lot of words like "usually, normally, often, generally, or rarely". I apologize for that, but there is a reason for it. It is usually (there I go again) a mistake to speak about bees and their behavior using words like "always or never". That's just the way it is. If you like "flying by the seat of your pants" you'll make a great beekeeper!
I hope you can take the time to check out the site. Maybe one day we'll be able to meet and talk face to face about bees...'cause I just love to talk about bees!
You can also follow what I'm doing on Facebook at this link: Personal page-Arvin Pierce"
A lot has happened since. I had the opportunity to be an Illinois apiary inspector for 7 years. I've lifted more lids, removed more colonies, captured more swarms, took more photos and videos, and have given more talks and presentations. I'm still a hobby beekeeper, only older with fewer hives. I've had to stop a couple of things, change how I do some things, but I still don't treat my bees. I have yet to see a reason why I should.
At Blackburn College, a work college in Carlinville, Illinois, Blackburn Beekeepers have been keeping bees since spring 2017. We usually have 10-15 hives. We've never treated our bees. We have yet to see a reason why we should.
After three years of teaching a beginning beekeeper class at Blackburn, I edited over 15 hours of class PowerPoints and files of photos, videos, and stills taken from videos and put them into a 250 page book using over 430 photos, "ABOUT BEES & KEEPING HONEYBEES WITHOUT TREATMENTS", basically the class curriculum with PowerPoints in book form. Chapters include a bit of history, the bees, getting started, understanding and managing a colony, swarm and colony removal, threats from pests and diseases, hive products, and even a chapter about a few visits with a beekeeper in South Africa. All with accompanying photos. All in the "keeping honeybees without treatments" mindset. It can be found in most online bookstores.
For many years many beekeepers have been successfully keeping bees without treatments, yet we regularly hear, "you can't keep bees unless you treat 'em." It's simply not true. Finally, after 23 beekeeping seasons of no treatments in my own colonies, and meeting many others during that time who were also not treating, I had to say something. Although, Chapter 1 focuses on the treatment-free mindset, it's throughout the book, its foundation.
In an effort to create a PowerPoint focusing on Treatment-free beekeeping, I put some photos & quotes from the book and some additional thoughts together into a 65-frame presentation. Then, I used that information and a bit more to put together a 25-page half-sized pamphlet, "BEES CAN SURVIVE AND ARE BEING KEPT WITHOUT TREATMENTS." The following is a PDF of that booklet. Hopefully, it will give you an understanding of the treatment-free concept as I've come to see it.
In an effort to create a PowerPoint focusing on Treatment-free beekeeping, I put some photos & quotes from the book and some additional thoughts together into a 65-frame presentation. Then, I used that information and a bit more to put together a 25-page half-sized pamphlet, "BEES CAN SURVIVE AND ARE BEING KEPT WITHOUT TREATMENTS." The following is a PDF of that booklet. Hopefully, it will give you an understanding of the treatment-free concept as I've come to see it.
You hear and read a lot of things about bees. Some of those things have been said and written so often, they have become "common knowledge". I'm sure that by now there's little doubt about where I stand with the "you can't keep bees unless you treat 'em" misconception. I've not used any treatments for 23 seasons. There are many bees that live and many other beekeepers that are keeping their bees without treatments. Also, if you've read any of my book or booklet you will know where I stand with the "natural hive or treatment-free hive" misconception. After many years of personally removing colonies, and in contact with others who have spent many years removing colonies, I do not know of a hive design or location that stand's out as being standard or preferred by colonies of honeybees. Check out the photos of removals - available locations with hives built to fit. The only "natural" hives I have seen come from the minds of beekeepers. I hope I've offered enough information to help you understand why I think the way I do about these things. I can only share my experience and observations. I can't show you a picture of treatment free-beekeeping. Please look into it yourself. Asks questions of others. Think about their answers. I believe you'll find the use of miticides and antibiotics haven't actually made that much difference in long-term health and survival of hobby beekeepers' colonies. Again, please look into it yourself. Do what you think is best for your bees ... and us.
I do have some videos calling into question or raising some questions about a few other generally accepted claims of what bees do - things like "when honeybees sting you, they lose their stinger", or "the queen leads the swarm, they follow wherever she goes." They've been on YouTube awhile. I'll follow those with a video of a totally mysterious "growling" sound heard from a few colonies in different situations several years ago. No one has come up with the answer for who, what, or why.
Here are the first two, "Do Honeybees Really Die When they Sting" and "Where Is The Queen In A Swarm?":
I do have some videos calling into question or raising some questions about a few other generally accepted claims of what bees do - things like "when honeybees sting you, they lose their stinger", or "the queen leads the swarm, they follow wherever she goes." They've been on YouTube awhile. I'll follow those with a video of a totally mysterious "growling" sound heard from a few colonies in different situations several years ago. No one has come up with the answer for who, what, or why.
Here are the first two, "Do Honeybees Really Die When they Sting" and "Where Is The Queen In A Swarm?":
Okay, here's the one with the unexplained sound, "Weird Sounds Inside The Beehive". I had originally set up the video camera to simply record moving the bees from the TopBar into a single Langstroth deep. I at first thought some large bug, like a locust or something was caught between the screen bottom and the foil board I'd used to close the hive for winter. Took time to look closely, couldn't find a thing. I walked up on a healthy, double-deep Langstroth with a mostly empty super miles away in a backyard months later. Heard the same sound. Took time to look closely, couldn't find a thing. A student at Blackburn and I heard it on more than one occasion - in wooden deeps and cardboard nucs. Almost 1500 workers from hives at Blackburn were put into a small cardboard sample box for a honeybee survey. Later that day, the other state inspector sent me a phone video of the sound coming out of the sample box they had taken home to send in. It's not queens, it's not swarm prep, the sound is created in both cardboard and wooden boxes of various sizes and a variety of circumstances. Other's have heard it. There are other's stories in the comment section on YouTube.
I later found someone had posted the sound they had heard on a bee forum from 2011. My favorite comment from that was a suggestion that the guy should get an exorcist.
I later found someone had posted the sound they had heard on a bee forum from 2011. My favorite comment from that was a suggestion that the guy should get an exorcist.
Photo Phootnote:
Nearly all of the photos used on this site (except for a few taken with my cell phone and an old Sony digital) were taken using a Pentax K20D camera with a selection of lenses & extension tubes- Super Macro Takumar, Adaptall 2 Tamron SP, & Lester A. Dine.
Videos were taken using a Panasonic GS250 and a Sony FDR AX100.
Videos were taken using a Panasonic GS250 and a Sony FDR AX100.