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, taken 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, taken 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, and is 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 booklet, "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 booklet, "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've heard and read a lot of things about bees. By now, I'm pretty sure you know where I stand with the phrase "you can't keep bees unless you treat 'em" and why it's not true. Also, if you've read any of my book or booklet, you know my view on "natural" hives, basically, that they exist in the minds beekeepers. I hope I 've provided enough information to explain why I've come to believe the way I do, and maybe have given you reasons to think more about it. I don't have a study to reference. My conclusions come from my own and others' experiences and observations over time. Ask questions. Look around.
Don't believe everything you hear!
How many times have you heard that "bees always die because they lose their stingers when they sting?" How many times have you heard that "bees always follow the queen, how the queen leads the swarm, and wherever she goes, they go." Well, here are a couple of videos, that, if nothing else, will make you aware that there are always exceptions with honeybees.
Following these two videos is one of a very unexpected, and so far unexplained sound coming from hives.
Don't believe everything you hear!
How many times have you heard that "bees always die because they lose their stingers when they sting?" How many times have you heard that "bees always follow the queen, how the queen leads the swarm, and wherever she goes, they go." Well, here are a couple of videos, that, if nothing else, will make you aware that there are always exceptions with honeybees.
Following these two videos is one of a very unexpected, and so far unexplained sound coming from hives.
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 the time to carefully go through the hive, 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 the time to carefully go through the hive , couldn't find a thing. A student at Blackburn and I heard it on more than one occasion - in wooden deeps and cardboard nucs. Another time, almost 1500 worker & nurse bees 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 from out of the sample box. It's not queens or drones. It's not swarm prep. The sound is created in both cardboard and wooden boxes of various sizes and in a variety of circumstances. Other's claim to have heard it from bees in their walls.
I later found someone had posted the sound on a bee forum in 2011. My favorite comment on that post was a suggestion that the guy should get an exorcist.
I later found someone had posted the sound on a bee forum in 2011. My favorite comment on that post 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.