Melanie J Yanke Designs

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Celebrating the feminine spirit thru bees

The Spirit of Beekeeping

My journey started in 2015 with hosting a hive in my backyard from a local beekeeper. After I tasted local honey from hives in my backyard, I was determined to start beekeeping and never buy honey in the store again! Yes, it tastes totally different and is that good!!

I began learning about how a bee colony functions and how to care for them. A bee colony is controlled by the queen bee who lays eggs to create mostly female workers and a few male drones. The workers do everything for the colony from taking care of the queen, feeding the larva, gathering nectar and pollen and cleaning house. The drones mostly are available to mate with new queens.

I learned about different systems to keep bees and started with the most common, commercial Langstroth hive body system.

I used this system for about 3 years until my bees died due in the extreme temperatures changes in the spring. I also had a shoulder injury and was unable to lift the full boxes of honey weighing over 60 pounds.

I began looking at all kinds of different systems used in other parts of the world. I was intrigued by the rich history of the Slovenian Bee houses using the AZ hive system. I switched over to the Slovenian Bee House and AZ hive system in 2019 and have loved using this system.

Traditionally the hives were decorated with folk paintings and bright colors on the front which appealed to my artistic nature. My artist daughter - Molly Zimmer - painted the scenes on the hives to represent things I love about New Mexico.

What makes my honey great?

The flavor is of urban flower gardens with hints of roses, fruit and fragrant flowers.
The honey is truly local to the Uptown Area of Albuquerque and includes local pollens that may help with seasonal allergies.
No pesticides are ever put in the hives. Although I don’t use any pesticides in my garden, I cannot say the honey is organic because the bees forage beyond the borders of my garden.
It is raw honey and only strained to remove the wax in processing.
It is never heated and may crystalize over time.

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Bee Activity

I lovingly care for my queen bees and their workers in a beautiful Slovenian style bee house. Each colony has their own AZ hive box within the bee house. They live here year-round and draw from the pollen and nectar of the urban flower gardens within a mile or two from the hive.

Honey Bee Life Cycle

This is a great illustration by scientific illustrator Caterina De Pietro who has generously given me permission to use her design for education.

A colony of honey bees contains a queen who lays the eggs, workers who take care of the queen, clean the hive, collect nectar & pollen and drones who live only to mate with virgin queens and don't help in the hive.

Egg: A queen will lay one egg per cell throughout the brood nest, which is located in the center of the hive. They are very small and look like grains of rice. Worker eggs are laid in smaller cells and drone eggs are laid in larger cells.

Larva: After 3 days, an egg will hatch into a larva. Worker bees will feed and tend to the larvae as they grow. Once the larva is big enough, the worker bees will cover their cell with a wax capping.

Pupa: once the cell is capped, the larva will spin a cocoon around itself and develop into a pupa (similar to how a butterfly spins a chrysalis). At this stage, the baby bee develops its eyes, legs, wings and other familiar body parts.

Adult: Finally, once the pupa is done growing it becomes an adult honey bee. When it is ready, the bee will begin to chew through the cocoon and wax capping of its cell and emerge into the hive.

It takes 16 days for a new queen to be born, 21 days for a worker and 24 days for a drone. Queens live for 3-4 years, workers live about 6 weeks during the summer and 4-5 months in the winter. Drones live about die once they mate with a queen and live about 5-7 weeks if they don't mate.

Hive Inspection

The hives are installed in an insulated bee house with the fronts facing outside. The bees enter from the front and the beekeeper works the hive from the back side much like opening a kitchen cabinet. There are 3 levels in the hive and each level has a separate door but the bees can move through all levels.