Maya Reyes
Founder & Editor
Twelve seasons of backyard beekeeping across two hardiness zones. Writes the beginner path, hive management and seasonal guides, and reviews every article before it publishes.
Education first
About Honeybees 101
Honeybees 101 exists to help people start keeping bees responsibly — and to help experienced beekeepers keep learning. We explain the why behind the how, because a colony is a living thing and the details matter.
Why We Built This Site
Most people who want to keep bees start the same way: a few enthusiastic evenings of reading, a confusing pile of conflicting advice, and a growing list of equipment they are not sure they need. Honeybees 101 was created to make that first year clearer.
We write for backyard beekeepers, gardeners who want better pollination, homesteaders, and small-scale apiarists. Every guide starts with the biology and the season you are actually in, then explains the practical steps and the gear that genuinely helps.
The site is an education resource first and an affiliate site second. That order is not a slogan — it shapes what we publish. If a product is not worth buying, we say so, and if the honest answer is "you do not need this yet," we say that too.
40+
Guides & pages
12
Content silos
100%
Beginner focused
Who writes here
The People Behind Honeybees 101
We are a small team of beekeepers, gardeners and writers. We keep hives in different climates, which is exactly why our advice tells you when to check your own local conditions instead of copying ours.
Tom Okafor
Apiary & Gear Editor
Runs a small sideline apiary and a workshop full of half-repaired equipment. Handles gear guides, tool comparisons and the used-equipment advice on the shop pages.
Lena Sørensen
Research & Pollinator Gardens
Tracks down the extension publications and research behind our claims, and writes the pollinator gardening and bee identification material.
Our Standards
Beekeeping advice can affect the health of a living colony, so we hold our content to a few firm rules. The full detail lives on the Editorial Policy page.
- Evidence-based. We prefer university extension services, USDA material, state agriculture departments, peer-reviewed research and established beekeeping associations over folklore.
- Regionally honest. Climate, forage and regulations differ. We flag when something depends on where you keep bees rather than pretending one answer fits everyone.
- Corrected openly. When guidance changes or we get something wrong, we update the page and note the revision date.
- Commercially transparent. Affiliate relationships never decide what we recommend, and every page with affiliate links carries a disclosure. See our Affiliate Disclosure.
Where Our Information Comes From
We routinely reference and link to these kinds of sources:
- USDA Agricultural Research Service and the National Agricultural Library
- Cooperative Extension programs at land-grant universities
- State Departments of Agriculture and apiary inspection services
- Peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Apicultural Research
- National and local beekeeping associations
Start With the Basics
If you are new to bees, the Getting Started guide walks through what to learn, buy and do before your first colony arrives.