Recent Posts

Beekeeping Year 2 Recap: Splitting Hives, Harvesting Honey, Readying for Winter

Our bees were busy this year! Here's how we split hives, details our improved harvest setup, how our new honey extractor worked, and what we're doing this winter.
honeybees crawling over a brood frame in the sunlight

Bees: Splitting a Hive That Survived the Winter

Northern winters can be rough for beehives. Not all of our hives made it. Instead of buying a new nuc or queen, here's how we've attempted a split! Plus, read what I've been doing with the harvested honey and beeswax.
a man in a white bee suit holding up a frame from a beehive, which has capped joney covering 70% of it and some bees crawling on it

Winterizing the Bees, Year 1

Northern winters are cold—so what do the bees do? Here's how we prepared our hives for the snowy months.
pint size mason jars filled with honey in a line on a wooden surface

How We Managed Our First Honey Harvest

Our bees have been productive this summer, so we decided to harvest some honey! Here's what we've learned about the honey extraction process.
a man in a white beekeeping suit holding up a frame from a hive covered in comb and bees

Why We Started Beekeeping—And How It's Going!

No secrets: We wanted the honey. Here's why we started with four hives, how we setup the bees, what happened when one hive swarmed, and other faced challenges so far.

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About

We're Jacqueline and Randy, a blogging duo with backgrounds in tech, robots, art, and writing, now raising our family in northern Idaho.

Our goal is to encourage deliberate choices, individual responsibility, and lifelong curiosity by sharing stories about our adventures in living, loving, and learning.

Learn more about us.


Connect:

whoo@deliberateowl.com

Start here

Curious about our life and journey? Here are some good places to start reading:

Jacqueline and Randy leaning their heads together smiling at the camera

A Blog About Education, Lifestyles, and Community

A brief history of how the Deliberate Owl came to be and why we're writing a blog about us, our lives, and how we're living out our values.
Priests in red and gold celebrate a traditional Latin Mass

Discovering the Traditional Catholic Mass

How I discovered the traditional Latin Mass a few years ago, why that discovery changed everything for me, and what was wrong with the Novus Ordo Masses I'd attended.