Today I just couldn't wait any longer to see how the bees were doing after their move. It is a sooner than I would usually check, but I just wanted to make sure things were OK. I tried to be gentle and quick to cause as little disruption as possible. The first hive I checked was the one on furthest right as you face them. It is the flat roofed horizontal hive which is also double-walled. That one has been the weakest the whole season and still is. I did see a mouse in it when I opened it, which didn't make me happy, but I have discovered in the horizontal hives it really has no impact on the bees when they are small and weak and way up in the front of the hive. There was capped brood,
I realized suddenly that here it is the first day of summer. This is the turning point in the beekeeping season. After this point, the bees need the rest of the summer to build up for winter. I want my bees to make it through the winter and some honey for myself would certainly be a bonus. It would be a shame to waste those lovely Hawaiian queens because they have too much competition. So, I made a big decision. I moved all four of my hives to my friend, Dave VanAntwerp's property about six miles away from where I live. It is a very nice location, lots of forage and a history of producing honey for those who placed hives there. As far as Dave knows there are no beekeepers nearby. I
Isn't this a nice sign? A friend gave it to me a few weeks ago. I thought it would be good to put by my hives by the greenhouse. I discovered yesterday that there may be more bees crossing my property than I thought. I had been so hopeful that the Big Guy commercial beekeeper had not put hives near me. Then my kids saw trucks with supers going and coming down the road. There would be no reason for them to use my road if the hives were not somewhere on the road. So while on a walk yesterday I trespassed on the neighbor's gravel pit and found them. I found TWELVE pallets of six hives each. Yep, 72 hives. Over double what he had last year. Add to that the 72 a mile and half down the ro
Our June field day was Saturday, June 10, 2017. It was a warm (actually hot) day. We checked the horizontal and vertical hives by my greenhouse. The picture above is the horizontal hive. There was capped worker brood and it was in a decent pattern. We did see the queen. She is still dealing with a small population and seems to be making the best of it, laying as much as the small population can cover. I believe the population will increase as she continues to double it with each generation. The vertical hive was looking better. I am not sure if we just accidentally put more bees in that hive to start, or if the queen is superior, I guess time will tell. They had about six to eight f
