First, the good news: our 2 brand new hives are doing what they should be doing at this stage, drawing out comb, collecting nectar, bringing in pollen, and the Queens are starting to lay eggs. Now the bad news: Hive 1 (Queen Charlotte), our established hive that came through winter like a champ…well, a week ago this hive swarmed š Our web cam captured the moment of mass exodus, which is actually pretty amazing. It’s like rats from a sinking ship…
Exciting news, on the weekend we added 2 new hives to our apiary, for a total of 3! (I know what you’re thinking, you thought we already had 2 hives…sadly, we lost one to mites last fall and I haven’t been able to bring myself to write about it yet). We picked up 2 “packages” of 3 lbs bees each: The first time we installed our bees, we did it just the 2 of us. Now, 2 years later we felt brave
This weekend we had a brief respite from winter, and the ladies took advantage of it! I spent some time observing the comings and goings at the hive entrance. Looked pretty busy, and a lot of pollen was being brought in. Some bright orange/yellow, as well as some pale almost cream colored pollen. I’m thinking some might be the beginning of the red maple pollen (see our previous post about the importance of the maples as an early spring pollen
Happy 2016! Welcome new and old blog subscribers. Here’s to a year filled with bouncing baby bees, heavenly honey, and plentiful pollen! One of my New Year’s resolutions is to keep the blog more up-to-date…I also want to make it more interactive, so if you have any burning bee biology questions, write them in the comments! 2016 will bring exciting times to the apiary, as we are planning on increasing to 3 hives this year. This April, it will be 2 years
Day Four Note from Erika: for the previous guest posts by my super-creative niece, click 1. here, 2. here, and 3. here. Thanks Brooke! Dear Diary, Turns out he is the coolest Hawaiian bee but Iām still cool atā¦eating jalapeno pizza! Anyway, Stanley (the cat) thought I was one of those toy lights! Well today is my bros wedding and then he is going to go LIVE in Hawaii. He is just spoiled. Queen Elsa let me use her IPhone
Day three: Dear Diary, Car tripā¦ No good though because Iām going to get a prosthetic stinger. It was 8,000 dollars, just for my fat little striped body? Wow. When I got home I nearly burnt myself with the mosquito coil! Now my fake stinger is burnt. Is that a toilet because all I know is that 8, ooo dollars are just going down the drain. So I stole robs phone and took a selfie and saved to home and
Day Two Dear Diary, so I tried to make a fake stinger to get Erika for all the shaking to prove enough is enough. But it completely failed and fell off. Anyway my bro came back with a lei and grass skirt all the way from Hawaii! So Iāve gotten used to mint and actually I just remember I have to go poop on robs tomatoes and pee on the rhubarbā¦ HeHeHe. Come to think of it I havenāt had
BOB THE BEE A STORY OF A BOB Day One Dear Diary, you wonāt believe what happened today, the queen (Elsa) pulled a prank and switched my honey flavored toothpaste to mintā¦ UGH! Iām always going to be on my game watching her and Beeyonce. Last week Beeyonce made the honeycomb fall on me! While my BFF is having a great time in Hawaii and I just got my stinger chopped off by my wife, Rosa when she was making
Just a quick update on the bottling. Last night I did up some small (8 oz) jars to share with family on our trip home: This is less than 1/3rd of our total honey harvest! More will be bottled up when we return.
Exciting times at the apiary this Fourth of July weekend! Our first honey harvest! The nectar flow this year started late, but once it started, it was intense. We have the hives on a scale monitoring system (www.apiara.com), and the graph of weight increase during the first weeks of May shows just how much nectar the bees were bringing in: We pulled 4 frames early as insurance, then less than a week ago we pulled an entire 8-frame super, giving 12 frames total. We