She’s Laying!
This is the first I have seen her lay on the outside of the frame for weeks!
Category Archives : Beekeepers Notes
The Winter Solstice
The day before the winter solstice, the bees became frenetic. I could hear them buzzing from the next room. I went and observed and I was unable to detect what could possibly be causing the disruption. Is the winter solstice really that exciting an event for a colony of bees? […]
Attack of the Yellow Jacket!
On November 4, a single yellow jacket found it’s way into the hive. Chaos ensued!! […]
Building the Observation Hive
I have always wanted an observation hive. When I first started keeping bees, I was advised not to start with one as they are more difficult to keep thriving than a full size colony. Then, when I began to look at the cost of assembled observations hive, I pretty much […]
Score card for Libertytown (and out yard) in December 2014
Today was a relatively warm day after a few weeks of cold. Temp here in LIbertytown was 50, so I checked to see which hives were still buzzing. This is the score: my yard: 1.Allen’s nuc: died (I think this queen was not very suited for this area, there was […]
The Price of Education — It’s the Bees Who Pay
I did an inspection of the California Nuc that I bought from Allen this spring. This is the colony that I took most of the brood from when making up nucs. At the time it seemed the strongest. It paid the price. The brood pattern is spotty. This is actually […]
August inspection of Hive 1
I haven’t inspected my hives in about six weeks. Primarily I have been looking forward to solving the mystery of the blue marked queens. The mystery may not be entirely solved, but I do have a few answers. It turns out that the queen that KZ and I marked with […]
3 new royalty from Q3 marked in Libertytown
This friday (7.25.2014), I located the 3 queens that I have from Q3 and marked them with an orange dot. There was brood in every nuc, but clearly, the one with the most bees (from the most brood given when the nuc was set up), had the largest amount of […]
Q3 status in Libertytown
I started with 4 real nuc boxes for Q3 and one improvised queen castle (two compartment). All hives had a queen emerge, but today I checked for queens/bees/brood. This is my tally (July 20th, 2014): Nuc with white dots: nice queen, one of the ones that Andrew grafted from George. […]
Cleopatra and her Sister at Garst Farm
On July 6th, 2014, I also moved Cleopatra (a black queen from a split made with Mel’s stock) to the Garst Farm. She is in a single deep. She is marked yellow, but Liz and I did not see here when we looked last night (July 18). There was a […]