Just did a quick peek at all 4 colonies this evening around 5:00. The swarm from Todd which was requeened with a Carniolian queen from Eversweet Apiaries seems to be doing well. Calm and focused on business. The remnants of the Cleopatra colony that provided 3 boxes of honey last […]
I got a call from Todd this afternoon about an after-swarm. After discussion, we decided it would be fine to experiment with these. I have a laying worker hive. At least 4 frames of brood. The population in the colony is at least 80% drone. They haven’t gotten mean…yet. I’m […]
Q7 queens were installed in several hives amongst the group. Liz’ nuc that received a Pauw was abandoned after all. Last Sunday, Mel set up another nuc. Mel and I went to the farm to see if any of the reserve queens had emerged. We found one Pauw and one […]
I set up the same nurse hive that was at the farm and was used for Q4 with the cloak board. I had learned at the MSBA meeting this summer to be sure to put only capped brood in the box above the queen excluder and to shake all the […]
These posts are getting boring! Particularly as I can’t seem to load the pictures I’d like to! Anyway, it swarmed. Probably a really nice size swarm based on the density of bees remaining. I’d guess 5-6 lbs of bees left. Don’t know where they went. I’ve walked the neighborhood several […]
There is a simple calendar generator for queen rearing that lets you put in a start date and then generates a full calendar for grafting and moving capped cells right through to mating flights and egg laying.
Today it was the primary swarm from the nuc I got from Allen last year. This is the nuc that had a queen from his nuc yard rather than the purchased California queen. Kristien and I attempted to box the swarm twice but because they had clustered under the pallet […]
All signs are there! The observation hive is packed with bees. And last night the bees capped a queen cell! I think this means they will swarm on Tuesday or Wednesday!
Did a quick check of the hives in my yard and the one on the farm. All 4 are still going strong!
Is is just about 50 degrees here and I checked on the hives in my yard. Both nucs have starved: lots of bees in a nice cluster but no honey. Candy on top was being eaten in the early winter, but lately it was too cold for the bees to […]
