Today I added a second honey super. The first box felt pretty heavy (guessing 80% full), so I under-supered (or should that be sub-supered). It was a box of comb from last year’s hive 3. The Black Locust trees just bloomed yesterday in the area, so I think the timing […]
Kristien, would you like to provide the words for these pictures?
So the congestion in the observation hive is increasing again. It is 10 days since I first noticed a capped queen cell and none have hatched. I hear the queens quacking off and on. The bees are all over the queen cells that I have found. I wonder […]
This tuesday, while I was away, Liz and Todd removed the cloak board slider from Q4, effectively reunited the upper box of bees with the pheromones of the queen. They also took this picture of the queen cells: The artificial royal jelly was completely rejected by the bees, but […]
When Kristien and I arrived from setting up the cloake board at the farm, this is what we found! We swept them into a bag and then dumped them into their new quarters. I have a short video of the marching but I don’t know how to post that. […]
Q4 started a few days ago on the Garst Farm with the installation of the cloak board and the move of open brood to the topbox. Today, Liz and I rotated the hive 180 degrees so that the original opening is in the back (but still open). The queen is […]
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!
One of the queens that I really liked was George, originally caught as a swarm in my yard, than moved to a friend in Uniontown, and a split taken back to my yard. That line lived with me for 4 years without treatment and put up good winter stores. This […]
I have started preparations for our first round of queen rearing, although I do not know who wants to be involved this year. For this round, I decided to try a different method, as it seemed that in the end, everyone last year was reluctant to sacrifice hives. This year, […]
My lone survivor was hive 4 from last year, but I think I will re-label it as hive 1 for 2015. The queen is Sally 2c, but for simplicity sake I will just call her Sally. She is doing fine and seems to be off to a good start. I […]
