The updated bee yard
On Monday, April 11, the early afternoon turned into a rather sunny day. Not very warm, but sunny and the bees were flying. I had a 5-hour flight to California in just over four hours, in fact I still had to pack my bags. I had been sick over the weekend, diagnosed with strep throat that very morning, and was taking antibiotics to get better. I figured I had an hour to spare. Clearly, time for my first split. Continue reading
My helper G looking at the queen cups between the boxes of Mars.
This post was meant to appear a couple weeks ago with a short summary of my spring preparations. I’ve been crazy busy of late, and given that the advent of spring has taken a recess, I figure a summary of my beekeeping status will suffice.
Here I’ll just give an update on our existing hives. I’ve done some work getting the hives ready, and will save this for another post. Continue reading
My view of varroa mites and how to handle them has evolved this past year. I started out as a beekeeper not wanting to treat for mites. Then became a beekeeper who wasn’t worried about the mites because he had first year hives. Then finally a beekeeper who monitored for mites and treated during our warm winter. Around November 2015 I started recording the mite drop on my two Langstroth hives every few days. With the onset of spring weather I stopped (this past weekend), so it must be time to post some results. I also have some temperature readings from my BroodMinder devices to compare with this data. Continue reading
As you can see from the frame covered in capped brood, the bees have been busy. The flowers are slowly appearing in a steady procession of color. Last year I carefully wrote down the bloom dates of many plants around our yard, so this seems a good time to start this up again. I created a new page for this, and have an update on my spring goals as well. Continue reading
We had a warm day yesterday, partly sunny and 64 F. The bees went crazy, flying circles around the yard and coming to and fro in the entrances. Hauling out corpses, relieving waste, and generally getting their bee houses in order. I looked in the observation window of the top bar hive, which has shown only comb for a good month or so, and bees were everywhere. There were definitely clustering away from the window, as I mentioned in a prior post.
In the meantime, I finished up my winter reading, and thought I would share a summary of this rather interesting book. Continue reading
The weather swings to and fro. Spring is not quite in the air, though the birds are singing about it. I’ve been meaning to share some of the books I’ve read lately, at least the ones related to beekeeping. In the past few months I’ve read The Quest for the Perfect Hive, The Beekeeper’s Problem Solver, and The Thinking Beekeeper.
Much to my darling wife’s dismay, there is always something to worry about for a first year beekeeper. The latest fear is whether my top bar hive still had live bees inside. It’s been rather cold lately and there has not been a lot of activity in the apiary. My top bar hive has an observation window, and while I try not to peek inside too often, I have not seen any bees in the window since our snowstorm a couple weeks ago. Continue reading
With the historic storm Jonas past our area, I thought I would post a few pictures for posterity. One of these was in my last post, but I’ll include it here as well to keep the images together.
This amount of snow is pretty unusual for Virginia, especially as one storm. In fact we set a new record for a single snowfall, about 30 inches (75 cm) in all. Plus I like the story told by the before and after pictures of the hives, and it’s my blog so I can post whatever I want. 🙂 Continue reading
An update on my recent activities, from my trip to Ithaca, New York through our current snow storm. The trip to my parent’s was a great success. My lovely wife and daughter stayed behind so it was just me and the ‘rents – it’s been awhile since that has happened! Building the top bar hives was a bit of a challenge, so I really appreciated having dear old dad to assist. We built two hives based on the plans from my prior post, and had a nice time in and around Ithaca. We even visited local beekeeper Duane Waid and toured his honey processing facility. More on that another time, perhaps.
This week we prepared for the big snow storm currently hitting our area, so I have a short update on this as well. Continue reading
My dear father with his booth at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market in Ithaca, New York
As I mentioned in my last post, one of my near-term goals is to build a new top bar hive. The plan is to travel to my parent’s house this weekend, where my dear father has agreed to help me build the new hive. He has become quite the woodworker in his retirement, building and selling custom furniture throughout the year.
Based on my first year of use, my existing top bar hive Venus has a few drawbacks. In this post I’ll lay out my views on the current hive and how I hope to address these in a new hive. Unless something goes wrong, my next post will present the finished product. Continue reading
Bees with eeb 