Corks out

November 11 - Veterans Day - I removed the corks from the hives and a couple of bees came out to see what I was up to. We'll see how this winter goes - it's been unseasonably cold already.

Buttoned up

November 1, 2017
My hives are covered, the feeders are off. The mouse guards are on and it's game on for winter - keep warm and sated dear worker bees.

video October 2017

Put feeder boxes on

October 16, 2017
returned from Europe today and decided to feed the bees
put the bottom boards in 1/2 way and the mouse guards on
all went well, no stings!

Today October 17, I checked in the feeder boxes and the bees were taking down the syrup!
Another warm day over 70 degrees, will be up to 80 by Friday.

October 24, still taking syrup but not as voraciously (2:1 sugar:water)

Over 90 degrees and they're bearding

It's really warm today - humid and over 90 - so I checked the hives around 7pm and they were both bearding up the front of the hives.
Tomorrow is supposed to be just as bad.

Well this can't be good

It's warm and humid, but there's room in the bottom box, I think!
And then a spider has a hold of one of my bees!

Removed feeder boxes

The high today was 96!
Hive A's feeder bottles were empty - Hive B's were not, but I took off both feeder boxes with syrup jars after I smoked the hives.
Replaced the feeder cloth with a brand new piece of cloth.

Nadir'ed both hives June 5, 2017

Well, I know it makes for tall hives, but due to the fact that I started my packages in boxes which already had comb/honey, they've been going to town. It's been really warm for early June and I didn't want them to swarm - they were starting to build comb in the bottom boxes, so I got the smoker going and veil'ed up.

Beautiful day, warm, sunny, less humid, light breeze. Took off the feeder boxes then the top 2 boxes on the big hive - Hive A - then the next two boxes, then added the put the empty box below and restacked them. Similarly with Hive B, I removed the feeder box and jars, then the top two boxes but 2 top bars from the bottom (third) box stuck to the bottom of the second box, so those got a little squished, though I tried to keep the boxes tilted to avoid ruining them completely. I salvaged them and put the top bars back in the third box, then I removed it, added the fourth empty box and restacked them all up again.

I didn't look for the queen cages - if I had help, and someone could hold the boxes up for me, I could have tried to do that but they probably built comb around them anyway, so no big deal.

The smoker worked really well and the bees were surprisingly nice considering how intrusive these maneuvers were!

I'll take the feeders off next week.

I then clipped down all the grass by hand.

still taking down syrup

all four feeder jars needed to be filled again today.
a beautiful day - 80+ degrees, tomorrow will be 85 and muggy.
so I took out the bottom boards so the hives won't get too hot.

Taking down syrup

Saturday, 27 May 2017

A beautiful day to get lots of outdoor tasks finished. After a week and a half of rain, it has dried out so the garden was finished today.

Hive A emptied their feeders, so after I replaced the duck cloth on both, I filled the feeders on both hives though there was still ~1/3 in Hive B in each bottle.

Lots of activity and pollen coming in - there are purple flowers all over the land and the workers are enjoying them.

Despite neglect, they're thriving

We were in Europe for 2 1/2 weeks, I came back to two active hives, the large one with empty feeders and the small one with 2/3 empty feeders.
I filled them both.
All is good.

New bees

April 21 2017
60 degrees and sunny, no wind, perfect day to hive the packages.
4 boxes on the big hive (A) - due to comb/honey, 1/2 pollen patty, queen cage sitting on top of the bars.
3 boxes on the small hive (B)
All is good.
Saturday morning, april 22, Earth Day, I removed the grass from the opening.
All is well.
Feeders on

Yep - lost my hive

Opened my  hive today, Saturday Feb 11, 2017  - full of dead bees, capped honey and sugar fondant on top.
Time to order another package and harvest some of this honey, I guess.

?did I lose my hive?

february 6, 2017:
went to listen to the hive and didn't hear much!
but this happened to my small hive last year and it made it after all, so I'll see.
also the droppings are brown, not yellow.

I'll know within a month I think

Added some sugar

Friday Jan 20 2017: It has been warm, 30s-40s all week with rain, so I thought I better check the stores. I took off the roof, then the quilt box and partially lifted the top bar cloth. There was plenty of activity with bees on the remaining sugar blocks (fondant). But I put another block (broken into two pieces) under the cloth. Then I tried to cover it up again - not an easy task because the sugar pulls up the cloth - there isn't any excess - that's why I have two cloths overlapping to do the job.

Plenty of bees flew out and a couple circled around me but no stings, thankfully!
I hope this gets them through, though I do have one block of home made fondant left if needed.

January 14 2017

Well, we just went through our third polar freeze and the girls are alive. There are a lot of dead bees around the hive, but stethoscope to the escape hole yields buzzing.

Saturday December 31, 2016

The girls are active this sunny day.