Wildflowers and Special Memories

-
We've had a beautiful week of summer. I haven't been personally out to see our bees in weeks, so it was a wonderful surprise to see the amount of wildflowers that have sprung up in front of our hives. It was a great choice on the part of Mr. T to stop mowing that area - in part so he doesn't get "anyone" - namely, the bees - upset, but also because it's particularly beautiful these days!
 
Don't these hives seem comfortable here?
 
 

The hives are looking great and are our girls are busy working on filling up the second deep supers that we provided.  I think we'll be ready for our first honey supers this next week!

This next photo shows some new comb, being "drawn out." They built a little cell small enough to squeeze into and deep enough to hold brood, honey, pollen, or nectar.


This photo is interesting to me because I feel like my eyes find the comb first - and the stinger on that bee!  Isn't this honey-white comb beautiful?





We had to scrape some comb off of the bottom of a frame and I saw this later stage of the larvae for the first time. In this stage, the bees put a cap over the cell for the final part of development. ...Sort of creepy and very cool!






"Bee Space" - They don't need much!

It was a great inspection and the bees were in a good mood. They do have a lot to be busy with these days and we're getting a bit more efficient at inspection each time we do it.

Miss Bee got to meet our bees for the first time, and we did try to persuade her to become a beekeeper.  She was brave around the "girls" - just as we expected, and we found a little bit of honey for her to taste.




I am so proud of our Bee Family and it was a simply lovely time together.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Snowiest Winter Ever

-
Image
Really. It was the snowiest winter on record here in central Minnesota.  I often make references as to how long winter feels here, but this year was historical. We did a lot of shoveling and snowball throwing. We also did a lot of staying in, watching movies, and drinking cocoa. As always, we checked on the hives, too. We went into the winter with two hives. We had very, very high varroa mite counts in the fall and did some aggressive treatments in hopes to help the colonies be strong enough for what would be an extra-long winter. (Insert quiet winter waiting here.) I am pleased to say that warmer temperatures did return and one of our hives has wintered! In the fall, we treated these bees, separated the brood frames, and re-treated when the brood hatched. Then, we combined them all back together. Success!  These girls were out finding pollen even before all of the snow had melted. This colony has a wonderful temperament and everything looks right on track inside the hive. We ...
Read more

Bee Day 2022

-
Image
Happy Spring?? Minnesota is taking its time to switch over to warm temperatures, and I have some updating to do before I start the Bee Day update. I genuinely thought I had updated the blog last fall when the last of our hives died. I did not make a post like I thought I had. Although I left off with us treating for mites, we lost all of the remaining bees within weeks of my last post.  It was extremely disappointing after having had such a successful year; all hives survived last winter, we managed the most hives we have ever had at once in a beautiful new location, and we took our highest honey yield. Alas, all the hives succumbed and we didn't winter any. Many people think of beekeeping as being either really scary (being surrounded by 100,000 bees!?) or they think of it as being super idealized (scooping out honey whenever we want). Beekeeping is sometimes intimidating and is certainly beautiful and fascinating, but I want take a moment to remind readers that beekeeping is...
Read more

Seasons Turning

-
Image
We are always seeing the changing seasons, aren't we? Fall really lets us know it, though. At the beginning of August, something fun happened this season that I wanted to share here before I give an update on our hives. Some friends of ours said they had bees going in and out of a knot hole in an old oak tree.  When we visited, we observed the activity and saw that they were honey bees!  Over the years of beekeeping, we have lost many bees to early season swarming, when half of a hive leaves with a queen to make a new colony.  We have always comforted ourselves that, although we are losing something, we are contributing to nature, but this was the first time we have ever seen a colony like this for ourselves. It was so amazing to see a colony "in the wild!"  I have heard positions on either side of whether honey bees should be considered "native pollinators" since they were brought to the U.S. from England. Honey bees have stolen a lot of the public attention as...
Read more