Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

-

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow...
Tennyson
 

Our Hives
Photo Courtesy Mr. T


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

2015 Honey

-
Image
Here it is!  We are just starting to get this year's harvest into jars.  The beauty below is just part of what fell/dripped/was scraped off during de-capping the frames for harvest. It is slightly cloudy-looking just from the tiny particles of wax...and it's delicious! I think it's a touch sweeter than last year's honey, but it does still taste like wildflowers. I also made my first try at honey candy.  Candy making has been a challenge for me in the past, so it was exciting that it turned out.  Isn't the color beautiful?  The only ingredients were honey and butter. They remind me of Werther's, but they have a beautiful, strong, wildflower taste.  The fragrant recipe will be lovely to make in the fall and they should be soothing for winter's dry throats. The photo below is what we're looking at as of late.  The right-most hive is gone and we made the frames available for the bees to eat the last drops of honey off of so we can store them ...
Read more