Frances and the Bee

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...

Before I talk about Bee Day, I have an update on our wintering hive. It did not survive all of April. About a week before our new bees arrived, we were cleaning out that hive. Nevertheless, we picked up and installed our two packages of Carniolan honey bees on April 20. This year's season was and is under way. Two bee "packages." April 20 was a Saturday and a gorgeous day for picking up bees.  We thought we were completely set up for the smoothest installation ever. Instead, our installations were the clumsiest we have ever had.  Rather than talk about the way that we tried to install the first package in an unfavorable location and had thousands of bees flying around for a couple of hours, or the way that we accidentally released the queen for the other package and watched her fly away, I will talk about the two main lessons we learned. - We will try to always install bees at or after 6 pm.   At this time, the bees are getting ready to settle in and mo...

Photos from this post will look different from the last one since spring is finally making an appearance in central Minnesota.  We are starting to see green grass peeking through the brown, the sun warming the days after cool nights, and some Minnesotans wearing shorts at the first sign of a 60 degree high-temp for the day. All hands were busy helping us get the hives ready last weekend.  The kids are taking a particular interest in helping this year, and we are excited to teach them skills for beekeeping whenever we can. Mr. Bee made the 90-mile trip yesterday to pick up our four, two-pound packages of Carniolan honeybees, and so it was what we call "Bee Day." It's hard to describe how lovely it was to hear that humming sound of that many bees again.  This time of year can be frustrating in our area, mostly due to the weather.  We hardly ever know when the snow is really  gone or when spring has actually arrived, and we watch as hard as we can for s...

I'm thinking back to the day before we got our very first packages of bees, that excitement, and this photo from 2013. Many people ask us how we got into beekeeping. You know how we sometimes talk about things we'll do "someday when we're old"? Places we will go, hobbies we thnk we will have time for, or - if you are like me - plants we will own. Well, beekeeping was one of those things for us. We talked about how neat it would be and how much we would love it. When Mr. T, a family friend on whose land we currently have our bees, bought his home, I casually said, "Let us know if you ever want bees on your land." Immediately, he said, "I do want bees here." We spent that winter reading and researching as much as we could and Mr. T introduced us to Mr. Martin, who would become our beekeeping mentor and friend. That very next spring, there we were - first time and lifelong beekeepers. Many people don't know this, but beeks (short for ...

Well, August is here and we have updates! Days after my last update, we got a call from Mr. T. He had been walking through the yard and noticed something out of the corner of his eye.  One of our hives swarmed.  This doesn't mean they flew at someone in an angry cloud like we used to see in cartoons.  It means they had made a new queen and half of the hive left with her...and they were temporarily in this tree: Photo Courtesy Mr. T. Bees are not aggressive in this state since they don't have a hive to protect anymore, but this was not good news.  There are ways to collect a swarm and re-hive it, and some beekeepers get all their bees this way, but this was a difficult location, a difficult time of day, and an unlikely success.  The bees normally move on quickly to a home in the wild, and they did move on just a hour or so before we were able to get there. Although we like to look at this in a positive way, that we helped contribute a new hive to the wi...

I didn't realize it had been so long since my last update. Is it July already? We have been taking more of a hands-off approach to the bees this year, and since our inspections have been so simple and quick, I hadn't been taking photos.  Now, I miss having the photos, so I'm back to it. Both of our hives are doing well.  The queens have been making great patterns and there is already some capped honey in the hives. Below, you can see an excellent coverage of brood comb.  We look for not too many empty spaces. To the left, which is actually the bottom of the frame, are larger cells that hold drone (male) bees. It's normal for the hive to produce these and I will try to get a photo of a drone so you can compare. The rightmost bee is next to a brand new emerging bee, which we know is a female because of the shape of the cap on the comb.  The bee will chew her way out and start her life by cleaning the cell for the queen to lay a new egg in it.  Can you ima...

Our bees are busy... In the photo below, on the right side, you can see a bee entering into the hive with some nice, light yellow pollen on her leg.  Hooray! The trees have already passed the budding stage here, dandelions are in bloom (to my delight but the dismay of many), and more wildflowers are on the way.  In case you're choosing flowers for your garden, honeybees like blue and purple blooms the best.  It looks like both queens are busy laying eggs and, any day now, new honeybees will start emerging from their cells and will get to work.  Since a good queen could lay 1000 eggs each day, we would hope that about that many bees would be added every day once the hatching rotation is in full swing. A honeybee's first job is to clean out her cell. Below is a photo of a brood frame from one hive.  You can see what we'd call a very nice pattern of brood.  That means that there aren't many empty cells, which would be ones  you can see here ...