Frances and the Bee

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 ...

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...

In my last post, we were holding our breath to see if spring had really arrived.  Update: it did arrive!  The unseasonably warm weather made a swift end to winter and gave all of our hives (as well as ourselves) an unpredicted boost. For the first time ever, all of our hives survived the winter.  We were checking on the hives and had a hunch that we needed to get to splitting the hives, but it seemed too early.  It turns out the bees were quite ready to split. It was wonderful and, on Mother's Day, forced us to "level up" our beekeeping - in more ways than one! We were finishing our family time together outside when our company noticed "the bees were really busy."  Mr. Bee and I saw that they were coming rapidly out of one of the hives and flying up and around...and away.  We could even hear a difference. This was a swarm. Swarming is the honey bees' usual way to reproduce and make more colonies. Imagine a hive has survived winter.  The weather is warm...

It is now August, and signs of the last part of summer are all around.  The county fair came and went, the school supply lists are out, and the leaves on the trees can be heard a little more as the wind blows through them. Minnesotans, although very fond of autumn, try not to mention its pending arrival.  We are soaking up every last drop of summer here. In my last update, we had two awesome hives and I was daydreaming about a stack of honey supers taller than me on each one. We started to see fresh, capped honey. With the changes in season come the usual changes to plant and animal life in the area. The corn is high, some of the flowers are going to seed, and the deer are out at sunset to eat up soybeans.  This isn't to mention how plump some of the toads have gotten: Unfortunately, though, we have also had a change in our beekeeping season. During one of the inspections a while back, we saw that the brood patterns were really healthy and we decide...

It’s the week of the Fourth of July and that’s normally when we have the start of greatest flow of nectar in our area. Spring was wet, though, and summer has taken it’s time to appear (I think it is finally safe to say it is here). We are watching to see if and how the beekeeping year is affected by these factors. Regardless of how long it feels like it took for summer to make itself known, it is here, and you can tell by looking at the hives. Trees and grass and wildflowers are surrounding them, and it’s just beautiful.  We did decide to do something unique this year. Beekeepers using the Langstroth hive (the type we use) generally use 8, 9 or 10 frames in each box. Mr. Bee prefers 10-frames, but they are larger and quite noticeably heavier. I prefer 8 frames since they are easier for me to lift and they make for nice, tall stacks at the end of the season. (We have enjoyed using 9 frames in a 10-frame box, but that is a story for another day.) Orange pollen c...

Yes, July is here, and so is the summer's main nectar flow. The bees are, as always, working hard to forage and make honey. We have been researching and turning ideas over to find what we can do better now and each season.  This season, we have two hives, the first one being very strong. It has the best temperament of any hive we've had. The queen has an excellent brood pattern and the colony has been steadily growing. This  brings our first attempt at a split, making two hives out of one. Mr. Bee built a great nuc box and we filled it with several frames of eggs and bees from the strong hive, leaving the queen with the original colony. The plan is to relocate the nuc box so that the bees inside make a new queen for themselves out of the eggs we provided. We did move the box and have been waiting to see if this has been successful and what the next step will be. The second hive had a very poor start. Their temperament has been bad their brood pattern h...