Frances and the Bee

Summer is full of activity in Minnesota, for us and for the bees. We have been visiting parks, pools and lakes, fishing, picnicking, and spending as much time as we can outside, and, of course, checking on our bees. We are already in what is one of the main nectar flows in our area. This means it is prime time for bees to be collecting nectar and storing honey. We will be checking on the hives about once a week to make sure that the bees have enough space to work. Honey is often called "liquid gold". It is a very sweet reward for the labor of beekeeping. Many people don't know that there are other simple joys in beekeeping aside from just collecting honey. For example, our second hive is doing remarkably well, and it's really neat to open the cover and see a full box of frames like this: Every year, I look forward to the first time I see an emerging bee. This is the first time I have tried to post a video here, so I hope it works. Here is a short clip where...

It was a beautiful day here today...AND we have a laying queen again in our North Hive! We know this because we saw plenty of eggs and larvae...and we saw her ! She's the queen we purchased at the County Fair and she's marked with red. Can you find her?    She moved over a little in his one, but Mr. Bee will help you this time. Here's a frame with capped honey from our South Hive. They're doing great.     Today we put another honey super on that South Hive, so we're thinking they have a good chance to make it through the winter.     Driving out in the country lets us see just how quickly the season is about to change.  There are hints of yellow and deep autumn red appearing everywhere. While Mr. Bee was adding the honey super, the kiddos and I found this neat plant.  I'm not sure what it's called - let me know if you do - but it looks like a bunch of tiny windows.  It was a beautifu...

After erroneously destroying some queen cells that our North Hive needed, we'd been brainstorming how to help them pick up their numbers again with a new, fertile queen.  The choice of many beekeepers, and a handy option for us this time is to purchase a new one. We are part of the Tri-County Beekeepers Association, who happened to have a display case at our county fair the beginning of the month.  We visited their booth to talk with some experienced beekeepers about what we should do, and a man there offered to sell us the frame - with a marked, fertile queen - to try and place it in our hive. Mr. Bee learned from this fellow beekeeper that we should place one layer of newspaper over our North Hive's highest box and then place another box on top of that to hold the frame with the new queen and bees. If we were to put the frame in our hive as-is, the bees would most likely work to destroy all of the new bees and likely the queen since they wouldn't reco...