Frances and the Bee

Since I don't update the blog often, sometimes, when I sit to write, I wonder where to start.  After the last two years of beekeeping, we found ourselves in a place of learning mostly from the mistakes we made. Honey yield is not our main goal of this pursuit, but it is a goal, and we just didn't have the harvests we'd like to see. We haven't been as successful at getting our bees through winter as we want to be. This beekeeping year, we regrouped and have been working hard on keeping up with spring feeding, doing inspections more often and with more intention, learning MUCH more about pre-swarm behavior and inside-the-hive space management, etc. Each week, I kept thinking of updating my notes here, but I knew that several days later, we'd have more we had been thinking or doing...and so here we are in July, 2020. Oh, 2020.  I won't address the upheaval this year has brought with it except that, in the particular theme of things here, it brings to my mind quite ...

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...

Last fall was a very busy time for us. We had many things going on, and although we harvested our honey and kept our best hopes for the bees to winter, we didn't get to spend as much time closing out the season as we would have liked.  One hive made it through January, and no hives made it all the way through our long, long winter. As I have said, our winter was long here in central Minnesota.  It always feels long in February and March, but it really was long this year.  One local company had bee pickup in April and there was a blizzard the next week!  Our beekeeping mentor had his bees arrive with that shipment, and (to his wife's dismay) he kept those girls down in their basement for a couple weeks until the terrible weather passed.  Well, winter finally did pass by, and we are smitten with Minnesota again.  Sunshine and green is what we really needed to see. In my last post, I explained that we were waiting for "nucs" of Italian honeybees this ye...

Some people have been asking if the remaining hive has made it through winter.  Unfortunately, it did not, so we are awaiting a fresh start again this year. It has been sort of a slow start to the season, though.  I read the other day that it felt like the 57th day of February here in the Midwest. It's sad, but true. We are right in the middle of April, and still looking at another snowstorm in the forecast for the upcoming weekend.  On April 5th last year, I wrote that we had just picked up our bees. We know a couple people who have received their bees here, including our mentor, Mr. Martin. Because of the cold, he has been keeping his bees in the basement and just installed them yesterday. Mr. Bee, Little Mr. Bee, and Scout were able to be there with Mr. Martin yesterday when he moved them back inside. He can keep them there for a couple of weeks now since he has provided them with honey and controlled temperatures. Here is a photo of Mr. Martin and one od his ...

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...

With the advice of a professional beekeeper, we grabbed our tools and went back to look into what was going on with the fourth hive. Literally, we needed to look inside that queen cup. Again, here is what it looked like from the outside (larger cell at the bottom of the frame) and now what we found it looks like inside: If there had been a larva inside, we would have had to take some action to prevent a swarm. There was nothing inside, so we don't need to do anything immediately. We will be watching this queen and her brood pattern, to see if she is healthy enough, though. I suspect we will need to replace her but will not jump to that conclusion just yet. We saw her again - can you find her in the photo below? Beekeeping keeps us on our toes and we really appreciate the community and support we find to help us do the best job we can. We will check this and the other hives soon and look forward to the next update.