Frances and the Bee

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...

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...

In my last blog entry in July of last year, we were in the swing of the season and evaluating how the bees were handling themselves with the nectar flow. I will try to sum up the details of the end of the season and what surprised us this winter. We had two hives in 2018 that we purchased from a different source than we have purchased them from in the past. The hive that was doing poorly (in my opinion) was the most aggressive colony we had ever had. One even managed to sting through my leather glove! I also felt that it was the least hygienic hive that we had. It was low-producing and although we managed to help the colony get established with its own laying queen, we were unable to winter it. The hive that was initially doing well continued to do well. The only issue we ran into was with the queen excluder. This is a layer that beekeepers can use in a hive to keep the queen in the area where she lays eggs (the brood) and away from the honey frames. We haven’t used an excluder ...

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...

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...