Following the bees

This is where we are following an overwintered nuc through a bee year. See the initial installation here.

our nuc is finally ready for a super. If you look down between the racks, there are lots of bees on both sides of 7 of the racks.

BTW - we need to name our nuc... any ideas?

Bee stings this year:

Kelley..........30

I went through all of my hives three different times in the past 2 weeks. Twice I went through with no stings at all, then got 8 at one time - including one on my calf that is still blistered up.

Quintin........4

Tink holding at four. perhaps I should get her in the beeyard more often.

Devlin.........48

Our Devlin took the lead this week with a record 17 stings. I must say this was not his fault. He arrived at his bee yard to find that an errant branch had blown off of a tree. The bees were PISSED. All you can do is just try to get the hive back together A.S.A.P.

Lydia...........2

One on the head when she was just happily gardening and a bee got caught in her hair, and one on the leg when she was actually working the bees.

 

send us your current bee stings.

See what Krista Robb has to say about bees, ccd, and chemicals. click here

The nucs did great, however.

What's going on in the bee yard?

6/7/2010

 Wow - our spring honey flow is doing terrible. This always leaves you wondering what you did wrong. The only thing I would have done differently would have been to really feed the bees a lot more this spring to get them boosted up faster. The problem seems to be multi-faceted. The bees were not nearly as built up as I would have liked when the locust started blooming. I had split very aggressively this spring and they just never seemed to catch up - that is where the sugar water would have really helped. But there were other problems beyond my control.  The locust bloom was wonderful, but lasted less than a week. The poplar bloom has not been as abundant as usual, and also lacked any longevity. The daily rain showers have made it very difficult for the bees to collect nectar. A friend of mine pointed out that all of a sudden, the bees were on the clover in his yard. It struck me that what that means is the poplar bloom is over, and we've not much honey in our supers. Well - maybe sourwood will be better for us. As Tink says, "That's farming".

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     Honey:

This past season we were able to collect two kinds of honey. Our early summer honey is made up of a variety of nectar sources. The bees visit locust, apple, blackberry, blueberry and all of the early blooms, but it is the nectar of the poplar that gives our honey its dark, rich, heavy flavor.

We were delighted to have gotten sourwood honey. The rainy weather took its toll, which meant very few beekeepers were able to collect this very special honey. Sourwood is the signature honey of the Appalachians and the nectar flow occurs from late June to mid August.

We use no chemical treatments in our bee yard. Our honey is what is considered "raw" - we do not heat and strain only lightly to remove impurities. Honey in the grocery store is generally "dead," meaning it has been over-heated and strained repeatedly. This kills the enzymes and removes the good stuff found in honey.

To see what a starved out hive looks like. click here

For a picture gallery of what we saw in Lydia's beeyard- click here.