🐝💗Our Backyard Beekeeping Journey!💗🐝

[drstratton]

It's kind of hard to take a photo of the bees clustering in a slatted rack, looking into the entrance. They aren't bearding, just hanging out in the rack until they can go back out and forage.
This is bearding!

That's an amazing amount of bees.

As I said, I have seen bearding on other people's hives but not on my own hives.

We had some that hung out on the entry board. When we added the shade cover and screened bottom boards, that pretty much stopped.

 

[Apis mellifera]

That's an amazing amount of bees.

Thats how you get a lot of supers filled real fast.

 

[drstratton]

We will be home on Saturday. We have to attend a memorial service, for a dear friend. So, we probably won't have time to feed the bees until Sunday. We will probably remove the supers, depending on how well capped they are.

We leave again on Monday and will be back on Friday. Then, we'll mite test all 4 hives. I hope the counts will be low.

Not sure what day we will extract. We have to take DIL & grandbaby's to the airport on the 6th, they fly out on the 7th. Then back home and no more running around for awhile. We have soooo much that needs to be done at our place.

 

[drstratton]

Thats how you get a lot of supers filled real fast.

I can believe that!

 

[drstratton]

Today is going to be busy. I made up two gallons of syrup last night. We will be pulling off the remaining honey supers today and feeding the bees. The buckwheat is finished blooming, so even though we still have a lot of flowers in our yard and the area, it's not enough for the bees. I'm afraid they are going to be very cranky when we remove the supers. I think we will be putting a majority of the frames into the freezer, until the end of October. Then we will decide if we need to add them back onto the hives for winter. We're hoping they will have enough in the double deeps, supplemented with candy boards or we're thinking to use sugar blocks, which are easier (thank you @5Australorpasaures) for that info. Hubs is still thinking that we might combine any hives that don't seem strong. I'm hoping to keep all 4 going, but want to give them the best chance.
I'll report back later.

 

[drstratton]

Everything went well. The girls were very calm in the first 3 hives. The swarm hive was a different story. They were a bit spicier and a few were buzzing my head. I'm so thankful for my veil, jacket, gloves & big boy pants (aka hubs jeans, they're thicker than mine).

We worked as quickly as we could, put everything back together and put on the 2:1 syrup.

We will be extracting 14 frames of buckwheat honey and 14 frames of late summer honey. That will have to wait until we're back home next weekend.

Very thankful to have the 3rd freezer. We were going to sell it, before we got our bees. So glad we didn't.

Next year we might remove most of the supers in the middle of the buckwheat flow. Leave any frames that are mostly filled, so the girls can cap them. That will hopefully make it easier for them to fill up the deeps in prep for winter.

We should be able to keep feeding syrup until the end of October. We'll see what our temps do.

 

[5Australorpasaures]

Today is going to be busy. I made up two gallons of syrup last night. We will be pulling off the remaining honey supers today and feeding the bees. The buckwheat is finished blooming, so even though we still have a lot of flowers in our yard and the area, it's not enough for the bees. I'm afraid they are going to be very cranky when we remove the supers. I think we will be putting a majority of the frames into the freezer, until the end of October. Then we will decide if we need to add them back onto the hives for winter. We're hoping they will have enough in the double deeps, supplemented with candy boards or we're thinking to use sugar blocks, which are easier (thank you @5Australorpasaures) for that info. Hubs is still thinking that we might combine any hives that don't seem strong. I'm hoping to keep all 4 going, but want to give them the best chance.
I'll report back later.

3 hives and 3 gallons of heavy syrup every other day, it's ridiculous.

 

[drstratton]

3 hives and 3 gallons of heavy syrup every other day, it's ridiculous.

Right...lol
We need to pick up more sugar. I think I'll grab 4 25lb bags. Our local store is not the place to do it. We'll hit Costco in Wenatchee on our way home from Lake Chelan.

 

[drstratton]

I was out mowing the lawn and noticed the bees all over my Caryopteris. Had to get a video. I think this is the biggest game in town right now.

 

[Sally PB]

Our goldenrod is on its way out. So are the blue New England Asters. The pink NEAs are still blooming. I'm going to encourage those to spread.