Our Backyard Bee Journey!💗🐝

[drstratton]

So much to know about bees. Way back when, there was a book - The ABC and XYZ of Beekeeping. I devoured it.

Thank you! I'll look that one up. I'm watching videos and reading articles almost every day.

 

[sourland]

Thank you! I'll look that one up. I'm watching videos and reading articles almost every day.

Apparently it has been renamed 'The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture'.

 

[drstratton]

Apparently it has been renamed 'The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture'.

Thank you!

 

[GunnyBun]

Not a beekeeper but I find this fascinating! Just here for the beautiful pics and wealth of knowledge and information.

 

[Sally PB]

I've learned so much since we started, for everything I've learned there's probably 10x's what I haven't.

Exactly!

 

[drstratton]

Not a beekeeper but I find this fascinating! Just here for the beautiful pics and wealth of knowledge and information.

Welcome and thank you for following along. It's been such an amazing journey!

 

[drstratton]

Did our inspection today. The bees were nice and calm (I understand that can change), so far we've been blessed. We saw lots of eggs, larvae and capped brood. The queens also had plenty of space to continue laying. We will probably extract about 8 more frames of honey next week. Then nothing until/if we get a nectar flow from buckwheat.

Nuc hive #1
Capped brood

Eggs

Nuc Hive # 2
Capped brood

Lots of room for the queen to lay.

Capped honey

Package Hive
Capped brood

Swarm hive
Capped brood, Eggs & larvae

Capped brood, eggs & larvae

If you zoom in, you can see the eggs & larvae on some of the pictures. The eggs are like tiny grains of rice, standing in end.

I found one thing in our hive that doesn't belong there. A small hive beetle. Thankfully they won't survive in our area for very long. Too hot and sandy for them to breed. It might have come from some commercial hives that were brought in to pollinate the buckwheat. They can fly up to 10 miles to find a new hive to infest. If not kept in check they can destroy a hive and cause the bees to abandon it. Their larvae do the most damage. Hopefully we found this one before it laid any eggs. We will inspect every frame of the hive next week.

We will also test for Varroa mites next week. Hopefully the count will be low, but I'm not holding my breath. We need to ke the counts low, so that the hives will stay strong and make it through winter.

 

[Sally PB]

How much honey did you get? I don't recall if you said.

 

[drstratton]

How much honey did you get? I don't recall if you said.

About 42 lbs from 13 medium frames.

 

[Sally PB]

Cool!

I'm sorry we put a deep box on as a honey super. I really wish we'd put on a medium. But we had the deep ready to go, and had more frames with comb.

Thank goodness we have 8 frame boxes. Deeps get heavy!